Great kids: Mother Teresa

( August 26, 1910 – September 5, 1997)

The bud that blossomed

YOU’VE heard of all that Mother Teresa has done for the children, the poor, the dying, the homeless, the unwanted ~ in India and dozens of other countries. You’ve seen her in photographs in a simple, blue-bordered white cotton sari, one end draped over her head, her face creased in a beautiful smile.

You’ve read about the Missionaries of Charity, the order that she founded in Calcutta, and that she adopted Indian citizenship in 1949. You know that she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979.

But who was the girl who grew up to become Mother Teresa? What were her early years like?

Agnes Gonxha ~ Gonxha means a flower bud in Albanian ~ was born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Albania. She was the youngest daughter of Nikola and Dnanafile Bojaxhiu, both staunch Catholics. Her sister Age was six years older than her, her brother Lazar three years her senior.

Agnes was a plump and tidy child, if a trifle serious for her age. For instance, she was the only one of the three children who would not steal jam! If Agnes heard Lazar hunting for desserts, she would remind him not to eat after midnight, specially if they were to attend morning mass. “But she never told on me,” Lazar recalls.

The Skopje of Agnes’ childhood was marked by five centuries of Turkish rule ~ a busy bazaar, soaring minarets and the muezzin’s regular call to prayer. Catholics, including the Bojaxhiu family, were just a tenth of the Albanian people.

Nikola, a prosperous contractor and wholesale importer of food, actively campaigned for a free Albania. He was “full of life and liked to be with people,” Lazar remembers. Unfortunately, he died suddenly when Agnes was just nine and his business partner cheated the Bojaxhius, leaving them nothing but their home.

The children called Dranafile Nana Loke (or ‘mother of my soul’). Supported by Nikola, she would never turn away the needy. Explaining that the unwanted were part of the Bojaxhiu family, Dranafile would feed anyone who knocked at her door. Often, she would visit the poor with food and money. Can you guess who went with her? Agnes, of course.

At elementary school at the local Sacred Heart Convent, Agnes’ lessons were in Albanian, with Serbo-Croat being taught in the fourth year. A fine student, she later attended the Skopje Gymnasium or secondary school.

When Agnes was not studying, helping friends, enjoying social or church activities, she was buried in a book. She read all she could find in the local parish library, including Dostoyevski’s works and those of Henryk Sienkiwicz, including Quo Vadis.

Agnes and Age, with unusual singing voices, were known as the nightingales of the Albanian Catholic Choir of Skopje. Can you imagine Agnes singing solos in Christmas plays, as she frequently did? On outings with their friends, the sisters would even sing on the road in horse-drawn carriages!

Some of Agnes’ friends would visit the open, happy Bojaxhiu household for extra tutoring from Agnes. “I love to teach most of all,” Mother Teresa, who taught at the Loreto schools in Calcutta when she first came to India, later said with a smile.

Even when young, Agnes was moved by the work being done by Jesuit missionaries in faraway Bengal. When her cousin Antoni gave free mandolin lessons to three girls, Agnes urged him to charge a dinar for each lesson. “Give it to me for the missions in India,” said the girl, who often wrote poetry in a notebook. She was just 17 then.

A year later, Agnes Gonxha told her Nana Loke that she wanted to become a missionary. As they bade her farewell, her friends gave her gifts and hugs, her family offered their understanding as they watched their precious bud set out for India, where she would blossom as Mother Teresa.