Originally appeared in the April 2013 Nauset Neighbors Newsletter:
Really? There is a Cape Cod Primary School in Nsangi, Uganda?
The arc of Mary Lee Mantz’s life is a story of courage, self-confidence and growth. Born in Waukesha in southeastern Wisconsin, the only child of a close knit family, her dearest memories are of childhood summer vacations with her parents and grandparents at a cabin on a lake in northern Wisconsin.
Mary Lee's lifework is in nursing. She received an RN from Fairview Hospital School of Nursing in Minneapolis, a BS in Nursing from Marquette University in Milwaukee summa cum laude, and then trained in midwifery and received a masters degree from the Yale School of Nursing. She then spent the next twenty years in clinical practice and teaching in graduate school at Yale and at the University of Vermont, and in clinical practice in Connecticut.
Mary Lee’s life took some twists and turns during those years, but her most extraordinary decision was to quit her job in Vermont to move to Connecticut to help her recently widowed Yale friend raise her six children. Then, in the late ‘80s, Mary Lee moved to Cape Cod and worked in clinical practice in nurse midwifery in Hyannis.
In 1990, Mary Lee was ready for an adventure of another sort. Under a Rockefeller grant administered by Case Western Reserve University, she became a faculty member at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, arriving about three years after the end of the Ugandan civil war and at the start of the Gulf War. The country was decimated, the infrastructure was destroyed, and virtually all communications in East Africa was blocked by the Allies. The university was in ruins. Faculty had fled or been shoot. Books were burned. AIDS was rampant. Mary Lee’s mission: to help establish the first nursing degree program in East Africa.
Mary Lee arrived with one piece of equipment: an Underwood manual typewriter. She left five years later, mission accomplished. And she left with a gift from the Ugandans, a new name, Akiki, pronounced Akeek, meaning “the gentle one.”
What was her most memorable experience in Africa? Mary Lee thinks for a moment, then a smile appears on her face. “Cape Cod School….definitely,” she says.
While in Uganda, Mary Lee wrote to friends and family back home describing the deep need she saw, and their generous donations helped to build four primary schools, a small medical clinic, and wells for clean water in several villages. One school in the village of Nsangi received most of its funds from the Federated Church of Orleans and the Congregational Church of Chatham, and the villagers named their school the Cape Cod Primary School, although they had no idea where Cape Cod was. That school remains a vital part of the Ugandan school system today.
In the photo above of the dedication at the opening of the school, the sign reads, “This school is dedicated with thanks
to Congegational (Congregational) Church of Chatham and Tedbrated (Federated!) Church of Orleans, Cape Cod, Mass, USA on
23 Ap 92.” That’s Mary Lee on the left.
The second photo shows Mary Lee handing out school bags handmade by the women of the Federated Church.
In 1995, after leaving Uganda, Mary Lee joined John Snow, Inc., a public health management company that had contracted with the US Agency for International Development, and she was posted first to the Zimbabwe regional office, then to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Zambia. During this time, she was involved in a variety of reproductive health projects related to AIDS, infant and maternal mortality, and family planning. Her work took her to villages away from the capitals in Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. And she may also have gone on about forty safaris, Mary Lee says with a smile.
Mary Lee left Africa in 2004, and as a senior advisor oversaw projects in eastern Europe, "commuting" to Russia and Romania, and living for six months in Albania. She then returned to her home on the cape and retired in July 2010.
What to do? Mary Lee had lived and worked overseas since 1990 and felt out of touch with her community. She was looking for interesting volunteer opportunities. How lucky were we when she read about Nauset Neighbors? At that time, Nauset Neighbors was a gleam in the collective eyes of the founders, and Mary Lee had spent much of her life putting programs together. Mary Lee quickly became an important part of the team that launched Nauset Neighbors in February 2011, and is on the Board of Directors in charge of outreach presentations.
Mary Lee’s new mission is to help the seniors of Cape Cod. Hers has been a rewarding and giving life.