IT WAS after giving a sermon in a church on the Grenadine island of Carriacou last year, that Lisdoonvarna man Fr Tommy Barrett felt there was something wrong.
He had just delivered a passionate homily explaining why he had devoted his life to missionary work and led the mostly French-speaking congregation in prayer, but he could not remember any of it. He visited his local doctor who asked Fr Barrett, to his surprise, how his eyes were.
“He explained that the heat and the conditions had probably sent a shock to my brain and had caused me to blank out,” he said.
When he returned home to Ireland this year, he visited an Irish doctor who was sceptical about his Grenadine counterpart’s diagnosis. The doctors found evidence of a mild stroke but were still unsure how the problem had developed.
Since the incident, Fr Barrett’s eyesight has improved to a stage where he no longer needs to wear glasses.
“It has continued to get better,” he says “Is it for this project?”
The project Fr Barrett speaks about involves training the peoples of Carriacou and Petit Martinique in the art of stained glass production and the construction of a workshop.
Fr Barrett returned to his native Lisdoonvarna over the Christmas as the fundraising drive for the project gets underway. His excitement over the venture is palpable.
“I can’t wait for it to start. This programme could spread like rash around the islands. It would make a major difference to the lives of so many people.”
Funding for the project has already been sought from the Irish Government, while a bank account for donations has been set up at the AIB branch in Ennistymon. He hopes that the project will make people less reliant on aid by promoting a culture of self-sufficiency throughout the region’s fragile economy.
The road to Carriacou began in St Flannans college where missionaries would visit the school, appealing to students to join the priesthood. Enchanted by stories of sailing canoes down the Niger river, the young Thomas Barrett, along with five of his classmates, signed up.
During the ‘50s, he attended both the seminary and college in Cork where his educational and vocational pursuits ran tangential to his sporting ambitions. In 1960, he contested a senior colleges final while playing for UCC.
Fourteen points up at half-time and cruising victory seemed assured. But a sporting legend had other ideas.
“I played in a colleges final in 1960 where we were beaten by two points in the final,” he said. “Christy Ring got a goal with two minutes to go. We were 14 points up at half-time. In the second half, they came out and they knocked us out. Our two midfielders were carted off to hospital. I started the game at wing forward but I ended up playing midfield on Christy. God, he nearly killed me.”
Like Christy Ring, though, the Barrett family have carved out their own unique place in GAA folklore. Along with his brother Jim, Fr Barrett played both hurling and football at senior grade for Clare in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
He played his club hurling with Ruan but found that circumstances dictated that, by the time he had finished college in the summer, Clare had usually bid farewell to championship hurling.
“My brother Jim was on the Clare minor football team that played in the All-Ireland final. He played for the seniors on one occasion and he played senior hurling too. I think that is a bit of a record, in Clare. I don’t think it happened before that brothers played at senior level in both codes.”
Football and hurling took a backseat in 1964 when Fr Barrett left to pursue missionary work in Africa. Nigeria was his first port of call and, at the time, the church’s aim was to ensure as many children successfully graduated to second-level education. But in 1967, ethnic and religious tensions between the different peoples of Nigeria reached boiling point, resulting in the Biafran civil war.
The conflict had major implications for the work of Catholic missionaries. Schools were forced to close down and, for Fr Barrett, the dangers became very real.
“In Nigeria, when the war started, this big soldier showed up one day with his gun. He said ‘today I have killed one white man and you will be the second, your hour has come’.”
But Fr Barrett survived that, and other perilous encounters.
After moving to Kenya, he gained a qualification in mechanical engineering and motoring mechanics and spent the next 26 years running a polytechnic training college. Financial restrictions eventually made it impossible to keep the school open, so Fr Barrett set off again.
This time, the destination was the Caribbean paradise of Carriacou. He immediately felt at home. The Irish priest settled well and found the people warm and welcoming. When his truck came idling down the road, everyone waved and saluted the man they knew as the mechanic.
He recalls the “terrifying” night when Hurricane Emily struck. It devastated the region and resulted in widespread looting, but it proved the catalyst for his latest project.
Carriacou has no indigenous craft industries of any kind and the proposed stained glass project would have major social and economic implications in the region. The employment rate for women is very low and Fr Barrett believes that the workshop would mean more women would join the workforce.
But it is his conviction that training, instead of aid, is the only way for communities like Carriacou and Petit Martinique to go forward.
“When you achieve something with somebody else, it means a lot more to you. People can’t share that with me, but they can share by helping the people of Grenada make their own living instead of having their hands out for aid. It is far more important that we give people a way of making a living,” he says.