KildareNet News

BROWNSTOWN, 4 January 2002: by Brian Byrne. He can be a pain in the ass. He can drive you to distraction. You groan as he tangents in discussion from Irish relative wealth to absolute African poverty. And you can’t help but love him and envy his absolutely total trust in the humanity of man and the deliverances of a God he completely believes will come through.

Nobody can refuse to help Dan Noud, a Brownstown-born man of so many parts that many of us feel inadequate in his company. Priest, missionary, teacher, beggar, nurse, midwife, carpenter, mechanic, visionary, ascetic, builder and optimist. And a man who has, over almost four decades in Africa, lived a life that only he would disclaim deserves the title of ‘saint’.

When Dan comes home to Brownstown there is a large sigh over County Kildare. It happens every five years or so. And once they’ve expressed their feeling of ‘here we go again’, the people who have so often helped in the past get stuck in again.

Along with the new ones. Over the years the word has spread. Dan’s work has attracted the attention of different groups of people in his home county, all who want to help him in building schools and medical centres, training young African men and women in trades and skills, advancing in small increments the quality of life for the communities around Nangwa and Mogitu to the point that they can hope for much better for their children than they ever could for themselves.


Caroline McNamara of the Solstice Foundation gets a bouquet from Fr Dan in thanks for her group's fundraising.

Dan’s basic supporters are a loose group of people working under the banner of TOIL, aiming to provide the wherewithal for ‘Dan’s people’ to help them help themselves. Some have been involved since 1974 when Dan drove his first donated VW minibus 10,000 miles from Kildare to Nangwa, loaded with tools and three Tanzanian lads who had spent six months in Ireland learning trades.

The most recent are the members of the ‘Solstice Foundation’ who organised a dance during the summer of 2001 and raised some £17,000 for the TOIL group, which manages all the funds raised to make the most efficient use of them.

In between there have been many others rallied to the cause, individuals and companies who have donated money, medicines, tools, transportation and other needs. The results of their work have allowed, at intervals over the years, the sending of containers of supplies to Nangwa and Mogitu. In Nangwa, a Trade School set up by Dan with just 13 students now has several hundreds and is operating fully. A dispensary started in the same community is now being operated by the Medical Missionaries of Mary.

The Mogitu project, on a site donated by the government, is now well in development, with a basic training school and dormitories, a church, and the beginnings of a full dispensary/maternity unit for the local community.

The funds provided by the Solstice Foundation are being used to send another container to Tanzania, filled with essential supplies for the trade school and dispensary. These include tools, materials, spares, textbooks and training aids for teaching young people skills in auto electrics, building construction, carpentry, draughtsmanship, shoemaking and mechanical engineering. Antibiotics and other basic medical supplies are also being sourced.

The response already has been, as usual, extraordinary. Dan hopes to have the ‘Container 2001’ project on the high seas in early January. And then those who find it impossible not to help him can all heave another sigh over County Kildare. Of relief, that it’s all done again, for another few years at least.