Maud Kells: Wounded missionary on last visit to Africa

'This trip will be my last' - wounded missionary Maud makes last trip to the DR Congo.

A County Tyrone missionary who was wounded in a gun attack in 2015 says her next trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will be her last.

This week, Maud Kells, 77, is planning to travel to the place where the last 48 years of her life have been spent working as a nurse and missionary.

It was work which put her in danger at times.

Last February she was shot and critically injured.

Recounting her shocking experience she said:

"After midnight, my guard and I were coming back to the house. Suddenly two bandits came around.

One of them pointed a gun at me. Of course I froze at first but then when I thawed out I thought, 'He's not getting the better of me!' and I went to grab the gun. That's when he pulled the trigger."

The bullet hit her in the shoulder and she said she narrowly missed death or paralysis.

Now Maud says it is time to say goodbye to the country she has worked so tirelessly in.

"I feel, at my age, that it's maybe time to give up. I'm just not as healthy as I was," she told the BBC's Evening Extra programme.

"I feel it's God's time to say goodbye. It could go on for ever and ever but you've got to draw a line somewhere," she added.

Some of the young people Maud works with. Pictures provided by Maud Kells

Maud has spilt her time between her home in Cookstown and the mission field in Mulita, to the north east of DRC with WEC International mission agency.

When she first arrived in 1968, Ms Kells learned Swahili and turned builder, working with local people and using brick making equipment left over by the Belgians to create a hospital in the Congo.

Between them, they built a maternity unit, an operating theatre, a surgical ward and a primary school.

"When I went to work in Mulita, the church leaders approached me. They told me a lot of women were dying in childbirth and they would like me to train midwives. Whenever I realised they only had a mud hut as a maternity unit I realised it was very impractical to deliver babies in," she recalled.

"I had no idea I would end up involved in a building project. I'd thought I was just going out to preach the gospel and help deliver babies, " she said.

Work on a pre-school nursery is currently being carried out.

Maud said it has not always been easy but has found ways around the difficulties.

"It's amazing how you can adapt. I've brought in solar panels over the years and solar panel equipment and because we're in a rainforest we can collect rain water."

The moments after Ms Kells was shot by intruders: Pictures provided by Maud Kells

When she returns, she will be spending her first Christmas in Cookstown in 20 years.

"Out there, there's no Christmas cards, no tinsel, no decorations. So it will be as different as day and night," she said.

"I'll miss the place and the people - they're almost like my family now, having known them down through the years and their children and grand-children," she added.