The Isorana teacher María del Carmen Larai Martínbetter known as Sister Larai and named Favorite Daughter of the municipality of Guía de Isora in 1994 for her humanitarian work in different African countries, passed away this Thursday in Rome.
On the occasion of his deathor, the official flags of the municipal corporation will fly at half-staff and they will wear a black crepe as a sign of mourning. The mayor, Josefa Mesa, and the City Council of Guía de Isora deeply regret the death of the missionary and send their condolences to her friends and family.
“Sister Larai is leaving, but she leaves us her teachings: the value of caring for others, dedication to others and care for the most disadvantaged“, Mesa has expressed in a note.
Mari Carmen, of an Isorana mother and an Indian father, was raised by her aunt Benigna after his father returned to India and her mother died when she was only four years old. After finishing her studies in Guía de Isora, she went to the Hogar Escuela in the capital of Tenerife, run by nuns from the Congregation of Mary Help of Christians.
A year before finishing his teaching studies, he became part of the order and later He dedicated himself to teaching at the same center.
A life dedicated to others
However, her true vocation was to work as a missionary, with Zaire -now the Democratic Republic of the Congo- being her first destination and the place where she would remain for seventeen years.
From there he went to Rwanda, a country in which I would work as a teacher in a school until the arrival of the ethnic conflict in which the Hutu ethnic group would confront the Tutsi after the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both of the Hutu ethnic group, were victims of an attack perpetrated against the plane in which they were traveling on April 6, 1994.
This bloody conflict, which Sister Larai described in statements to the newspaper The day as “a butcher’s shop”, lasted three months and it resulted in the murder of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people.
This meant that, despite his desire to remain in the country, Sister Larai had to flee and return to Spainsince the intention to assassinate the foreigners who remained on the ground had already been announced.
His humanitarian work in these countries in conflict and his commitment to the most vulnerable It was what led the City Council of Guía de Isora, the municipality that saw her grow up, to grant her the status of Favorite Daughter on June 16, 1994.
