WHEN Mary Kolu Massaquoi telephoned her sister in their home country of Liberia for a chat, little did she know that her calls would one day form the basis of a successful radio show.

The former nurse and midwife, who is 65 this month, is the creator of a radio show ‘Calls to My Sister’, which uses drama to convey health messages to audiences in Africa.

She uses her experiences growing up in Liberia and later working in a hospital during the country’s civil war to share vital advice with listeners.

Her advice has, at times, proved invaluable: during the 2014 outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa, she produced five emergency response programmes and was later invited to help shape a new BBC Media Action radio drama to improve knowledge about the virus.

Now her story has been included in a book compiled and presented by Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, containing 22 personal stories about overcoming doubt and loss, or finding meaning or fulfilment through forgiveness or working for the good of others.

The book is entitled ‘Agape Love Stories’ - agape being the word the Greeks use to describe the love of one’s fellow man, and which is also used by the Christian church to represent God’s love for man and man’s love for God.

“I am absolutely thrilled by the way the Archbishop has captured my story and my life,” she says.

The first born in a family of nine - four girls and five boys - she grew up in Liberia. Her father travelled away for work, accompanied by her mother, leaving her in the care of grandparents.

She attended the local Lutheran mission school in the village of Sucromo before moving to another mission school and going on to win a scholarship to boarding school. During term time she helped the school nurse for an hour a day, for which she was paid. The chance then arose for her to work in a hospital during the holidays.

She then, through Dr Rupert Prescott, the head of the hospital, accepted a life-changing opportunity to study nursing abroad, in England. She left to live in Yorkshire, with Dr Prescott’s family.

Once qualified, Mary, who lives off Manchester Road, Bradford, continued her nursing training in midwifery and tropical diseases.

Mary became a born-again Christian on her birhday, while working at St Luke’s Hospital in Bradford.

In 1986, 14 years after she arrived in the UK, she returned to Liberia to work at ELWA Mission Hospital, where she had a job on the wards as well as teaching in Monrovia Bible College where she passed on basic health information to pastors who might have been placed in villages without access to medical facilities.

She had moved to another area of the country when war broke out and remained there, despite having the opportunity to leave. She treated many children, some aged under ten, who had been handed guns and sent to fight.

“It was a terrible time, with many children malnourished and suffering from disease,” she recalls.

She escaped the war a year later, crossing the border to the Ivory Coast as a refugee before returning to England. “It was another two decades before peace finally came to my country and I haven’t been able to return since,” she says in the book.

‘Calls to my Sister’ grew out of a work placement Mary did as part of a degree in nutrition and public health at the University of Huddersfield. She had returned to Radio Worldwide, where she had previously trained. “The station was based in East Sussex but was now in Leeds and working with a missionary body, Reach Beyond, with links to a number of radio stations in Africa,” says Mary. “Every week I would call my sister Gomah in Liberia and during our conversation I would find myself offering advice about health, and wondered whether such advice could be communicated through the radio.”

They decided to produce programmes based around the idea of Mary’s calls to Gomah, containing information on health, nutrition and hygiene.

“Some of the hygiene-related things I have been teaching come out on the shows, such as the importance of washing your hands,” she says. Some sensitive issues are specific to Liberia and certain African countries, such as the traditionally-held belief by many women that when breastfeeding a woman should not sleep with her husband in case his semen contaminates the breast milk.

“I hoped to reach women who are intelligent but have had little or no education.”

She also used the show to spread accurate messages about the Ebola virus, which since last year no longer has Liberia in its grip.

Gomah loves the show. “She thinks it is fantastic,” says Mary. “Once she heard it and rang me to say “Sister, I am listening to you on the radio.” She held the phone out for me to hear. It was airing through my sister’s kitchen as clear as if I was there talking to her myself.” The sisters still speak weekly.

Mary has recently been invited to work on a new programme, ‘Senior Moments’ for Bradford Community Broadcasting.’

She believes that the path she has taken was in God’s hands. “I feel that what I have done in my later years was a calling from God – he had a plan and a purpose for my life.”

*John Sentamu’s Agape Love Stories presented by Dr John Sentamu and written by Carmel Thomason, is published by Darton, Longman and Todd. W:dltbooks.com