It was scary. I was left with six children in a country that I didn’t really know because we had only been here for six months. My first inclination was to pick up my suitcase and run back to the US.

“But then I thought: ‘No. Vic wanted the children to grow up here, so I’ve just got to stay here and stick it out.’ They say that God gives you the courage when you need it and I would say that’s what happened to me.”

Aloma McKay pauses to sip her coffee. It’s a bright, sunny day in Ennistymon, Co Clare, but the ICA (Irish Countrywomen’s Association) regional president is recalling that grey November day in 1989 when her husband Victor (Vic) died suddenly, leaving her widowed in rural west Clare at 41, with six children aged from three to 13.

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Her’s is a story of strength and survival, but the 66-year-old grandmother wears it lightly. She’s the kind of person for whom the adjective “bubbly” was coined – she beams positivity and is never far from a self-deprecating anecdote.

Like when she was first getting to grips with an Irish-style range: “Somebody said: ‘You know you can dry clothes with the range?’ They probably meant that you could hang them over the range. What did I do? The kids had to go to school and their socks were still damp, so I got a baking tray, shoved the socks into the range – and pretty soon there was smoke coming out. I’ve come a long way since then.”

A long way in every sense. While Clare is now home – the cover picture on her Facebook account features Aloma with the Liam McCarthy cup – she grew up in Bangladesh, where her father managed a Swiss watch company. She remembers the Underwood typewriter in his office where she trained herself to type, while a friend schooled her in Pitman shorthand. This, along with gaining an MA in English, proved instrumental in getting a job with US AID.

It was while attending a work seminar in Washington DC that Aloma first met Victor; though love was the last thing on her mind, having already turned down various suitors proposed by her extended family, given the culture of arranged marriages.

“On the basis of principal as much as anything else, I just refused all these people that they brought,” she says. “I remember my father said: ‘Why don’t you go to the convent?’ I said: ‘But why should I go to the convent? I don’t want to be a nun.’”

Victor clearly won her over. She recalls that during her trip in America, he offered to drive her to Canada, where she had relations. However, when they got to the border, she realised she had left her passport behind. “And I realised he had a lot of patience,” she smiles.

Moving To Ireland

The couple married in Bangladesh in 1975, with Aloma returning with Victor to Washington DC. She laughs that he got quite the shock when he realised his new wife could not cook (like many middle-class families in Bangladesh, Aloma grew up with servants) so the newly-weds survived on Campbell’s soup and eggs until a friend staged an intervention with a Betty Crocker cookbook.

Little did Aloma realise then that she would one day be a finalist in the Calor Gas housewife of the year competition, or run her own homebaking stall at Ennistymon farmers’ market.

The couple had six children: Patrick, Malachy, Christian, Dominick, Martin and Jeanne Marie. The Irish names are not a coincidence. Victor’s grandmother came from Ennistymon and he always had a desire to live in Ireland, but made the ultimate move in 1989 so that the children could be educated in Catholic schools – a privilege the family would not be able to afford in the US.

For Aloma, who had always lived in cities, adjusting to life in rural Ireland was not without its share of culture shocks – like the day she was surprised by a cow while hanging out the washing.

“I got such a fright I threw my basket of washing with everything and I ran,” she recalls. “The farmer that was coming up behind it just couldn’t believe this. He had never seen anybody run from a cow.”

Sadly, however, tragedy struck the family when Victor was admitted to hospital after complaining of a pain in his side. He passed away shortly afterwards, with tests later revealing he had contracted peritonitis.

“They say time heals all wounds, but it doesn’t really,” says Aloma.

“There’s not that companionship. If you have a problem, who do you discuss it with? Or sometimes I’d say something and look back and realise there’s nobody there. There are times you are okay and you’re getting on with it, but there are times when you miss him. I do still.”

New horizons

While Aloma considered returning to the US, the urge to honour Victor’s wish proved more powerful. Financially, she could cope by receiving his pension and life assurance, but there were many things she had to come to terms with: from working with a contractor to build a family home to learning to drive a manual car.

“I had a van at the time, but I would get stuck going around the bridge in Ennistymon,” she laughs, cringing at the memory.

While her mother later came to live with her, Aloma felt she needed to make friends in her new community. A neighbour invited her to an ICA meeting.

“And before long, I was going places,” she smiles, explaining that she was quickly appointed secretary and has since risen through the ranks to her current position of regional president, where she hopes to encourage new and younger members.

“But the main draw was friendship,” she says.

In a way, ICA opened many doors for Aloma. She returned to the workplace – her first job was as breakfast chef in a hotel in Lahinch – and she worked as secretary at Ennistymon family resource centre until her retirement last year. Not that Aloma is taking life easy, she sings with her local folk choir, sits on the board of directors at her credit union and recently finished a diploma in credit union governance under the Pathways programme delivered by UCC.

“When I did the first module, I thought: ‘Oh, this is too tough, I don’t know if I want to go ahead,’” she admits. “But if I take something on, I like to see it finished.”

No surprises there for the grandmother of five, who sees her amazing story as distilling down to a very simple choice.

“I had the choice of either sitting and doing nothing or getting up and going,” she surmises simply.

“So I did.”

For further information, visit www.ica.ie or call 01 668 0002