Irish nurse remembered in Pakistan and Tarbert after ‘very interesting life’
The death of Jennifer Musa, aged 90, led to many tributes being paid in Pakistan and beyond by those who recalled her courage, determination and influence.
Yet in Tarbert, Co Kerry, they remembered a woman born Bridget (Bridie) Wren in November of 1917, who left in the 1930s to train as a nurse in England. One of a family of seven, she changed her name to Jennifer and met future husband Qazi Mohammed Musa at a ball in Oxford.
Qazi was a ward of the governor-general of the autonomous province of Baluchistan and married Jennifer in 1940, prompting a move there in 1948.
The Musa’s family’s base was at Pishin, 30 miles from Baluchistan capital Quetta, and Jennifer quickly settled into the tribal life.
“She had a very interesting life,” said her nephew Michael Wren in Tarmons, Tarbert, yesterday. “She was my late father Seán’s sister but I never met her. My father used to speak about her. But she was older and I’d say she was gone from Kerry by the time he grew up.”
As well as nephews and nieces in Kerry, Jennifer is survived by two sisters, Margaret O’Donnell in Tarbert and Teresa Kelther in Britain.
Jennifer’s husband died in a road crash in 1956 but, after initial plans to return to Kerry, she was persuaded to stay by Qazi’s family, along with their 14-year-old son Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.
Her late husband had already been married in the 1930s, with another four sons and one daughter, and Jennifer and Qazi’s first wife became close friends.
“She never came home after the 1960s,” said Mr Wren. “She was once in Dublin, when Benazir Bhutto was there, but not Kerry.”
Entering politics in the 1960s, Mrs Musa joined the National Awami (Freedom) Party of nationalist Wali Khan and was elected to the national assembly at Pakistan’s first — and often described as last — free elections in 1970.
In her seven years in parliament, she founded the first woman’s association and first family planning clinic in her own area; was a signatory of the country’s constitution in 1973 and always fought for the rights of Baluchistan.
She was known as “Mummy Jennifer” to the people in Baluchistan and became too attached to them to allow her return to Kerry in latter years.
Her son also went into the public service and is a former ambassador to the United States and current ambassador to Sudan. President Pervez Musharraf telephoned him upon hearing the news of Jennifer Musa’s death.
Her funeral was attended by thousands, including nationalists connected with the Taliban, and Ms Musa was buried in the family’s burial ground in Pishin.
