In this extract from an interview Ruth Weiss conducted with Maryknoll Sister Janice McLaughlin (1942–2021) in Harare (Zimbabwe) on 30th July 1982, Sister Janice reflects on her decision to move to Rhodesia where she worked for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in 1977. Documenting atrocities of the Zimbabwean war of liberation she was arrested and deported, only to continue to work from Mozambique. After Rhodesia gained its independence in 1980, Sister Janice returned to Zimbabwe to work as an education consultant in the President's Office. She continued to work in Zimbabwe until 1992 and returned to work in the country in the areas of adult education, peacebuilding and combating human trafficking from 1998 to 2009 and from 2015 to 2020.

Ruth Weiss who had lived in Rhodesia in the late 1960s and then was expelled, also returned in 1980 to live and work in Zimbabwe. She soon started to research the lives of women and interviewed Sister Janice as “an important figure in the liberation struggle”, as she writes in her book “The women of Zimbabwe” (1986).