A Maryknoll sister accompanies incarcerated people from other countries.
Asha, 35, is far from her home back in East Africa. She sits on one side of the visitation booth of the Lo Wu Correctional Institution for women in the city of Sheung Shui in northern Hong Kong. On the other side of the window is Maryknoll Sister Esther Warioba, who has become Asha’s only outside connection in a foreign place.
Wearing a checkered white and brown uniform, her hair carefully arranged into Bantu knots, Asha explains the thick, two-inch scar on her body from a machete attack over a debt dispute that compelled her to seek quick money back home.
A few weeks later, she was arrested for attempting to smuggle drugs into Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. After pleading guilty, she was sentenced to seven years. Asha says she was tricked by a friend who promised her a job and used her as a courier.
“There are many women from different countries — from African, South American and Asian countries,” says Sister Warioba of the five prisons she visits in her ministry with Voice for Prisoners, a Hong Kong-based nonprofit organization.
Before her visit, Sister Warioba makes a stop on the dusty road next to the Lo Wu prison. At a steel shack that functions as a shop for prison visitors, she buys pre-approved personal necessities such as sanitary pads, deodorants, shampoos and conditioners.
She retrieves a piece of paper carrying the names, prisoner ID numbers and countries of origin of the 20 inmates she visits. She has scribbled their requests next to their names.
Sister Warioba also makes sure to buy international calling cards. Prisoners are allowed one 10-minute phone call per month. For inmates from remote countries and who receive no other visitors, those precious minutes are the only way to hear a loved one’s voice.
For all other times when prisoners like Asha need a friend, Sister Warioba is there.
“Sister Esther has been like my blood sister,” Asha says. “She listens to every word. I appreciate her presence so much.” Then she adds, “If you don’t pray, you can’t make it here.”
“I usually feel energetic when I go there, even if I’m tired,” Sister Warioba says. “Listening, meeting the prisoner, it takes energy, but it is also a blessing.”
However, prisoners are allowed only two visits per month — each lasting half an hour — and therefore much of the communication in between visits is relayed through letters.
Besides being pen pals for the inmates, volunteers with Voice for Prisoners, like Sister Warioba, maintain contact with the families of foreign-born inmates via the phone application WhatsApp. In turn, inmates’ relatives text photos and letters, which volunteers then print and bring to their “i-friends,” a term for the prisoners they visit.
Sister Warioba says that this helps families know how their loved ones are doing.
Voice for Prisoners, which was founded in 2018 by Oblate Father John Wotherspoon, also works on awareness campaigns about trafficking tactics that ensnare impoverished people like Asha.
“The best way to help prisoners is to help them not go to prison,” Father Wotherspoon says. “You’ve got some bad guys who are in the trafficking business, and they exploit poorer people who urgently need money, especially women who need money for their families, their education and their medical bills.”
As part of the Voice for Prisoners’ deterrence initiative, the campaign called No More Mules/No Más Mulas publishes letters from inmates in Hong Kong prisons on its website. The objective is to create awareness of the coercive, fraudulent and — many times — violent strategies of traffickers, as well as the risks of drug smuggling.
Sister Warioba, who is from Tanzania, was asked soon after her arrival in Hong Kong in 2018 to visit Swahili-speaking inmates from East Africa, although her ministry since then has expanded to inmates of different regions.
Every Sunday, Sister Warioba’s voice reaches inmates via a Voice for Prisoners radio program for those who don’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin. She writes and records Scripture reflections in Swahili that are aired on the show called “Prison Visitation on the Air.”
“They really want to connect with God,” Sister Warioba says. “They’re grateful to Catholics who are very near to them.”
Marta, 30, from Venezuela, is another inmate whom Sister Warioba visits. She is serving an 11-year sentence at Lo Wu after pleading not guilty to drug smuggling. “Having Sister Esther visit me is a blessing from God,” Marta says.“She knows how to inject me with peace. She’s talkative, full of knowledge, and doesn’t underestimate anyone.”
Marta participates in a Voice for Prisoners academic program which supports rehabilitation and recidivism prevention. “I love the power of knowledge,” she says. “Back in Venezuela, there were many nights I asked God to give me the chance to study.”
The organization’s 2024 annual report states that “inmates who earn an associate degree are 85% less likely to return to prison, and those with a bachelor’s degree are over 95% less likely to reoffend.”
In 2025, Marta earned an associate degree in general studies; she hopes to obtain a bachelor’s degree in social studies before her release. Sister Warioba says that this is one of “the many chances at transformation” for inmates in the Voice for Prisoners program.
“My dreams for the future are not impossible,” Marta says. “I hope I can find a job where I can do what others have done for me. I dream of helping prisoners, kids, single moms like me.”
The main worry of many inmates is for their families, Sister Warioba says. Voice for Prisoners helps support families back home by paying children’s school fees, and recently began offering small business grants to ex-prisoners’ families to help them restart their lives.
Father Wotherspoon says that’s “what Jesus told us to do: to care for people who are homeless or sick or in prison.” He is grateful to volunteers like Sister Warioba “who try to be compassionate to these people in prison and help them keep going until the day they can get back to their families.”
For Asha, whose physical scar still aches, that accompaniment has helped her heal spiritual wounds. “In Africa, being in prison is a bad omen. I used to have anxiety, shame, self-hatred and fear,” she says. “Since meeting Sister Esther, everything changed.”
Sister Warioba says that love encapsulates her approach.
“Love brings us together,” she says. “Some of them are afraid to go back to their families. I say to them, ‘You’re a child of God. If you are close to God, there is a way that everything will work out.’” The names of prisoners in this article have been changed for their protection.
Featured image: Maryknoll Sister Esther Warioba, who professed her final vows last year, regularly visits 20 inmates in five prisons. The missioner, originally from Tanzania, offers a lifeline of support for international prisoners, many of whom are victims of human trafficking, as a volunteer for the nonprofit Voice for Prisoners. (Paul Jeffrey/Hong Kong)
