Planning to go again

This time a year ago, I was living in a humble home shared by eight others, who were similarly embarking on a life journey that would answer the calling of a 'drum' that was beating in our hearts too loudly to be ignored. After months of showering from a bucket of dirty water, months of being served goat entrails, rice and beans (with bugs and rocks), months of facing digestive problems, scabies, malaria, ant bites, snakes and spiders, and months of 40 degree heat... I can still hear the African 'drum' that beats within.  I am not 'dying' to get back to Africa any more, but I am living to get back to the land of mud huts and banana leaved roofs.

 At the orphanage many are broken and abused, hurt and dying, confused and inconsolable. They have never seen any example of true unconditional love and often, particularly in the children who first arrive at a centre, they just cry, bite, or kick or scream. One little boy I met last time in the toddlers house at Iris was about three, and he had never once smiled, spoken or shown any expression but utter sadness on his face for months of being there. No one knows what happened to him to have caused so much sadness. I desperately hope to see a change in him next month when I arrive back there.

Amanda my missionary friend and I, are nearly ready to leave for the cruel but beloved continent to embrace the culture and to befriend the unlovely. 

The tentative plan is to spend six weeks at the Arco Iris mission base in Pemba. Soon after the new year, I travel north to Dar Es Salaam -Tanzania, then by bus pass through Nairobi -Kenya and into Kampala -Uganda. From Kampala, Uganda's capital.  I will then head south to Kamuli and will be staying at a very basic orphanage. Some of the children there have come out of the Lords Resistance Army and have endured that of the most immense suffering that humanity can face. I am so looking forward to meeting them. 


Christy