African Pearl

Irish-Nigerian Pamela Brown-Peterside is forty and burned out when she exchanges the intensity of an honourable public health career in New York City for the lush valleys of western Uganda. She goes there to join an America missionary doctor couple who’re intent on saving new-borns from getting HIV. Within days of arriving, Pamela learns that a medical emergency will prompt these doctors to leave, which puts her in charge. Three months turns into two more years and though the doctors return and the AIDS programme flourishes, the challenges intensify. From illness to loneliness to deaths—which keep mounting—to an outbreak of Ebola, this spiritual memoir describes Pamela’s extraordinary journey. Intertwining the themes of identity, sacrifice, commitment and calling, African Pearl is a gripping account of an African returning to Africa but experiencing it as an outsider, being surprised by missions, and undergoing transformation within the richness of community.