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Elizabeth Geitz is an Episcopal priest and the author of five books on spirituality, evangelism, hospitality and women's perspectives on faith. An award-winning writer, she is a spirituality faculty member for the CREDO Institute, Inc. and works closely with the Good Shepherd Home Board in Cameroon. Geitz is a popular keynote speaker and has been a radio talk show guest. The mother of two adult children, she lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Michael.

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I Am That Child

Church Publishing Incorporated

Contents

Chapter One

Sister Jane is a born storyteller who highlights a story by lowering her voice, widening her eyes, or slapping her fist in the palm of her hand. Ebony skin against white nun's habit, face radiating joy her presence never fails to fill a room. I saw it happen at a gathering in America, where she was sharing stories of the orphanage she had established several years earlier in Cameroon, West Africa.

"I was here in your country in 2003," she told us, "when I received an urgent e-mail from Sister Précis, one of the nuns at the orphanage. 'You've got to come back immediately!' it said. 'The other Sisters and I can no longer stay in this house. We are terrified. There are large snakes, witch snakes that disappear completely when we try to kill them. The work of the witch down the road. We cannot stay. We're leaving our dogs behind and getting out of here tonight. Hurry! We need you here!'"

"You know," she went on to explain, "only a witch snake can totally disappear like that. They are big, huge really. Something that big can't just disappear unless it's through witchcraft. So with all the Sisters gone from the home, I had to go back to solve the problem."

"When I got back to Cameroon, I brought friends to the house with me so I wouldn't have to enter alone," Sister Jane continued, brown eyes sparkling. "While they were examining every nook and cranny of that abandoned house, one of the dogs dug up a twelveinch clay pot in the front yard. In it we found someone's hair, a small spear, a knife, coins, and a tiny bag with black stuff inside. All signs of witchcraft. Then the minister who had sold us the house came over. We gathered up all the things that had been buried in that pot and burned them. Afterward, we put the ashes on the road going to the man's house who we knew had done the witchcraft.

"When the man saw the ashes, there was no doubt in his mind as to what they were. 'Why'd ya put those ashes on my road?' he screamed the first time he saw me. 'Because you're the one doing the witchcraft!' I yelled back at him. The man did not defend himself. He just went home and two months later he moved out." As she finished her story, Sister Jane crossed her arms in front of her with a satisfied look on her face.

"Our spirit of prayer was disturbing him, and that house of his collapsed," she explained. "He only came back to sell it to us. So we bought it and completely destroyed it. And then we bought the property next to it. We got that, too and that's where the Good Shepherd Home is now."

Sister Jane was lost in thought. "We have not had it easy trying to establish our orphanage," she sighed. "No, we have not had it easy."

And this was just the beginning.

* * *

Sitting with me that morning were two women who were as captivated by Sister Jane as I was: Lillian Cochran, who had previously visited the orphanage, and Nan Curtis. Three years later, we took the unlikely leap of journeying to Africa together.

We had no idea what we would find when we arrived. One afternoon we saw each other in town and shared stories of our very different preparation procedures.

"I can't believe we leave in a month. I don't think it's sunk in yet," said Nan, a trim woman in her late forties with short brown hair.

"How about bug spray? Have you all bought any?" I asked, filled with last-minute questions. "They say there's a kind of malaria peculiar to Cameroon that's resistant to pills. I don't know what to do—cover my face with a net I guess, get a mosquito net for the bed, and douse myself with the best bug spray I can find."

"Elizabeth," said Lillian, a spry and bright woman in her eighties, "I've told you a hundred times that I never saw one mosquito when I visited the orphanage four years ago. Not one. Don't worry about it. You won't need any of that stuff."

"But my guide book says the type of malaria you can get in certain areas of Africa is awful and I'm not taking any chances," I responded.

Clearly we needed to do a more thorough review, so we set a wine and cheese date at my house exactly two weeks before departure. Nan arrived with the three donated laptops we were taking in our carry-on luggage for the children. Then Lillian joined us. Sitting on my couch that was covered in cream-colored silk, our plate of cheese on a tea table in front of us, I could see the stark contrast between our lives here and the community we would soon be visiting.

"Why did you all decide to do this?" I asked. I'd been wrestling with my own motivations and was curious about theirs. We hadn't known each other well prior to this. We were church friends who occasionally had dinner in one another's homes, but not much more. We were all concerned about helping our neighbors both near and far. But why Africa? Why now? And why the three of us?

"There are a lot of different factors for me," I volunteered. "Certainly part of it is the work I did with African Americans twenty years ago in the inner city. While I was there I felt called to become an Episcopal priest. Now that I've been ordained fifteen years, I've been given a sabbatical and initially had no idea how to spend it. Then I suddenly remembered something. In the late seventies, I was watching The Today Show with my husband when Miz Lillian Carter was being interviewed; she began relating a mesmerizing story about her visit to an African village. Suddenly there was a picture of her sitting on a motorcycle with a big smile on her face, surrounded by about thirty village children. 'That's going to be me someday, minus the motorcycle,' I told my husband, filled with conviction. But the biggest factor for me by far was meeting Sister Jane three years ago. Her deep sense of spirituality and ability to communicate the love of God never fails to draw me to her. Not to mention her determination and perseverance."

"I know," said Lillian, nodding her head. "She's the reason I decided to visit her orphanage four years ago and why I started a sponsorship program for the children when I returned."

As soon as I heard about the program, I immediately signed up to sponsor five-year-old Nafi Ndika. I had wanted to visit him but wasn't sure how. The feeling continued, so I drew Lillian and Nan into the journey with me.

I had no idea until that afternoon that both Lillian and Nan were also from the South, with Lillian having grown up in Louisiana and Nan in Kentucky. I grew up in Tennessee, though I had spent the last twenty-nine years in New Jersey.

We discussed the segregated schools of our youth, the "coloreds only" water fountains, access to movie theaters only through the balcony for "colored people." Lillian recalled battling fear when a black man sat next to her on the bus—every message of her culture said she should move. I remembered being told in all sincerity, "Never look a black man in the eye." Such was the racist world in which we cut our teeth, the very air we breathed.

In the same world some of us were cared for by African American women in our homes. These women gave of themselves each and every day, and we grew to love them with a fierce loyalty over the years, even as we recognized the injustice that forced them to nurture us at the expense of their own children's care.

"I guess our Southern roots have a lot to do with why we're going," I observed, not realizing then how...