Well I slightly mentioned how I came across the Peace Corps but I want to go into more detail about why. As a child growing up in America with all African family I always had a different perspective. While I was able to assimilate very well because I have very strong supportive parents I always had a longing to be on the African Continent. I was able to visit Sierra Leone in 2002 and it was awesome. That feeling is one I can not put into words. Meeting your brothers and sisters (as the Mende often don't use the term cousins) was beautiful.
As a child I have always had the desire to assist people with their needs. I always wanted my friends to be unified and I often was the peacemaker. I know that is why I was lead to Social Work. At twenty-one I began to work at a shelter that was for clients who had HIV and were homeless. At twenty-one I did not realize the wealth of knowledge that I was going to acquire while working there. I just wanted a job other than the awful security uniform that I had to wear. There I learned about HIV not just as a pandemic but as a human spirit. I loved my clients and they taught me more than I believe I assisted them. I experienced HIV, homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness, and how life can be painful but how love really does heal. I watched people whose family abandoned them because they had an illness. I cried when clients would move to the next dimension. It was named a shelter but it was home for the clients and me. I was there 40 hours+ a week and even on the hard days I was blessed.
My innate desire to be a part of others healing, the realness of the effects of HIV that I experienced, my longing for Africa, and my desire to experience newness all led me to the Peace Corps. I wanted to be able to serve while I still had the freeness of being a bachelorette. I wanted to change in a way that only being in a new environment can do. If you know the story of Abraham, thats what I know it is like. God calling you away from everything you know to go to another land for reasons that I do not fully comprehend. So hopefully you now understand why!
Peace and Blessings
Martha-My life is not all about me (A Lesson from God!)
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