After having lived and volunteered in rural Cameroon, Africa with my husband Baine for 7 months in 2005/2006, I’ve had the enormous privilege of returning each year to follow up on the work I started. A primary reason that I return is to evaluate and provide ongoing training and support for the programs (i.e., after-school programs, women’s literacy classes, widows’ support groups) that I helped BERUDEP start in 2005/2006. The deeper reason I return each year, however, is to see and connect with the very real, human faces that both contribute to and benefit from my work there.

During one of my after-school program observations one year, the children in the class were learning Philippians 2:14, “Do everything without complaining.” The teacher asked the children to give examples of situations when they shouldn’t complain. I listened passively as the children named “normal” situations: complaining when their parents ask them to do chores, complaining when they have conflict with their siblings, etc. But my easy, passive mood quickly changed when one child – Seth – confessed, “I shouldn’t complain when I’m hungry.”

It’s hard to explain the thoughts and emotions that I’m forced to reconcile when I have faces like Seth’s imprinted in my mind. My ideals are challenged, and my beliefs questioned. While I normally experience significant internal conflict over the seemingly infinite ethical dilemmas that I face in this work (including whether it’s even my place to do this work at all), I consistently find rest and overwhelming gratitude when I watch children like Seth play, learn, grow, and even eat most days in after-school program.

I feel similar gratitude in the large community of widows that I work with in Cameroon. After organizing over 300 of them into small support groups in 2006 and training facilitators for each group, many of these women have taken serious ownership of their groups. They have grown not only in the way they support and encourage one another but even to the degree of reaching beyond themselves and working to help the neediest people in their communities. In contrast to the way these women literally begged me to help them a few years ago, I am deeply humbled as it now feels more like they are helping me. Every year, they invite me into their community, feed me, listen to me, laugh with me, pray for me, and eventually bless me through their tears when I leave them to return home. My gratitude goes beyond words in moments like these.

This year, as I’m currently entering birth and post-partum doula work in the USA, I plan to spend more time with these women in Cameroon by allowing them to introduce me to their culture’s way of encountering birth. I hope to attend several births, begin to learn the birth and post-partum customs of Kom culture, and offer training in any doula skills and care that might be needed. In this, I’m excited to discover even more opportunities to bless and be blessed by the Kom people of Cameroon.

If you are interested in following my journey to Cameroon this year or reading stories of my previous work, please feel free to visit my blog: aprocessofbecoming.blogspot.com. Also, because I work on a 100% volunteer basis, my work in Cameroon is completely dependent on donations. If you’re interested in contributing to my work and helping me return to Cameroon this year, you can make a donation of any amount to me through PayPal. There’s a link to make a PayPal donation on my blog, or you can send it directly to baine_craft@msn.com.

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Laurie is a 2010 MACP graduate of MHGS. She’s mostly trying to survive the seemingly inevitable post-graduation identity crisis but also very excited to be in the process of becoming a certified birth and post-partum doula. She blogs regularly at aprocessofbecoming.blogspot.com.