Hey Africa,
You loved me from the start, but there were chains lined up and down my heart. I lost the key before I gave you a chance. I heard rumors about you. I judged you before I got to know you and it took me a really long time to hug you with open arms.
For a month, I believed you were annoying and loud. I couldn’t shake the desire to remind myself of home in a loud place that never would. You stole my ATM Card, but reluctantly gave it back. You honked at me and took me through experiences that made me uncomfortable. You squished me into vehicles with too many people inside. I let fear take over for a majority of the month instead of choosing in. It took me until the end of our first month together to listen and really step out. I’m sorry it took a blunt conversation in the dark over laundry to make me realize that the community of family is offered everywhere I go, as long as I open my arms to it.
You had me experience food poisoning my first week on the Race, making me realize that I can’t always be the hero I want to be. You got me addicted to greasy chapatti (your rolex’s are life!). A weekend filled with cheap motels showed me a glimpse of what true joy and being myself is like with some village children. You helped me jump off an edge, literally, letting go and learning to fly. You brought me into the Nile, flipping over and getting a nose-full of water. But you saved me and kept me afloat.
Eventually we moved onto Rwanda, debriefing at a nice hostel in our tents as a Squad. There, I got feedback about the things that held me back during month one and I worked hard to process through it, so I could move onto month two with you, more open than I was before. When we got to ministry in the land of one thousand hills and learned that it would be the same thing every day, I got scared.
But I wasn’t expecting the chains to break with a schedule of regularity. I wasn’t expecting to go all-in. I wasn’t expecting to make as deep a connection with two kids as I did. Between Isaac holding my hand every time we’d walk during Ministry and Little Kevin going from lifeless to running full force into my arms with her little smile, you began to melt my heart and tuck your people away inside my heart, making it extra hard to leave by the end of month two.
In Rwanda, you gave me moments of dancing and showering in the rain. You gave me Jesus in a deeper way. You showed me His heart for me through the book of Romans and you gave me a glimpse into what love really is. I didn’t allow the gravity of the gospel into my heart because I had lost hope in love a long time ago, even God’s. But Africa, you handed me the word hope, preluding into what was next for us in Ethiopia.
I carried that hope and love I’d learned of with me to Ethiopia, learning one of the first mornings here that love is not territorial and that people are not mine; people have the freedom to love who they want. It doesn’t have to be just me. Being territorial of people is no way to love them correctly. You helped me to start finding peace in friendship and love in a way being back at home never could.
Giving me short glimpses of home in Ethiopia is how you captured me. Hands down. Where I’m leaving you is my favorite month so far on the Race. Not because of the reminders of home, but because of you and how you just are. It’s in the way you wrapped your arms around me through the stories of your people. It’s in the simple act of brushing up against another life. It’s the way you helped me realize that the injustice in our global world is a personal issue if I let it truly sink into the depths of my heart.
I let it happen without even realizing it. I let my preconceived judgments about you fly away in the wind. You loved me from the very beginning, and you turned my heart of stone and bitterness into a heart of flesh. There is nowhere to go but forward now. You have officially smashed the chains binding my heart away. It’s beating. Hard. While I didn’t love you as I should have in the beginning, you can bet that I am leaving with the feeling being mutual now. I love you, Africa; it makes my heart ache to leave you. I am not leaving the same as I found you.
What are the odds we see each other again?
All my Love,
Ashley
