First Impressions of Freetown

I arrived at Lungi airport in the middle of the night on June 27th, 2002. Phil Nelson, DOVE's director, picked me up at the airport and helped navigate me through the chaos of security, customs, and the helicopter ride from the airport to Freetown. It was pitch dark and as we drove through the city I couldn't see a thing but sat back and enjoyed the feel and smell of the tropics at night. I soon met Judy Nelson, Phil's wife and co-director who gave me a very warm welcome into their home. The next day I met the Nelsons adopted twin Sierra Leonean boys, David and Jonathan who were 4 years old at the time, and we became fast friends.

My first couple days were spent chatting with Phil and Judy, playing with David and Jonathan, meeting Pastor Daniel, one of the national DOVE staff, getting familiar with the DOVE compound, and being shown around Freetown by Judy. It was fascinating to explore such a colorful, lively, and chaotic African city for the first time. I will always remember the mosaic of colors, everywhere. People on the move, men and women alike with enormous objects or packages balanced effortlessly on their heads. This soon became my favourite feature of people watching in Sierra Leone! I would love to keep a record of the things I've seen people carry on their heads that I couldn't have imagined was possible. I saw brief glimpses of desperate poverty as we drove around, remnants of the war in burned out buildings or those covered with bullet holes, and also the architectural influence of Sierra Leone's British colonial period. I loved seeing the vibrant community life evident all around me, as people talked animatedly to each other in Krio, the local Creole language, as children played in the streets, and music blared out from just about everywhere. The overcrowdedness, poverty, and often poor sanitation conditions did not obscure the beauty of the lush green hills on and around which Freetown is built and the palm tree-fringed coast with gentle waves lapping the shore. My first drive around the city took my breath away and I remember writing in my journal a couple days later that part of me felt like it had come home.

A Dream Come True, Part 1

The story of my Africa dream wouldn't be complete without telling you a bit about my struggles with depression. I first went to Sierra Leone when I was 22 and at the time, I had struggled with depression and self-esteem issues for at least 10 years, sometimes more seriously than others. I managed to keep it all hidden from people for the most part but inside my head, I lived in a world where I often felt really low and hopeless, and my self-image consisted of feeling like a failure, ugly, undesirable, weird, etc. Basically, it did not prevent me from pursuing my goals in life but through every significant step I took, I really battled this sense of failure, especially when I was doing the things I really love, such as working with kids and teaching English.

A few months before I went to Sierra Leone, things came to a head in January. That whole month I found myself feeling very low and fearful of being around people, feeling like everybody disliked me when they met me. I retreated into myself and spent a lot of time thinking. I realized that although I had tried to work through some of these issues with God and other people in the past, I had always been too proud to really admit that I had a problem and that I needed some help. I had always pushed the issues aside, hoping they would go away on their own. I decided that I needed to seek out some counselling but because I was in a new country (England) and didn't have a lot of connections here, I wasn't sure where to turn.

One evening, while feeling very depressed, I dragged myself to my Christian Union meeting at University, although it was the last thing I felt like doing. At the end, I spoke to our staff worker about my problem and asked if he knew how I could access some Christian counselling. Amazingly, it turned out that his mother had battled depression for years and now counsels a lot of other people. He got me in touch with her and I went to see her several times over the next few months.

There was no magical, quick-fix answer to my problems but over the next few months things began to change for me. In January, I had started to have thoughts like "Why am I even going to Africa? I'm just going to fail there too and if I'm feeling like I am now, I'll never be able to cope." Looking back, I think that the devil was using these thoughts to make me give up on my dream completely and totally defeat me as a Christian.

I decided to make some changes. I spent a lot of time praying specifically about these issues and pleading for God's help. I was more open with my family and friends about my struggles and asked them to pray too. I started going to see this lady for counselling, which helped a lot. She gave me lots of time to talk about the things that were bothering me and she could really relate to lots of what I was feeling as she had been through it herself. She shared passages of Scripture with me that helped to dispel the lies in my head and we spent time praying that God would change my thinking. She also gave me lots of practical advice about understanding my depression and what triggers my struggles and how to manage it better and prepare for times when I will probably feel low. I no longer felt out of control.

I soon began to feel a new freedom and lightness of heart that I had seldom felt before. I do believe that God worked a miracle in my heart that spring and that I have never quite been the same since. Things were not perfect and I still had days where I struggled but I felt like I now knew how to cope with these times. The world was like a new place for me and I relished each depression-free day and began to see all sorts of new things around me to be joyful about. I even began to feel thankful for my long-standing struggle with depression as I was beginning to see how God had used something painful and bitter in my life to do His good work in me and prepare me for the future.

My fear of failing in Sierra Leone that summer began to disintegrate and I was soon looking forward to it with fresh anticipation, sensing that God had been preparing me my whole life for this...