African Pearl: AIDS, loss and redemption in the shadow of the Rwenzori Mountains

Single, burned out and on the cusp of forty, Irish-Nigerian New Yorker, Pamela Brown-Peterside, is yearning for meaning when she exchanges a stable US career in HIV research for the lush but AIDS-hit valleys of western Uganda. Ambivalent about missions, Pamela unwittingly joins an American missionary-medical couple committed to preventing HIV infections in newborns. Within days, she learns they have to leave and she finds herself alone and in charge. Confronted by personal illness, ever-present death and a devastating Ebola outbreak, Pamela faces uncomfortable questions of identity, sacrifice and calling even as the AIDS programme succeeds. Vulnerable, inspiring and honest, Pamela’s gripping account of an African returning to Africa and experiencing it as an outsider tells how she rediscovered God’s grace both for herself and those she went to serve.