African Pearl: AIDS, loss and redemption in the shadow of the Rwenzori Mountains by Pamela Brown-Peterside

African Pearl: AIDS, loss and redemption in the shadow of the Rwenzori Mountains by Pamela Brown-Peterside, published in April 2020, amidst the worldwide Covid19, is timely, insightful, and important. African Pearl is a compelling read on how Africans are effecting transformative change on their continent, told by an African.

African Pearl is the journey of a “single, burned out and on the cusp of forty, Irish-Nigerian New Yorker, Pamela Brown-Peterside, 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.” Source: Instant Apostle

African Pearl is also an emotional memoir that takes her from hope to despair and back to hope. I met Pamela in our local park gym in Gladstone Park, NW London, one early morning in June 20109. I had returned from five years of living in Lagos, Nigeria and was struggling to adjust to being back in the UK. We connected on many levels and discovered our mutual love of storytelling. She shared the manuscript of the book as she was preparing for the publication by Instant Apostle. I read it in one sitting, a page turner as she drew me into the life of a community and its people in the shadow of the Rwenzori Mountains. The stories of the people Pamela met are inspiring, vivid, and deeply moving. It is a thoughtfully, and honestly written book and a reminder of why Africans must shape their own narrative.

African Pearl is available on Amazon HERE. To learn more about Pamela Brown-Peterside, you can visit her website HERE and follow her on twitter @PBrownPeterside. I highly recommend that you buy the book and share with your network.

Please share the links on your social media accounts, leveraging any blog/press/influencer relationships you currently have as well as organizations and developmental agencies within your network that will be instrumental in spreading the impact of African Pearl across Africa. These individuals stand as beacons of hope and their stories deserve to be heard.