Thursday, June 30, 2022

Africa in My Soul by Cheryl King Duvall

Africa in My Soul by Cheryl King Duvall is a good book subtitled Memoir of a Childhood Interrupted.

Duvall was ten when her parents went to become missionaries in Africa, leaving behind in Georgia her fifteen year old sister and taking she and her two younger siblings to Nigeria. Her sister had to stay back and live with strangers, not because there wasn't a religious school she could attend in Africa, but because it wasn't the right type of religious school.

Duvall in Africa was stuck in mission boarding schools for 9 months of the year, under the care of people who forced the missionary kids to refer to them as auntie or uncle, and was the victim of an episode of sexual abuse by a doctor at the mission. Her story shows awful it is when parents think they're making sacrifices, in this case to become missionaries, but really they're making them on their children's behalf. 

The book shows the hardships Duvall faced in Africa, and also how the continent an amazing place, one full of beauty and also people who turned on one another, with there a civil war while she in Nigeria.