Turn Left at the Big Anthill

"See this paper?" The ragged old man pushed it under my nose. I stepped back.

"I have bought the house," he said, "and you will be my wife."

Independence had brought change to the Congo in 1960, but this was too much. I stepped back into the house and latched the screen door. My husband thought it was funny. "They're all over town with those papers," he said.

In 1957, we 'd pledged the United Methodist Church that we would serve the Congolese people for five years. We were thirty years old wi...