FREEDOM IN AFRICA

LEONTINE NUNGA,—KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

UNTIL RECENTLY, women in most parts of Africa have not been really free. They have been considered inferior. In rural areas, they have been Number Two, except in childbearing and cooking and working in the fields. It has been hard for us to get a proper education and find jobs.

However, nothing has helped me more to survive the prejudice against women in our country than a passage in Science and Health that describes the escape of the children of Israel from captivity in Egypt. Despite their terrible fears, they walked through the wilderness, "anticipating the promised joy." Then comes the best part: "... so shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God" (p. 566). For me, that is real freedom!

At one time, as a single mother with four children under 12 years of age, I felt anything but free. Then I remembered how my father had taught me to pray, and what he had said about Christian Science practitioners who love to help those who come to them for healing. So I spoke to a practitioner, but was not very happy with what he said. He wanted me to forgive everybody—even the men who had treated me as inferior and didn't have a proper job for me. This I just couldn't do. How could I love the people who were so mean to me?

But the practitioner insisted. True freedom, he explained, is deep inside us, and doesn't depend on other people. God is always in control—whether you are a man or a woman.

It took almost three years of praying before I truly understood what Jesus meant when he said we have to love and forgive even those people who have been unkind to us. But the change did come—and it was in me! I began to see the connection between me and everyone else in my life. We are equal children of one loving Father-Mother. Also, at that time my life changed in other ways. I was given an opportunity to go back to school and improve my qualifications.

Now I have a good job in a government department, and the men at the office treat me with friendliness and respect. God really has been good to me! CSS

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