This is Africa

I don't know if you have one thing that you think about every single day. I don't know if it's someone who left or someone who is right beside you. I don't know if it's about something extraordinary or something tragic. I don't know if you love that thought or hate it. But I absolutely love mine, no I am in love with mine. And I've never even met it, never approached it, never even been so close as to touch its surroundings. It's not close by, it's thousands of miles away from my desperate reach. It's extraordinary and quite tragic at the same time. I don't think of just one person I think of a people. My one thought is not a single being but a massive whole. Countries. A continent. A nation. My one thought is Africa.

I cannot ever explain why this place seemed to land itself into my passionate soul. I don't know why I am so moved by any mention of Africa. My only explanation is that God must want me to have something to do with this nation. My one and only passion before this was writing and I would flow freely in and out of my unstable ingenuity that my mind yearned to be in. But now each time I write, I cannot stand when the nation is left out of whatever I create. Africa will not leave me alone, but this is the way I like it.

My desperation is calling for justice to this world, but for an even greater sub-calling: I want this continent to experience love. We experience love each day when our family tells us they are proud, when someone holds a door open, when we hug our children, when we feed off of the attention provided for daily, when we sing songs of it. These people are sometimes brought up without one hint of the word love. Love has never been squeezed into their bones or muttered to them in times of starvation or disease. Love has never walked past through villages or swept over their skies. Love has been stored away here and is abundantly being thrown around its boundaries. Love is dying to wrap its arms around a child who has never been showed love. Love wants to heal the sick and feed the hungry. Love wants to home the homeless. Love wants to hear its name sung in tribal hymns and praises. Love wants to see its progress shining on the smiles of this people's face. Love wants to spread. Love wants to break free.