Ruth leaves her comfortable, settled home in Durban, to live among a tribe of nomads in Uganda. "I waved goodbye to my family at Durban airport, and flew to Nairobi. I half-hoped for a miracle mid-air to change me into the super-heroine missionaries are supposed to be. Nothing happened. I got off the plane, the same Ruth Stranex, who had been assessed by my Oxford college as "not outstanding." Yet I was facing an outstandingly tough job, only possible with God's help."
Ruth has to adapt to the culture of the Pokot people: to their diet of cows' blood and milk; their cattle-raiding wars; their frenzied search for water-holes. She delivers their babies, treats their malaria and sews up their spear wounds. She cleans up the infected sores left by witchdoctors trying to let out evil spirits. She challenges their goat sacrifices intended to appease an angry god. She tells them about the one sacrifice offered for them by the Lamb of God who is Love.
Then, without any warning, she is arrested, driven for 2 days, between policewomen with kalashnikovs and locked in a foul cell .....
You'll love her frankness and her humour. You'll wish you had friends like her African Christian friends. You may wish you had a faith like hers.
