As I grew and matured, as all young girls are prone to do, people commented that "pearls would look great with that outfit" and suggested that I borrow their set, even if just for the night. How do you tell someone you think pearls are ugly? Shake your head and mumble something about not feeling like wearing a necklace or that your ears are hurting so couldn't possibly wear earrings, and remove yourself from the situation as quickly as possible, that's what you do.
In 2011 however, God introduced me to a pearl I'll never forget. She's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen and a part of my heart will always and forever be with that pearl. Over 100 years ago, after a journey through the country, Winston Churchill called Uganda The Pearl of Africa.1
I spent a week in Uganda visiting my Compassion International children Specioza and Florence, but that's a story for another time. I followed up that trip with another one in 2013 where God solidified Uganda's place in my heart.
July 2014 marked my first gaze upon another pearl. The Pearl of the Antilles. Haiti. Or Ayiti as she's known in Creole. I set foot in Haiti expecting to see a ravaged wasteland. A land of hopelessness and despair. I anticipated feeling no connection to her land or her people, instead cementing in my mind that Uganda was to be the only pearl in my heart.
Simply put —I was wrong.
Since leaving Haiti this idea of pearls has been rolling around in my head.
According to Wikipedia:
Essentially, a pearl is a hard, beautiful, valuable object created by constant grinding of abrasives (such as sand) against the soft inner tissue of a really ugly shell.A pearl is a hard object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusc. Just like the shell of a clam, a pearl is made up of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes of pearls (baroque pearls) occur. The finest quality natural pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty for many centuries, and because of this, the word pearl has become a metaphor for something very rare, fine, admirable, and valuable.The most valuable pearls occur spontaneously in the wild, but they are extremely rare.
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| Photo from AllPosters.com |
I'm not sure if you've ever tackled a mountain of oyster shells, or even been within a few miles of such a mountain, because that's all it would take for you to know it's a very undesirable location. These things smell. Really. Really. Smell. They're garbage. Waiting to be crushed up and used for lining your walkway or something else which I'm sure is incredibly useful. Whatever was inside is scooped, sucked or otherwise extracted and the shells are discarded.
To most of the world, Uganda, and maybe more so, Haiti, are throw away nations. Places that have seen too much devastation through violence, natural disaster, corruption, and neglect to ever recover. But they are pearls. Beautiful, lush lands full of vibrant colors. People rich in love with a faithfulness in Christ unparalleled in America. Uganda and Haiti were given their names because of their beauty. But they lived up to their name when ugliness descended and instead of allowing death, famine, war and poverty to destroy them from within, they became pearls. Under the weight of it all, the hardships worked as an abrasive, forming and polishing a hard, valuable object of the finest quality.
“The kingdom of Uganda is a fairy-tale. You climb up … and at the end there is a wonderful new world. The scenery is different, the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and, most of all, the people are different from anything elsewhere to be seen in the whole range of Africa ... I say: ‘Concentrate on Uganda’. For magnificence, for variety of form and colour, for profusion of brilliant life - bird, insect, reptile, beast - for vast scale -- Uganda is truly the pearl of Africa .” --Winston Churchhill
1 monitor.co.ug↩
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