By Volunteer Borna

In the second grade of primary school, when I was just eight years old, during a religion class I cheerfully and confidently exclaimed: “When I grow up, I’m going to be a missionary!”

I’m not sure where that idea came from. Maybe it was the thought of setting off to faraway lands to spread faith in Christ—by serving those in need, telling Bible stories to children the way my beloved religion teacher told them to us, and discovering the Living God in other cultures and in the most unexpected places. I can phrase it so neatly now, but my eight-year-old self certainly didn’t have the words to express such feelings—though the desire was very real.

“My dear Borna, if you want to be a missionary, then you must become a priest,” my teacher Dorica told me in her gentle and kind voice.

“Then I’ll be a priest!” I replied without hesitation.
Although I never followed the path of priesthood, God still provided everything necessary for His will, not mine, to be fulfilled.

At the beginning of March this year, sitting in a neighborhood café, I found myself thinking about two unfulfilled wishes that had been postponed again and again in recent years. The first was to serve my homeland and/or those in need. I had wanted to join the army, but work commitments held me back. The second was to retreat into solitude and pray, just as Jesus did in the Gospels—to step away from everyone, to have my own spiritual renewal, a time for reflection and prayer.

“No prophet is welcome in his own homeland,” I thought. In this case, homeland might as well mean continent. That evening, while sipping black tea with milk and puffing on my pipe, a single word suddenly came to mind—Africa!

With one decision, I could resolve both desires: to go far away and to serve, to pray and to work. And I hadn’t even remembered my long-forgotten childhood dream of being a missionary. As I said, everything seemed to fall into place. I decided to explore the possibilities of an African adventure, and soon I came across the website of the association Kolajna ljubavi. A quote from Mother Teresa drew me in even further.

To cut the story short, in the following months I attended a volunteer training course that all candidates go through. A week of carefully planned sessions prepared us on every level—legal, medical, linguistic, cultural, moral, and spiritual. By the time of departure, I knew everything I needed to know. I believed I wouldn’t set off on mission until the following year, but once again: “My plans are not God’s plans.”

When I told my parents, colleagues, family, and friends that I was preparing to travel to Tanzania, they either didn’t believe me or were skeptical. They only realized I was serious when, almost at the last minute, I bought my ticket. And not for a moment did I feel afraid.

Arriving in Songea, in southern Tanzania, everything seemed surreal: the children, the landscape, the orphanage. Everything I had only seen in photos and videos was suddenly before me—and it felt magical. It was astonishing to see how, in the same country, two such different worlds could exist side by side: the tourist-developed Zanzibar, while Songea is town of about a hundred thousand, where people live with great scarcity, draw water from wells, cook over open fires, use pit latrines, eat almost the same foods day after day in different combinations, and wear worn-out clothes. It’s a town without cinemas, theaters, galleries, major museums, or even shops in the way we understand them. And yet, there is one thing they have in abundance —faith.

I witnessed how happy the people are with so little, how cheerful, joyful, singing and dancing they are, willing to wait for hours if needed, since time seems to stand still and few even bother to look at the clock. I was certain I had encountered God in that community. I believe God is just as present in our own society, but with our hectic schedules and modern ways of living, we struggle to notice Him. In Songea, however, God reveals Himself daily, in new things, in new situations.

The water pump, standing as a symbolic source of life at the heart of the orphanage, taught me many lessons, above all the lesson of community. Everything there radiates togetherness. When someone is washing dishes or laundry at the pump, another quickly joins to help, whether to draw water or to scrub alongside them. Many times, after dinner, children would take the plate straight from my hands to wash it for me, no matter how much I insisted on doing it myself. Everything is done in pairs or in groups: cooking, cleaning, playing, dancing, singing. These people, and especially the children, truly embody the Living Church, and they can be an example to us all.

I could write for days about everything I experienced in those thirty or so days, but I won’t. What happens there is indescribable—just as indescribable as the greatness of God, who makes it all possible. There are no words to capture the love, tenderness, and goodness of those children. Leaving them was heartbreaking, even after only a month, despite the fact that my own friends and family, including my little nephew, were waiting for me back home. That speaks for itself.

I can still hear their voices, their laughter, calling me “uncle” and I miss those little ones so much, sheltered from the corrupted outside world. Children who have so little, yet are so rich. All they own are a school uniform, supplies and books, a backpack, a few clothes, a pair of shoes, a toothbrush, and a wash bucket. And yet they never complain, nor do they find anything too difficult.

I thought I was going there to teach, but in truth, I was the one who learned. I wanted to evangelize, but instead, I was evangelized. I carried with me two large suitcases full of donations, school supplies and hygiene products but what I carried back, selfishly perhaps, was far greater: a lifelong experience. I wanted to bring home a little piece of Africa, but instead, I left with an emptiness in my heart. And nothing will ever be the same again, even though I was there for only a month.

I will forever remember and miss them all: Harriet, Alice, Irene, Isaiah, Jennifer, Jacqueline, Jackson, Joyce, Glory, Ronnie, Editha, Emma, Luisa, Glorista, Faraja, Imani, Anitha, Beatrice, Baraka, Meshaki, Evans, Julius, Gladness, Elisa, Sabrina, Rehema, and Careen.

I will keep them in my prayers, along with their future, with all those involved in this beautiful story, and with that little place hidden miles away, in an African oasis of peace, an oasis that breathes community and feels like home.