Most of you know that I’m leaving soon for Africa (July 25). But, I would guess, most of you don’t know why I’m really going. On the surface, you might say that I’m going just to scale Mt. Kilimanjaro and view the world from on high (19,300 feet). Or if pressed, you might say it’s because I’m catering to the adventuress in me.

But the real reason has been brewing for more than forty years. When I was a little girl, for some reason, the name “Africa” seemed to quiver with mystery. It was remote, exotic, and foreboding. . . . I’m not alone in my mysterious imaginings. Historically, Africa was known as the “dark continent,” not because of the dark skin of the inhabitants, but because the interior was so inaccessible that the Western World really didn’t know much about it beyond its boundaries. Though calling Africa the “dark continent” today is definitely not PC, and though the interior of Africa has long since been explored and exploited, the continent is still shrouded in mystery, conjuring up images of adventure, danger, and “other world-ness”. At least it did for me as a child.

Today, Africa is a continent in turmoil. I could go on and on about its troubles, but I’ll just mention one here that is germane. Due to AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases, there are currently over twenty million orphans in Africa. It is estimated that by the year 2010, there will be fifty million orphans. Africa is in the throes of a vast humanitarian crisis– a crisis that will only worsen unless the world awakens to its cry.

I first visited Africa in 2007. I’d agreed to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a friend of mine, Connie. But while we made plans, checked schedules, and tightened the straps of our backpacks, something kept bothering me. How could I just waltz into Africa (Tanzania), climb the mountain, and then leave with only a “thank you very much”? Didn’t I have a responsibility to effect positive change? Didn’t I have a responsibility, as Emerson wrote, “to make one life breathe easier”? This was the continent that had beckoned me all my life. Perhaps there was a deeper reason for that beckoning, a purpose beyond curiously fathoming its mysteries.

I began to search for volunteer opportunities — you know the kind: fly in for a couple of weeks, teach at a school, sing songs, clap, smile a lot, and then show’s over. The schools were pristine, the uniforms pressed and gleaming-white, the students smiling and healthy. While this was all well and wonderful, I felt a deeper calling. After more searching, digging the dregs of the internet, we discovered a small, grassroots organization called the “Marilyn Orphans Projects Foundation,” founded by Zambians and Tanzanians. This ragtag group of nobodies went around building schools for orphans, staffing them with volunteer teachers, and putting orphans (yatima) in the care of kindly widows (wajani). This ragtag group had nothing and yet they were making a difference. Their vision, their passion, moved me to tears. I signed on to volunteer and managed to talk my husband, Carl, and my friend, Liza, into going with me. By this time, I no longer desired to climb the mountain.

We spent two weeks there. No running water, no electricity, no clean uniforms, no nothing except the extreme need of the orphans and the heartfelt goodness of the adults who were trying to help. We came home exhausted, but on fire. They needed our help and we were going to give it.

Since 2007, the three of us have founded a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit charity called Orphans Africa (www.orphansafrica.org).We have helped to construct three schools, each at various stages of development, educating several hundred students. In just a few short weeks, the dormitories will be finished in one of the schools, and we will then be able to house forty orphans. We have sent hundreds of books and countless school supplies and equipment. We’ve planted hundreds of trees on 80 acres donated by the Tanzanian government and will soon break ground on a self-sustaining K-12 school where orphans will learn agriculture and animal husbandry. Someday the orphans will be able to raise food to put on their table, while selling the excess in the market. Someday it is even our dream to send the most academically inclined orphans to university, and others to our on-site vocational training school, to help them become productive leaders and members of a struggling society. We have big plans.

In a few short weeks, we leave again — Carl, Liza, and me (Connie’s coming too — but later). This time we’ll travel to interior Tanzania, near Zambia, where it is even more primitive. There is little infrastructure, no medicine, no running water, and no electricity. Communication is by word of mouth, by bicycle, or if you’re lucky, a rickety car. Once there, we’ll meet with community leaders and revisit our strategies for the orphans. It is our hope to see new buildings rise out of the dust, witness hope spring anew on tired faces, and to see lives transformed. It’s the highest mountain I could possibly climb.