By Jacek Rakowdki, M.Afr
Published in the Saturday Post, Saturday 27 July 2013
Most people remember very well a moment or an episode in their lives, which was a turning point. (…) It happened (to me) 10 years ago. I had just arrived in the country, form my native Poland, to continue my training with the Missionaries of Africa in Kasama. I was in Cairo Road, looking for an Internet Café from where I could call my family to tell them I had arrived safely. I found one but at the door, lying on the pavement, there was a child. The only way for me to enter into the shop would have been to step over his body. But I couldn’t. I froze and I moved to the other side of the street and went back home. That night the vision of that boy came back to haunt me time and again. 
On the following morning, I went back to the shop and the child was awake, standing and begging. Unable to communicate, I just took him by the hand, led him to a fast food and bought him something to eat.
Today I would not encourage anyone to do that but that’s what happened to me on that fateful encounter which threw open a door on a world I only knew through readings and movies.
