Joyce Baker Porte

One Girl's African Odyssey Joyce Baker Porte

In 1937, when Joyce was three months old, her parents sailed with their young family to East Africa to be missionaries with the Africa Inland Mission. Imminent war n Europe brought world-wide tensions and ten years would pass before they could return to the United States. It was a decade of privation and learning to make do, growing cotton and sugar cane, harvesting their own garden, and resoling shoes with cowhide -- all while building and overseeing schools and churches. At the end of WW2, their return to the United States brought a new kind of adventure for Joyce as she navigated a home she didn't remember. Undaunted by their previous experiences. the Baker family returned to Africa in 1949. They lived in a mud and wattle shack while Joyce's parents began a new venture to build a school and church nd a more permanent home. Joyce and her sister were sent to their mission boarding school, Rift Valley Academy, in Kenya for five years, until Joyce's graduation from hgh school. This is the story of the joys, perils, and miracles of Joyce's childhood and her coming of age in Africa as the winds of change swept across the continent and into her family's life and work.