Africa children’s choir to visit Fort Worth

United Methodist News Service
A slender young woman stands behind the audience––well out of the limelight.
Twenty-three pairs of little eyes are watching her every move. She smiles. They smile. She clearly enunciates each word. They pay close attention. She sways, she directs, she holds them all in her capable hands.
“Auntie Lydia” is the conductor and manager for the Hope for Africa Children’s Choir and Academy.
Lydia Namageme, a young woman who knows how hard these children’s lives have been, loves her charges. When they need a hug, she’s there. When they need a little tough love, she’s there for that, too.
Namageme lives with the children at the United Methodist school that has rescued them from lives of poverty. She serves as the right hand of Tonny Mbowa, the choir’s director.
The 23 children live together night and day and are preparing for their “first ever international tour.” The highlight of the tour will be two performances at the 2008 United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth April 28 and 29. After their performance in Texas, the children will tour and sing at United Methodist churches in Arkansas, Georgia, Wisconsin, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee until the end of July.
Namageme and Mbowa have a deep spiritual connection with the children because they were once orphans. They were rescued and made part of the African Children’s Choir, founded by Ray Barnett in 1984. That choir is still saving and training children today. It has gained international recognition and performed in some of the world’s most prestigious halls.
Namageme and Mbowa grieve over the children left in the camps.
“I believe the children we take from here are few, but if we teach them the right ways of God—like the Bible says, ‘Teach them my ways and when they grow they will never depart from them’—if we teach them love, they will bring back love to this community,” Mbowa said.
“I try to refresh these children’s mind,” Namageme says. “I want them to have a new life, happiness and a future.”
The teachers at the academy are trying to prepare the children for their visit to the United States.
“They are very excited. They have started counting the number of planes in the sky,” Mbowa, said laughing.
Ask the children about the upcoming travel and they smile, wrinkle their noses and say they are really excited. They know it will be different, but as Mbowa said, “It is beyond their imagination.”
“They are going to be like, wow, are we in heaven or what?”