Because Everyone Is Different
As a little girl Vanessa Ebiaca sometimes went with her father to the big petrochemical companies in Equatorial Guinea. It always surprised her that most of the people working in those offices were from someplace else, while the people cleaning or guarding those offices were Guineans. Something about that offended Vanessa. It wasn’t so much that people from other countries were making more money than the Guineans as the implication that these challenging jobs were beyond the Guineans’ ability.
When she realized the problem was that most Guineans didn’t have the education to compete for these jobs, she made a decision: “I didn’t want to spend my life cleaning up after other people.” Later, while working at her mother’s shop in Malabo, the capital, she learned that her cousin Esther was going to attend a school in Texas, the Presbyterian Pan American School (PPAS). After hearing that Esther loved the school, Vanessa decided to apply to it for admission and a scholarship. She says, “I stood up on my feet and told myself, ‘I can do it!’” But not without misgivings. She wondered whether she would be accepted at school or would remain an outsider, as she often felt in her own country. “I didn’t think I would necessarily be accepted as I am.” She smiles, remembering. “But now I see that everyone here is accepted because everyone is different.”
Growing out of that diversity, Vanessa sees a powerful unity at PPAS—a unity that offers strength, she says. For example, all the students work about ten hours a week at chores that help keep the school running (Vanessa mostly works cleaning the girls’ dormitory.) The fact that the students all participate in chapel is also meaningful to her. With a Portuguese-born, Roman Catholic mother who made her attend church and a father who is not a believer, Vanessa needed a chance to explore faith on her own terms. Within a couple of months at PPAS, she had discovered that a faith community could be a welcoming, nurturing place. In September, the students visited a youth rally at a church in Austin. “We didn’t know anyone there, but everyone was so open and loving and peaceful we felt included right away, and I began to understand what faith could mean in my own life.”
After graduating from PPAS next year, Vanessa wants to continue her studies in chemistry so that when she returns to Equatorial Guinea, she can work in the petrochemical industry and show her fellow Guineans that they too can be the ones with challenging and exciting jobs.
Presbyterians have a long history of supporting education. Through the Christmas Joy Offering, we can extend the blessings of educational opportunity to many who might otherwise never experience them. Thanks to your gifts many more young people like Vanessa, from different cultures all over the world, can enrich their own experience—and that of our communities and churches—at racial ethnic schools and colleges around the country. Just as the Offering supports, through the assistance programs of the Board of Pensions, those in our churches who have given their lives to following their call, let us joyfully support those at these schools and colleges who are striving to discern that call.
To learn about how the Offering supports retired church workers
see Board of Pensions
