Even though she escaped from Liberia in the midst of their Civil War in 1991 with nothing more than the clothes on her back, missionary Wenona Jennings still yearns for the country she called home for more than 30 years.

Bermuda-born Ms Jennings, nowadays a resident at the Matilda Smith Williams Senior Residence, has some very fond memories of the West African country of three million inhabitants. In fact, with better health -- the 75 year old lost a leg two years ago after complications from a fall at a bus stop -- she would probably have returned to continue work she says has "been my calling since 13 years of age''.

Born in Government Gate, Pembroke, in a family of 12 (just one older sister is still living) Ms Jennings went to Liberia as a missionary right after finishing college at the Ontario Bible College in Ontario, Canada.

Initially it was to be for three years, but she ended up staying more than 30 years.

"I was stationed at the mission run by the Afro American Missionary Crusade,'' she explained.

"I went alone, but met some Americans there. I didn't know any of them. The programme was for three years and in my first three years there I took sick and after an operation in Philadelphia I came back here for nine months.

Ironically, her job during those nine months back in Bermuda was at the Matilda Smith Williams home where she worked for seven months under the then patron Cora Trott.

"My foster mother Mrs. Helena Williams and Mrs. Cann had the vision for this home which was started on prayer, faith and fasting,'' Ms. Jennings recalled.

"The home first started at Ewing Street and in the afternoons after school I used to wash dishes. Ethel Thomas ran the home at Ewing Street.'' It was in her early 20s that Ms Jennings visited Liberia for the first time, alone in a country thousands of miles from home.

"It was quite an experience, I didn't know anyone,'' she stated.

"I felt like Abraham when God told him to leave his kindred and go and he didn't know where he was going. I didn't really know where I was going, but as the board sent me they had a place for me.

"When I got there I met four American missionaries and was ushered right into work in a school. I had a passion for the children, some of them were very thin and being a practical nurse I had sympathy for them.'' Ms Jennings' work kept her in the interior in Liberia working with children.

"I had a desire to open up an orphanage and most of the children were from women who died in childbirth,'' she explained. "I brought them right up and was both mother and father to them.

"Relatives didn't want the children, because when a woman dies in childbirth they say she is bewitched.'' Even though she was forced out of Liberia for her own safety ten years ago during the war, Ms Jennings left reluctantly.

"It was a war, too, so much of a war that I had a nervous breakdown,'' she revealed.

"I was 100 miles out from the city, there was no transportation and they put me in a hospital where all the doctors had left. They sent air planes and boats to take the foreigners out and they sent word to one of the children that I brought up and he came in an old broken down taxi and took me down to a Catholic hospital and I stayed there for about ten days.

"I put him through school with the help of the missionaries of Bermuda and he has his Ph.D now. They were looking for all the instructors and educators and they killed practically all the educators, doctors and ministers.

"They were looking for him because he taught at the university. Each night he kept moving to another place so they wouldn't catch him. I got him when he was 11 years old and he was so brilliant he got a scholarship to the high school, a scholarship to teacher's training and a scholarship to university and a scholarship to come over to the States. He's in the States now and I keep in touch with him.'' Added Ms Jennings: "My board sent word to immigration that they had to get me out because they were responsible for me, but I told them I was not going to leave Liberia because I had a responsibility to the children, but I couldn't go back to them because they burned up everything...all my clothes and all my certificates. "Immigration came to the hospital and said they had to get me out, if not my board could not hold them responsible for me.'' Ms Jennings explained how one of the children she brought up, who was 18 by that time, managed to get through the checkpoints and back into the interior to search for her belongings.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways because she couldn't find my birth certificate or my other certificates but she found my passport,'' she explained.

Despite the circumstances of her departure from the country, Ms Jennings still misses Liberia. "I wouldn't trade it, I wish I could go back and if I was able I would go back,'' she says without hesitation.

"Africa did become a part of me. I did get homesick for about a year but after that I fell into the pattern of the natives, cooked like them, dressed like them and went fishing with them.

"There's nothing for me to do here. They have enough preachers, missionaries and people here to do the work, if they would just step out. "I don't know Bermuda now, even Government has changed, everything has changed. Put me on a street I wouldn't know which way to go.'' She added: "Where they need people is in other countries like Africa. I still love the work. I went out to other villages, taking my medicine and distributing the medicine for things like Dysentery, Malaria and ulcers.

"All I could hear that Africa was a dark continent with wild animals, but I didn't know what they meant by dark continent. I thought the place was dark.

"I didn't know they lacked in education but they have educated people now, doctors, lawyers, everything. When the war broke out so many people got killed and the population went down.'' Seven years of civil strife came to a close in 1996 when free and open presidential and legislative elections were held. The country is still recovering from the flight of many businesses which robbed them of capital and expertise.

"I still have nightmares sometimes,'' she says of the experiences during the war.

"I was way up in the interior and when I went down to Monrovia (capital) the guns began to shoot and I was running for my life.'' On Saturday, the Matilda Smith Williams Home will hold their annual Harambee celebration at the St. Paul's Centennial Hall on Court Street, starting at 7.30 p.m.

Harambee is a Swahili word meaning pulling together or togetherness and the public is invited to attend the fund raiser, wearing any national dress.

"We would like people to come out and have a good time and support the home,'' said secretary Madree Sampson.

"The senior population here is growing rapidly, with about eight percent of seniors now in rest homes on the Island.'' The home started an extension years ago that would increase bed space and one of their goals is to have that project completed in the very near future.

Entertainment will be provided by the group Word under Lloyd Matthew and the Bermuda African Dance Group, as well as poetry and a display of Lloyd Webb's African artifacts.

The event is under the patronage of the Governor Thorold Masefield. Tickets are $35 for patrons and $25 for general admission.