Sari Fordam - Wait for God to Notice

This gripping, astutely written memoir of adventures and misadventures is also a very moving story of a mother-daughter relationship. One cannot help admiring the heroic stubbornness and resiliency of this naive, idealistic clan of missionaries, as they adjust to near-impossible circumstances presided over by mad tyrant Idi Amin.

Phillip Lopate, A Mothers Tale and Two Marriages

The missionary experience occupies a fraught corner of contemporary memoir. Sari Fordham approaches it simply as a girl, growing up in a faraway land. She doesnt celebrate the mission so much as her memories of family and home in a place that, as she notes, was never really theirs. The specter of Idi Amin casts the decency of the Fordhams and their Ugandan hosts in sharp reliefwe root for them, and especially for this storyteller.

Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

It is so rare to find a book as generous in spirit as Sari Fordhams Wait for God to Notice. Fordhams portrait of her childhood in Uganda, growing up in a missionary family during the time of Idi Amin, is sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny, and sometimes beautifully sad. Her love for East Africa and for her stubbornly remarkable parents will make you want to buy one copy of this exquisite memoir for yourself, and a few for your friends.

Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement

Missionaries, even with the best intentions, dont quite know what theyre getting themselves into. Especially in Uganda under the reign of Idi Amin. Food is scarce. Driver ants and snakes are omnipresent. Ordinary errands mean dealing with blockades, bribes, and sometimes terror. Sari Fordham has written a memoir of a family both innocent and brave. Written with compassion, humor, and a healthy dollop of skepticism, Fordham creates a world as vibrant and alive as Africa itself. A truly compelling read.

Fern Kupfer, Leaving Long Island

Sari Fordhams Wait for God to Notice is both a story of a young girl and her missionary familys life in Uganda in the 1970s among political unrest, and a meditation on landscape; of how our love is made from the stuff of the places in which we grow. Most deeply and poignantly, however, this is a daughters address to her mother, upon whom the memoir focuses most of all, and speaks to, and loves. I enjoyed this book immensely. It is lucid, careful, expressive, and wryly funny, and searchingly emotive without being sentimental. Sari Fordham takes her timethere is wisdom and authority here. Wait for God to Notice is a unique, pleasurable, heartbreaking read.

Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist

In Wait for God to Notice, Sari Fordham movingly and intelligently probes the ties that bind us: to our families, our homes, our cultures, our faith. She examines the simultaneously tenuous and unbreakable nature of attachment and identity as only the daughter of missionaries could. I fell in love with the authors family and with the wide-eyed, outsider children she and her sister were. Fordhams writing is funny, affectionate, wise, and socially aware, and I didnt want this beautifully-written book to end.

Andria Williams, The Longest Night

Sari Fordham

etruscan press

2019 by Sari Fordham

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher:

Etruscan Press

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Published 2021 by Etruscan Press

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Carey Schwartzburt

Interior design and typesetting by Julianne Popovec

The text of this book is set in Adobe Garamond.

First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Names: Fordham, Sari, 1974- author.

Title: Wait for God to Notice / Sari Fordham.

Description: First edition. | Wilkes-Barre, PA : Etruscan Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: In Wait for God to Notice, Sari Fordham writes about a childhood that is by turns dangerous and idyllic, but is always seeped in the peculiar faith of her parents. Her vivid, unsentimental prose observes how it is possible to love someone you disagree with and how a place that doesnt belong to you can turn you into who you are. Reminiscent of The Poisonwood Bible and Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, Wait for God to Notice explores the complex terrain of being a mzungu in Africa, and ultimately being a stranger anywhere on earth Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019054796 | ISBN 9781733674157 (trade paperback; acid-free paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Fordham, Sari, 1974---Childhood and youth. | Authors, American--21st century--Biography. | Missionaries--Africa--Biography.

Classification: LCC PS3606.O747337 Z46 2021 | DDC 814/.6 [B]--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054796

Please turn to the back of this book for a list of the sustaining funders of Etruscan Press.

This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

For those who were there: my father, mother, and sister.

And for my daughter, who is always asking me to tell her a story about when I was a little girl.

We just found out that the price of one roll of toilet paper is $5.00, and its size is not enough to use a dozen times. Ive read that the sellers rarely have bananas and beans. Wait for God to notice. We remember you all with love in our prayers.

Kaarina Fordham in a letter to her father ~ September 27, 1979

Wait for God to Notice

One day, I realized I had been writing this memoir for longer than my family had lived in Uganda and Kenya combined, and I knew then that it was time, beyond time, to finish.

Im grateful for the magazine editors who published parts of this project as the book was taking shape. Early work appeared in the following literary journals: Driver Ants in Brevity, Dividing Up the World Between Us and Ugandan Psalm in Cerise Press, House Arrest in Thirteen Parts in Isthmus Review, and Shaking Hands with Idi Amin in Passages North. Ugandan Psalm was also reprinted in Best of the Net Anthology 2011 by Sundress Publications, and House Arrest in Thirteen Parts was reprinted in Wrath-Bearing Tree.

Im lucky to have studied with so many brilliant professors who encouraged and challenged me in equal partsparticularly Helen Pyke, Fern Kupfer, Sheryl St. Germain, Madelon Sprengnether, Julie Schumacher, and of course, Patricia Hampl, who has acted as my literary fairy godmother. Thank you also to classmates and friends who provided crucial feedback, inspiration, and communityAmanda Fields, Marge Barrett, Laura Flynn, Amanda Coplin, Jon Lurie, Nicole Johns, Jen Johnson, Kevin Fenton, Brian Malloy, Cheri Johnson, Andria Williams, Karen Rigby, Rachel Wooten, Lorissa Gottschalk, Manolita Farolan, Keri Phillips, Synnova Goodge, and Sandy Suh.