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Margaret Maund, one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Church of Wales, has launched a revealing book about her experiences as a nurse deep in the jungle of war-torn central Africa during her twenties.

Buy ''Congo Calling'' here

Buy ''Decades of Discovery'' here

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One of the first women to be ordained priest in the Church of Wales has published a revealing book about her experiences as a nurse in war-torn central Africa. Margaret Maund was raised in the Rhondda and trained as a nurse and midwife before spending her twenties deep in the jungle of central Africa at the end of the 1960s.

In her new book, Congo Calling, Reverend Margaret Maund from Tonyrefail explains how wanderlust overcame her during her mid twenties and, after a few years studying French and tropical medicine in Antwerp, she travelled to war-torn Belgian Congo, in central Africa, to work as a medical missionary.

As Margaret tells the story of the years spent in Africa, between 1968 and 1971, the reader enters fully into her experiences: the intense heat and great electrical storms, the poisonous snakes, crocodiles and insects, the traumas of the medical staff and the Ngombe people’s song and dance.

“Looking back, I think I found many similarities between the people I’d left back at home in the Rhondda and the people I met in the Congo,” the author explains. “The warmth of the welcome, their generosity and willingness to share everything they had all reminded me of home. I found Africa an open community which also had the hospitality and wit of my homeland.”

After three years Margaret had to return home. Although she had hoped to return to Africa, her health had been seriously impaired during the time she had spent in the tropics and she was never able to go back to the hospital at Pimu. This was a source of great sadness to her, and despite the fact that she went on to continue her nursing career, to broadcast, to write and to become one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Church of Wales, her love for Africa never left her.

“Before I left Africa, I was asked if I could share with the people of Wales the positive and hopeful lives of those living around me there – could I talk and write about them as they would like to present themselves? I have tried, to the best of my ability, to do just that.”

Congo Calling is Margaret Maund’s second book, following the publication of her autobiography Decades of Discovery in 2011. Congo Calling was launched at St David’s Church, Tonyrefail on Friday 21 June during the Arts Festival and at Tonyrefail Library the following week. The book is published by Y Lolfa, priced £7.95.