We Took A Chance

We took a chance. We went.  Because we went, we saw.  Because we saw, we felt.  We felt deep pain and innocent joy.  We questioned with struggles too complex to answer.    We served, we laughed, we cried, we sang, and we danced.  We danced a lot.  But above all, we loved.  And in this love formed the truest bond between two different groups of people from two different counties and two different backgrounds.  We had different skin color and we spoke different languages.  We had different opportunities in life based on the family we were born into.  And yet, we were all the same. 

We are all the same.  So now we talk.  We teach.  We tell.  We find ways to advocate and we embrace in the hope of a another chance.  A chance to make a change in a country that so badly deserves an opportunity.  An opportunity to live.  To be healthy.  And an opportunity to sustainably live in a country devastated by poverty.

So we serve with Bloom.  We write.  We dream.  And we raise funds to support the most vulnerable children of Lesotho.  We communicate.  With the people in our country and the people in their country.  We continue to serve alongside. 

But we cannot do it alone.  

So we ask for your help.  Because you can make a difference.  A small one.  And together our small acts of love will transform.  Into a bigger change.  A greater change.  Centered around the love that was started from a chance. 

Ka Khotso,

Katharine         

Katharine is a senior at Wittenberg University and intern with Bloom Africa.

Savor the World

At the age of nineteen, I encountered the country of Lesotho in a state of wonder. How could such simplicity be so beautiful? How could we provide hope amidst so much brokenness? How did I get to be born into a comfortable lifestyle while other children lacked education, health care, or even an actual pair of shoes to play outdoor games? It was four weeks of an emotional overload of images; there were trees visible because of the outline of stars behind them, there was Scott Hospital in Morija where patient after patient presented symptoms of tuberculosis resulting in a chest x-ray resulting in an HIV test, there were children laughing on a playground while they waited to be called into the Baylor Pediatric AIDS Clinic for their appointment, there were conversations around a fire where college kids tried to make sense of the world they were witnessing each day. 

Almost two years later I still find myself struggling between trying to save the world and trying to savor the world. Every day it seems I pick up lessons that make the work done in Lesotho more worthwhile. The Wittenberg trips led by Dr. Rosenberg, as well as Bloom, truly do service the right way in how they work directly with the Basotho to learn their needs and then build projects that address them rather than having an outside agenda that they to implement on the country. However, recently through a few community service reflections sessions I have been a part of, I’ve begun thinking of our time there in different ways. One professor labeled service as a way of interrupting death; there are people in this world who humanity has written off and declared dead in a sense, but through service sometimes we have the blessing to interrupt that and remind the individual that he or she matters and has a role to play on this earth. Another professor spoke of the importance of viewing service as a healing of loneliness rather than trying to fix something. Lesotho cannot be overwhelmingly changed by one group of Wittenberg students travelling to the country, but we could show love and heal through that, and we could create conversation in ways other than spoken language to remind a child that we are all the same.

I hope every person can get the chance to witness the gentle beauty of the Mountain Kingdom. When I returned home from the trip, a friend from school interviewed me about the trip for a writing assignment for class. After listening to me, he simply entitled his essay, “Magnificence.” It was the best four weeks I’ve had the chance to live. I feel absolutely blessed by the opportunity I was given through Wittenberg, and continually blessed by what Bloom has continued to do in this nation. There is life without love but it is not found in Lesotho, and I have grown to believe it is not found in those who spend time in that country as well.

-Evan Cameron

Evan is studying medicine at Wittenberg University.