Walk in the Light
I am working at Walk in the Light for my community service. Walk in the Light works to serve the people in one of the local townships. In South Africa there are these townships, townships are for the most part impoverished areas were mostly Black people live because they were forced out of the cities during the Apartheid. Although the Apartheid has ended there are still many problems that need to be dealt with, one of them is poverty. Walk in the Light completely self-sustaining organization. They have about 200 acres of land and grow rose bushes. They remove the scent from the roses sell the cent so the scent can be placed in different things like air fresheners (I am not sure if Walk in the Light’s roses are actually used for air fresheners, but it is a good example).
They have done great things for the area. Everyday they take people who have HIV/AIDS to the local clinic to get medical care and do home visits to different people in the community. They also hold a church service on Sunday morning because there is no church in the township other than a Mosque. Each day some of us get to go into the township and meet some of the people. It was extremely moving to see the people in the township. We had a tour of the clinic, which is in no way up to American standards. There are so many people who suffer from HIV/AIDS here; from what I have been told it is the worst on the whole continent of Africa. My group had the opportunity to go into a couple homes and prayed for people who are infected with HIV.
There are 16 of us serving at Walk in the Light, so we get tasks done fast. This week our main responsibility was to paint pictures in the room they have church because the walls had nothing on them, they were just beige. Our token art major Jessica led the project and had all of us put base coats down while she added detail to the paintings. We were kind of frustrated because there was not enough work for us to do, but the workload will pick up next week. One major thing we learned is that we can serve by just being available, even if we don’t have something to do all of the time. Next week we are building a kitchen for a lady. It is cool to get out of our Luxury South African Vacation Retreat and do something to serve the people of South Africa.
