Not in Vain: How three children halfway around the world changed my life

Sunshine warmed us through the windows as we colored pictures together at the small orphanage in Mookgophong, Limpopo, South Africa. We were halfway around the world, in a different hemisphere, completely on opposite ends of the earth than the United States, and it was obvious. July was winter in Africa, but still warm unlike the harsh, snowy and cold winters of Iowa. Winter there was dry season and summer was wet. The seasons were different, the language was different, the climate, culture, and food were different, the animals were different... It was like being in a foreign world. Separated by oceans, and tens of thousands of miles...

But the things that are the same is what brought us together: Warm sunshine, along with the full moon like a spotlight amongst the stars, smiles and laughter, joy, sadness, anger, peace, hunger, happiness, singing, tears, blood, life and death, love and fear, Humanity, Children, The same.
Coloring, the same.




Although it was an orphanage full of heartbreak, it felt homey and happy amongst the smiling and laughing children who were loving the time and attention they were getting from us.
Later I would learn that three of the children came to the orphanage only one month prior to our visit. That their families had given them up and God only knows what kind of neglect they had suffered before that. They would also only be there one month past out visit. But what I didn't know didn't matter. At that moment, what mattered was that those precious children needed our love and attention. It was an unspoken need that you could feel. We all felt it, every where we went, the entire time we were in Africa.



The small orphanage housed nearly 20 children, from infants to early teens. It was a very special day for them because we brought gifts from the states. Handmade dolls and dresses for the girls, and Iowa and Iowa State sweatshirts for the boys. We played together and enjoyed each other's company, and gave lots and lots of hugs, lining up for hugs! They loved hugs! And they needed hugs! We all felt a very strong connection with these children and the heartbreaking reality of what so many of us take for granted, these children couldn't even imagine a life so blessed.

You would never know by the smiles what lived in their pasts. A country stricken with AIDS, poverty, mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Millions of orphaned children who many watched as their mother and/or father, their only providers, died from the horrible sickness of AIDS. Others, neglected, used and abused by the people that were supposed to love them. It makes you wonder how these children, innocent children, can even manage a smile. But they do. 




Last August, a month after our visit, I sat down to write about my experiences in South Africa, but wanted to do some research on the orphanages first. As I searched the Internet, I came across a recent news story about 3 orphaned children who had been kidnapped and brutally murdered, their ankles and feet tied together with their own shoe-laces, and then stoned to death, the little girl raped before she was killed. Two brothers Bafana, age 9 and Hosea, 10, and their cousin Johana, 12. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Something like this happening in this day and age, to children, in a country I had just been to, where I had spent time with orphaned children just like this and saw the longing for love and attention they so desperately needed? It didn't seem real. What kind of evil monsters could do this to orphaned children who had already had a hard enough life? It wasn't fair!

This story made me sick, frustrated, saddened, but mostly fiercely angry. But the worst of it came from the feeling inside. A deep-seeded, sickly feeling. The kind that makes you run to bathroom and gag. Something deep inside told me what I begged wasn't true. The only information I could find about the murdered children was vague, so with a driving, and knowing, force, that I wanted so badly to prove wrong, I spent an entire day researching this crime. Keywording the towns and places I could remember, looking at maps, researching old names of towns to match them with new names, going back through my journal to try and match the names of places and people. When I had finally put together what I didn't want to accept, I wrote the director of the ministry we had stayed with in South Africa and explained my findings and begged him to tell me that this wasn't accurate. His response crushed my heart. "I'm so sorry. These are the children you knew."


 
For weeks I asked myself what I could do with this information. There had to be something I could do. I knew that it wasn't by random chance I had spent time with, held, laughed with, and loved these children. I contacted news stations and newspapers in Des Moines telling them of this situation, and how a ministry started in Iowa, brought Iowans to South Africa to help and spend time with these children. How a food pantry in Iowa, "Meals of the Heartland" that thousands of Iowans participate in, fed these children. I wrote my church asking if anything could be done and I was met over and over again with the same response, thoughts of sorrow and sadness, but no action. I'm not sure what I was expecting anyone to do. I guess I didn't know what to do so I thought maybe they would know. I just knew that something had to be done, that these children, whom I had a connection with from halfway around the world couldn't have died horribly in vain. Something good had to come out of this, it just had to... Friends heard my relentless rants about the situation, and told me there was nothing I could do. I even had a pastor say "You're just one girl from Iowa, I'm sorry but there isn't much that you can do."

Maybe they were all right,... but maybe they weren't. I wondered what I could do to tell these voiceless children's stories as well as all the stories of the voiceless. I knew that I could be a voice and with experience, I could someday tell the stories of people like this who need to be heard. Innocent children, victims, who need help! Most people know that I moved to New York to pursue education and experience in broadcast journalism but most people don't know that these children were/are my motivation. I may have not done something big to change or effect what happened to them. But what happened to them changed everything for me, and in that I know that they didn't die in vain...



While living in New York I found out that they had suspects in custody for this horrific crime. The monsters who brutally killed and raped these innocent children had finally been caught!

Six suspects

ages 12-14

Children...


Shock. Silence. Now what?

Children killing children...
I'm not sure that it gets much worse than that...
Innocent children who are looking for, and longing for, guidance, acceptance, and love and are met with violence, hopelessness, neglect, and abuse at such a young and vulnerable age, that they know no different.

Prayers are needed in South Africa. Help is needed. Positive direction and hope is needed for the children of South Africa and the children of the world.

No matter the geographic location, culture, or race; poverty, sickness, and violence are unfortunately a part of our world... No one is immune to it...
But so is goodness, hope, grace, and love. We see the good conquer the bad when people run towards the violence, towards the sickness, towards the fire and danger, to help.... to make it good again. Together we overcome it.

Everyday we are given two choices. Spread Joy, or spread negativity. The situation in Africa and the time I got to spend with the children at the orphanage, taught me two things: 1. If you have any opportunity to show someone love, for them to see a glimpse of the goodness of God through you, to stop a negative pattern and make it positive, to give them a hug, or to make them smile or laugh,... Do it. Because life is too short not too, and this moment right now, is all we really have to do anything, so make it a good thing. And 2. If you want something to change, complaining and negativity do nothing, but a positive action is what will change it. I don't want to be someone who stands outside of a fire and complains that its burning. I want to be someone who runs into the fire, to help the victims, and help put it out...

For more information about what Blessman Ministries is doing in South Africa or how you can help, visit http://www.blessmanministries.org/.