Jessica and a Perspective

Jessica Bigler is a senior at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Jessica, who turned 21 last week, studies Integrated Physiology and hopes to go into medicine, either as a Physician's Assistant or as a Doctor. "God only knows where I will end up", she says. "I have a brother: Chris, father: Mark and my mom: Sue will be coming on this trip. I enjoy the outdoors, creative arts, manual labor, serving others and laughing... a lot. I play the guitar and like to sing, although I may not be the best at it. Right now, I play with three year olds at Cornerstone church, and love to be apart of the lives of those little people."

I would add too that from the picture, she likes hot sauce.

Maybe you have seen some of the recent news of Xenophobia flare-up in South Africa. You might be thinking, 'xenophobia - fear of strangers/foreigners - does that mean me?'

Here's the story. As the socio-economic situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate, more and more people from that country, just north of South Africa, are fleeing to the relative safety in South Africa. It's been estimated that there are approximately 3.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa illegally - men, women and children. Parenthetically these people cannot be considered refugees, and thus receive refugee support from international aide agencies, because the UN is dragging their feet on declaring Zimbabwe a crisis zone. (That's my political soapbox.)

What you have is very poor people who are losing jobs and housing to even poorer people. Then you thrown in tribal rivalries and you have powder keg.

Will that affect us? Well in no way will you would be mistaken as Zimbabwean. So that's one thing in our favor. We just need to be aware of the situation and will take precautions like not being in the township after dark or being out alone. The Development Centre where we will be serving has a secure fence around it and so will the hostel where we will stay in town.

Maybe, while you are there, you will meet a person from Zimbabwe that has been affected by the xenophobia of local people. Maybe he or she will share his or her story with you, and though you will likely not be able to provide any immediate or long-term solutions, coming all that way to help shoulder the difficult experiences by listening to people as they work through them will, indeed, make all the difference though.

Here's a perspective a friend who serves in South africa shared with me. "We do not dare to serve the people of Africa in the absence of such problems, or even in spite of them, but rather because such problems plague God's children across the continent. "