As the name of the blog suggests my name is Martha and I am on an adventure. The adventure is one year as a service volunteer for the Baha'i Faith in South Africa.
Who is Martha?
I'm a 21 year old who has a love for travelling and being of service to the world. I was born and bred in Sydney, Australia but have temporarily relocated to South Africa for what we in the Baha'i Faith call a Youth Year of Service. I graduated from the University of Sydney in 2009, I completed a Bachelor of Design Computing, and decided that I wasn't yet ready to keep studying or to start working full time so I felt that this would be the perfecting time to go on service. I gave myself a few months to save some money before heading off.
What is this service?
Not to be confused with missionary work the Baha'i perspective on service is about working towards the betterment of humanity by engaging in activities that seek to build the capacity of a community in terms of moral and spiritual education that is self sustainable and ever growing. The service that I have embarked on has seen me placed in a community with a relatively small Baha'i community in order to help that community establish classes for children, junior youth and adults based on these themes of moral and spiritual education as well as help increase the pull of human resources available to run these classes so that when I'm gone the process can continue without me. The main objective in all of this is the betterment of the world. We as individuals are realistically unable to change the whole world but what we can change is ourselves and where we can have an impact on is our homes, our streets and our neighbourhoods so by each of us focusing on our own little pocket and endevouring to uplift the spiritual atmosphere of that pocket through acts of service, prayer and a heightened awareness of our purpose in this world as spiritual beings and the responsibility we have in fostering the growth of our souls we can eventually change the whole world. This is the nature of my service in South Africa and if you ask any Baha'i anywhere in the world you will see that I am not the only one engaged in this process.
When and Where?
My adventure began on the 29th of May 2010 and will end on the 20th of May 2011. I am based in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
What's a Baha'i?
The Baha'i Faith is an independant religion and a Baha'i is a follower of that religion. The Baha'i Faith was founded by Baha'u'llah in Iran in 1863 and it's foundation is based on the idea of unity, that the whole world is one family and all are sheltered under one God. Baha'u'llah in His teachings greatly emphasises the responsibility of each individual in working towards the betterment of humanity. When we recognise that all of mankind belongs to one race, the human race, then we will disregard all the differences among us that create prejudice and enmity. Baha'u'llah calls for all of us to eliminate these prejudices and work towards equality; the equality of men and women, of race and religion.
For more information you can visit this website: www.bahai.org
What's with the blog?
The reason I started writing a blog was to keep all my friends and family up to date with what I was doing. Although I love to talk I find repeating myself draining so I thought I would be clever and start a blog so that whenever anyone asked me how South Africa was I could just refer them all to this. I also naturally love to write and I love to share my new experiences and learnings so a blog seemed appropriate.
What came as a complete shock to me was just how wide spread my readers would be. I really thought my mum, my cousin Elina and maybe a few friends would be the only ones reading it and I was shocked when I find out that I have had a reader in every continent of the world (except Antarctica).
The red thingys are locations where people have viewed the blog from not the number of people so even if 10 people checked the blog from Sydney only 1 red thing would appear.
Also I thought I might mention the design on the blog, The background is actually an image that I drew in a drawing class at university and then I played with it in Photoshop and used it as my background. Just thought I would elaborate as it has nothing to do with the Baha'i Faith or with Africa, it is just a piece of myself through one of my drawings.
To all the people who read this blog I would love to hear from you, positive or negative I would love to know what you think of the content and the way that I write. Please feel free to leave comments or if I have you on Facebook let me know what you think :)
