Visiting Los Rosales

Mostar, BiH Nov 2024

Los Rosales is a school in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, dedicated to holistically serving children and adults with physical and mental disabilities. While I usually gravitate toward spending time with kids, I’ve recently been drawn to the adults at Los Rosales.

Technically, the adults aren’t in “school” anymore—it’s more of a daycare center—but they participate in these incredible workshops where they create stunning works of art. The space is alive with woodworking, sewing, painting, and quilling projects, all bursting with bright colors and unique designs. Today, I had the chance to join them. They taught me how to quill—a technique where thin strips of paper are tightly twirled and arranged like a mosaic on a background to form intricate images.

Later, I visited another room, where they introduced me to another skill: using a thin wire to apply glue along the outline of a design, then layering it with colored sand to create textured, vibrant artwork.

These workshops are more than just creative outlets. They are spaces where people who were never given the resources to thrive in society can flourish together. Here, they channel their remarkable creativity into beautiful expressions of the talent that so often goes unnoticed.

The people at Los Rosales are kind, funny, and warm. They make coffee for one another, kick around a football in the sun, and invited me into their world. Some of them speak bits of English, and they lit up every time I said “bravo” or “súper,” two of the few words I’ve mastered in my very limited Bosnian vocabulary.

Later in the day, I found myself sitting with the teachers during their break. By then, I had taken all the photos and videos I needed—footage I’ll use to create promotional materials to help sell their products in the U.S. as part of a fundraiser—but my ride home was still chatting with the teachers. So, I sat with them, waiting.

We gathered around a table in the corner of the common area, the door left open to the rainy afternoon. A chilly breeze filtered in as a few of them smoked cigarettes and sipped espresso. Someone brought out a cake, and the men devoured it. I tried a bite, but it was a little too creamy for me. Most of the conversation unfolded in Bosnian, with some English sprinkled in so I could follow along.

I started to feel a little restless. I thought to myself, I’ve done what I came here for. Shouldn’t I get going? 

But get going for what? To sit alone in my apartment and work? I didn’t have any deadlines or meetings that day, but still, that familiar pull to move on to the next thing gnawed at me.

Then it struck me: everyone else here seemed perfectly content to relax for a while. Surely they had other things they could be doing, too, but they weren’t rushing. And in that moment, I realized—this is what I’m here for. To be present in the lives of these people. Whether it’s by painting alongside them in the workshop or learning from Mezzo, the woodshop instructor, about how the South Wind supposedly puts Balkan people in bad moods (and even makes crimes excusable by law), I’m here to be.

Eventually, we packed up, said our goodbyes, and braved the storm to head home. I’d only really needed thirty minutes at Los Rosales to get my media content, but I stayed for two and a half hours. And as I think about it, I see that as a small instance of personal growth—a shift in perspective. I settled into the moment instead of rushing out of it.

“Onto the next thing” is fine, but I’m learning, day by day, that I am not the master of the clock that determines when that next thing begins.