Cultural experiences

He was the first to greet us after the long journey and initially seemed confused as to why two westerners were in his village. Nonetheless he welcomed us and mustered a massive ear to ear grin. I could not help but stare at the deep lines on his face, evidently there from years of constant smiling.

I did not understand a word he was saying to me, but language held no barrier in conveying his happiness and pride in his village to me.

He waved us over and invited us to see inside his house.

Inside his mud hut house, sat his elderly wife. She was slumped over a blazing fire in the middle of the room, unable to muster the energy to look up at the strangers that had entered her home; she just sat there wrapped in a blanket, frail and fading.

The man continued to show us the place he lived, laughing and maintaining his happy demeanor, he explained to us that his wife was gravely ill and that the doctors could not do anything for her.

The translator explained in her broken English what the man had said to her; “The time we had together is happy, no time to be sad on how it will end, that would be wasting time where you could have been happy, it is all in the plan of life”.

I left his house in floods of tears, not because I felt pity for the man or his wife, but because I realised how naive I had been in life, that everything I knew about happiness from a western perspective was wrong.

As we turned to leave the village, the man forced a bag full of mushrooms in to my hand, and smiled; he had nothing but yet still gave it away, his happiness was sharing.