happiness

our western excesses may gorge our physical desires, but this greed results in other, more nameless needs....

anorexia. obesity. heart disease. traffic. no patience. canned laugh tracks on lame sitcoms. SUVs. cell phones. drive thru fast food. airbrushed skeletons staring us down as we pay for groceries. politics of fear. keeping up with the joneses. faster, newer, shinier, better. ignoring people as we walk past them; not looking at, smiling, greeting, or even acknowledging someone's existence as we speed through our day towards the next thing on our list.

our list doesn't matter.

we don't know the people who've lived in the house across the street in our subdivision for 10 years.

yesterday as i was jogging, a mob of young boys joined me, grinning away; their smiles a bright flash from a lighthouse beacon rotating and revealing my mind's dark hideaway. running alongside in their bare feet or sorriest of shoes for a full 10 minutes. i felt like forrest gump leading the pack.

the culture shock had kind of hit me earlier that morning, much more so than when i first arrived. we had been driving out of town for the first time and the extreme and exceeding poverty enveloped my growing shame. i was feeling kind of fucked up and loaded down with white man's burden. the purity of their smiles and laughs made me embarrassed to be wearing sneakers worth 3 months of their parent's income. they stayed with me for nearly a mile and then started dropping off, one by one. the last one stayed at my side for a few more minutes worth, before peeling off hard left and yelling "goodbye mzungu!"

smoldering piles of trash. women carrying impossible loads on their heads. a shanty house burning down in a town with no fire department, taking with it the few accumulated possessions of generations. men peeing on the taxiway and waving at me as i pass by in my $3 million office.

the long look of waiting; the quiet desperation that comes only from an intimate companionship with thirst. the decaying doppler effect of a bicycle bell; receding, curving, falling away; and us speeding by down the rutted road, the black road dust swirling in our wake.

the kids here are so poor, and so friendly. so hungry, and so generous. their bright smiles remind me that i have no real problems. why is this so hard to remember? although we couldn't say more than hello to each other, 10 minutes left its mark.


i hope that i can learn this happiness that surrounds me.