Here's a short story about my Christmas 2000.

Cultural shock

My five month term as a young volunteer in Africa was coming to an end. I was stationed in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, in a house made of beige bricks in a nice neighborhood. It wasn’t the most beautiful neighborhood but it was decent.

Burkina is a beautiful country with equally beautiful people but even so, I experienced a deep cultural shock: poverty. It’s deeply imbedded in harsh poverty. Where ever you went poverty was slapped in your face and the sting of the slap lasted longer when you realized you were powerless to help them all, and especially when, despite their impoverished lifestyle, they were very hospitable and would treat you with so much respect.

My first month had been spent trying to come to grips with this reality. I had seen poverty before on TV but this was so much different. This was real. These were real beggars in the streets, real dirty little children who looked mal nourished with their inflated stomachs, real mothers who would come knocking at your door not to ask for a handout, but for a job, any job, to be able to feed their children.

It was so heart breaking. I wouldn’t leave my house except to go to work and to church. I didn’t have any friends and I would spend my days off locked in my room listening to music or writing. This went on for a full month. One fine day, in my taxi I smiled. I smiled because I was suddenly happy of being there. Not that I stopped caring about the poor, but I just accepted that what I was there to do was the best I could do. To teach, to teach others to teach others so they would be more self-sustainable.

So with this realization and renewed happiness, I began to enjoy myself more, to see that even if they were poor they had dignity and that they were hardworking people who made ends meet no matter what. The most surprising discovery of all was that they were happy, happier than those who have it all in developed countries. How do I know this? They don’t know what stress is.