Rich Villages

I took my scooter to the northern ends of the Earth as I know it. The type of joy that filled me was the adventurous kind, where the only things that can stop you are your own personal decision to turn back, or the vast expanse of ocean. It’s fascinating to think about the people that live really out there. When I see these houses I think, now this is someone who has really “gotten away from it all.” But maybe it is closer to the truth to say that they never had to go anywhere. The world went the other way without them.

I think about impoverished villages – the kind with happy people and lots of kids, which distract from the tragedies happening in confidence - and see that there can be rich villages. I have never seen a rich village before. I have seen rich build walls between the village, I have seen rich move away to stand solitary of the village, and I have seen rich build a bigger better city. But looking at these houses I think things don’t have to change when you get more money, get happier or get healthier. Maybe even when you get more educated, but I’m not as sure about that one.

Nevertheless, there is something universal about going through a poor village or a rich town, a poor city block, or a rich neighborhood during dinner time, if you are lucky to catch that sliver in time and space. It is when nobody is out but you can smell the food that is bringing people together in their homes in that speck on a speck of Earth in the Universe, and you know it's the same everywhere, yet I feel privileged to be humming through these lives on my scooter, disappearing around the bend.