I'm at an internet cafe in David. David is my home away from home away from home. I´m still thinking about development and happiness. The Ngabes in my community are happy. Sure they complain that they don't have stuff, that they don't have money, that things would be so much better if they were rich, that the grass truly is greener in the US. I'm not so sure. These people are happy.
We measure success and wealth by money and how much stuff you have. Ngabes measure wealth with the same terms. But if you measure wealth by happiness, we may be a poorer nation. I don't know. What I do know is that there is something strangely gratifying in spending the majority of your day carrying out the simple tasks of cooking, cleaning, working in the finca, or working on bringing water to the community. And while days don't hold a lot of excitement in the sense of constant stimulus, they don't ever seem boring. And so you find yourself making a bigger deal about the smaller things. Today was the day that so and so returned from harvesting coffee for 5 months. Yesterday was the day I went searching for creollo so that I can plant hardwood trees while I´m in the community.
There are no machines to make things go faster. There are no schedules for projects and so there is no stress from deadlines. And while it can be frustrating at times, it puts things in perspective. Maybe they got it right. All of our tools, everything that we have to make our lives easier, also adds a small amount of stress, stress about the cost of that item, stress about time, stress from a world that continues to speed up.
But alas, they want the same images that we fall victim to. Who wouldn´t want that idea of happiness? The perfect family with all their stuff, their easy living, the comfort in having all those things. How do I explain to a Ngabe that there are things that they have that most Americans do not? How do I explain their wealth? I've tried. I usually get blank stares. I can imagine the internal dialogue. "I knew Oti had bad Spanish, but I didn´t think it was that bad. I can't understand anything he's saying. I think he just said he thought I was wealthy."
I certainly don't want to discount everything that we do have. There's a part of me that can't wait to go back to the carefree house parties, the good food and wine, the internet, the bike rides, the general ease of navigating through life. But I know there will be times when I look back with a certain envy and nostalgia for the way of life here.
