We talk about human tendencies as though they are universal.  It’s the explanation for so many toxic behaviors.  “It’s just human nature to want more and more.”  But in a different part of the world, a group of simple, hard-working, honest and loving people are teaching me otherwise.

I’ve considered this during countless moments here.  When we walked through the planting fields with Diana, we couldn’t help but wonder how the land is divided, how the village keeps track of what crops belong to whom, particularly in a place where so many people are starving.   Deena asked if people steal.  Diana explained that the land is divided up, that people know what land belongs to them and that stealing hardly ever happens.  In the rare cases that it does, the one who takes what’s not theirs must go to the chief and pay a fine.  So, as Diana said, it hardly ever happens.

How is it that people with so little are so pure of heart, so genuine and kind?  I constantly marvel at how picturesque this place is and at the same time, how absolutely heart wrenching it is to see starvation and lack of opportunity.  The people are generous yet poor, strikingly beautiful yet barefoot and covered in dirt.  There are so many intense contradictions encompassed in one being, one place, one lifestyle. And out of it all, I am perhaps most taken by the proof that human nature simply is not the absolute I thought it was.

When it rains, muddy water is used for washing clothing.

A beautiful place, with poverty that is indescribable.