Sickness? Ryan

November 23, 2013 - All Posts, 2013 Operation: Akata

There is a very strange bug going around among us here in India. It truly is a strange bug because it seems to be caught among people all around the world. It afflicts the rich, the poor, male and female; it leaves some dazed and others aching but it leaves most better than they have ever been in their entire lives. This “virus” that I speak of consists of two parts; love and happiness.
I quote Alek when I say I will never meet happier or nicer people than here in India. I have sat on the “porches” of houses made of mud with some tin placed on top and been given the very best food that the family can offer: some rice and fruit from the trees growing all around them. I can make these people’s annual wages and for some, more, in one week as a high school student. Yet, these people are happier and genuinely kinder than every person that I know who lives with the luxuries that man has created from this world.

This poison has rubbed off on every person here making our trip now very different than it was one week ago. There is hardly a moment when service isn’t being done in one form or another and smiles are abound.

If there is a cure for such an illness I hope that it is never found.

India is our school, the people are our teachers in the life lessons of kindness and happiness. May we forever remember what we learn and let nothing take this contagion from us.

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