No one explains this to you during your first visit – the place where you are going is never the best thing. The people are. The foreigner in the train that changes your worldview. The genie who feeds you, and you have not yet been acquainted by name. The co-passenger who makes a new way of telling your tale. The faces remain after years of travelling across countries and cultures. The following are the ones that never left.
The Monk in Myanmar
In Bagan, where more than two thousand primitive Buddhist temples were located, a young monk of the Shwezigon Pagoda sat at a tea stand by the road, sharing lahpet fermented tea leaf salad, without even uttering a syllable. Two hours passed. No language was needed. True varnish humanity, it has never known the need of a translator.
The Fisherman in Portugal
At Nazare, a small town with a popular surfing scene, where the largest waves in the world are documented, 86 feet in 2020, an elderly fisherman still used to take his boat out to fish every day before 5 am. He had been operating the same Atlantic waters since the year 1963. When Humbert inquired whether he ever thought of quitting, he pointed towards the ocean and said nothing.
The Colombian Street Artist
A young artist by the name of El Pez, who is a local in Cartagena, painted six a six-story long murals, in the neighborhood of Getsemani, the formerly dangerous area, but today, a worldwide-known hub of street art. He painted and sprayed all night to work during the early mornings when no one was around, he consumed more than forty spray cans in each piece, and now he had to work in more than thirty countries each year and attract photographers.
The Grandmother in Japan
Fumiko is a 78-year-old lady residing in Kyoto, in the Gion district, where the instance of machiya townhouses has been best preserved. Since 1981, Fumiko has been running the same family guesthouse. She prepared a classic kaiseki breakfast, which consisted of twelve courses daily. She never enquired on destination of guests. And only whether they had supped before they,
The Nomad in Mongolia
A 67-year-old horse-drawn herder called Gantulga in the Ovorkhangai Province of Mongolia had used horses to traverse the steppe in 40 years, making seasonal migration tracks of more than 300 miles a year. He invited a stranger into his ger, gave him airag fermented mare milk, and did not want anything back. The Mongolian hospitality is the cultural law that is constitutionally guaranteed.
The Refugee Guide in Jordan
A 29-year-old Syrian, known as Tariq (who arrived in Jordan in 2019), a 29-year-old had learned Arabic, English, French, and Japanese, becoming a licensed guide in Petra, the protected city (another example of this phenomenon is the area of Petra). Now he makes three times what Jordan includes in his average salary, and all this is completely through his own accumulated knowledge.
The Surfer in Morocco
A former London financial analyst by the name Claire, who has now left behind a six-figure salary to live in Taghazout, a village of around 6,000 people on the Atlantic coast of Morocco that has been transformed into one of the world’s best surf spots, in 2017. She has formalized a school called Surf Berbere, where she gets free weekend lessons with over 40 children in her village.
The Bookseller in Istanbul
A book seller of over 71 years old, Mehmet, had a stall in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, the oldest covered market in the world (founded in 1461 with more than 4000 shops) since 1986. He was also a specialist in Ottoman-era manuscripts and was able to date a book within ten years by just looking at the binding and the composition of the ink.
The Doctor in Rural India
This is the case of Dr. Priya Nair, who gave up a posting in a Mumbai hospital and went to serve 400 residents in a village called Mustekar in Barmer district, Rajasthan, one of the most underserved in the whole of India, with only 0.6 doctors per 1,000 population. She had delivered more than 800 babies and trained 12 locals as community health workers eleven years later.
The Old Man in Cuba
The 94-year old man Esteban, was sitting on his same doorstep in the Centro Habana neighborhood of Havana every night at sundown in a row of buildings that dated back to the 1800s and had not changed much since the time the revolution happened in 1959. He had survived under the Batista regimes, the revolution, the Special Period, and five American regimes. The only thing he told me is that you should not mistake surviving with living.
