In Search of a Story
I used to write about Karimojong warriors; about pitching tents near a space where you hoped the wild warthogs and hippos couldn’t hear you as well as you could hear them; about trying to not catch malaria. I used to write about people who had been child soldiers, or known them. --About women who had lost children to the war; about men who gave their lives to build orphanages for more forgotten children.
These were the normal day-to-day experiences I was blessed to be able to write about when I lived in Uganda. It was an all-too-real world, where I learned to be happy just being alive.
Road trips there meant sitting in the front of a ten-ton truck loaded with goods to haul over to refugee camps 4 days away. They meant no showers sometimes for a couple days or more. Travelling meant run-ins with dilapidated bridges and washed out roads—or no roads. And a trip to town meant you had to hope the hitch-hiking was lucky.
Nowadays, I write about five-star resorts, hotel-rooms, ocean breezes, and white sand beaches. I fly for free and am blessed to have my travel itinerary mapped out for me before I even know where I’m going. Gone are the days of danger when travelling, unless you are paranoid about airplanes. Gone are the little towns with no running water; the mud huts, the warthogs and hippos—at least the uncaged ones. And gone too, are the stories of warrior men in tribal gear and glaring stares who certainly aren’t there to pose for a tourist’s camera. But thankfully, since I have my journals and some photographs, I can still remember all those things.
Now, the stories aren’t quite in your face; at least not the ones I used to write about. I am still travelling, yes, but let’s admit it--travelling as a writer with a TV crew in a modern country is a lot less risky than backpacking as a missionary in the mountains of Africa, that faraway continent.
I am thankful for something though: That, because the stories of inspiration I used to write about are fewer now, it means you have to dig for them. I have to be standing at a very touristy site and try to see beyond the walls and picture-perfect places. I have to actually open my eyes to the deeper world around me, and know that there are stories just waiting to be told…if I take the time to see them.
Someone caught my eye on the last shoot we did. Set up outside of an old fort (the oldest one in the Philippines) in Cebu, I was doing a second take on my hosting spiel. The little old man selling wares beside me was, I thought, a good background for the frame. And he thought I was excellent market. He had a ukulele made of coconut that he insisted I buy. Despite my “No, thank-you’s”, he continued smiling, as if he had faith that I would give in at the last minute.
Maybe because he was so insistent, or maybe because a small crowd had now gathered around the crew to watch the shoot, I started to forget the lines I had written in my pocket-notebook. I’m hopeless with dates and figures, and I kept going blank when reciting what year it was that the infamous war was fought on the grounds I was standing. My notebook was in my hand, but I didn’t want to keep looking down to read it. So the little old man took my notebook from me, and, still smiling, held it out in front of my like a cue-card.
His helpfulness melted my nervousness in front of the camera…I think. Laughingly, I said in my spiel how nice it was that he was being helpful. And I hadn’t even bought anything yet. Maybe you think he was just being nice so that I would buy something, but I think it was something else.
It was the same thing I see in so many people on the outskirts of the city: it’s a simple kindness and thoughtfulness that even the poor have. It was a warm, genuine act of giving, and I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t doing it for anything in return.
After my spiel about all the wars fought here, and all the different races who had come to claim the Philippines as their own territory, I turned to him and asked, “But it’s peaceful now, yes? You’re happy now?”
“Yes,” he said, in perfect English, “I’m happy now.”
It was a wonder. He couldn’t have been very well off, sitting on his stool there in the heat of the sun, selling handicrafts. I don’t know what his life had been like, or if he even had a family. I didn’t even know how his business was going that day. But, like he said, he was happy. It must have been the simplicity of life. And it made me happy to see it, too.
I walked away afterwards with the crew, not having bought anything. We filmed the fort inside and did more spiels. But as I walked out, passing again the man with the ukulele, I remembered his smile and his kind gesture to help me when I stumbled on my words. It was something worth writing about, and something that gave me a little inspiration, too. It reminded me of the “Veggie Tales” quote I always repeat to my little brothers: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”
I bought the ukulele.
