The other day I visited a little island called Jambeli, it’s located in the South west part of Ecuador. To get to this island, I took a boat and right away I noticed everyone on the boat was laughing, thanks to a middle aged man. He knew many people who work on the boat and the locals who were heading back to the island. They were calling him lawyer, but I thought it was just a joke.
It was the last boat for the day which meant the tourists who came along had to spend the night on the island. It was nice, warm and humid but not much to do especially when arriving at night. It was easy to find a hostel; the local tourists didn’t flood the island because there was a football match between the top two teams in Ecuador, so most people spend the time watching the TV.
Next morning, a very delicious traditional breakfast made of eggs and plantain next to the beach, was a good start. Then the owner of the hostel started to walk around to show us the little island. The island is very primitive, it has lots of restaurants, hostels and few bars. I saw few houses and buildings that were washed away by the current, it’s probably as a cause of rising of seawater. While most of the houses are basic, there’s this huge house owned by a Swiss couple, who come to spend some time of the year, it makes you wonder why all this waste of building an extravagant house. I then saw the lawyer outside his modest room or shack, he was washing some dishes outside because he doesn’t have a kitchen. It was then explained to me that this man is an actual lawyer who decided to leave everything and just come to live on the island, everyone on the island likes him. It does show how happy he is because of how he projects his happiness on others. I kept thinking about him all the way even as I write this post. I also thought about some of the houses that probably cannot be called houses but more like shacks, but I could hear the people laughing and singing along the music that’s playing on the radio.
It brought some flashbacks from the time when I was in Canada, when during thanksgiving there were long lines of shoppers who want to get deals on buying more things. And from the time I started my trip I am always thinking why these people here and in some of the countries I visited in other countries, who seem to be happy although they are not rich in the material sense, yet it’s easy to see that they’re the true rich and it shows because they’re happy. It’s also easy to see with all the things going on, people in many of the big cities and rich societies have indulge themselves in acquiring material things and forgot important thing. We forgot to live and we keep ourselves worried about the future, afraid we may not have enough things, enough money to live tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes as we planned or as we thought.
