Go Do Good!

What Kids from a Different Culture Can Teach You About LOVE

A friend of mine wrote an excellent book of short stories known as the “Good Dishes,” which I highly recommend. The stories were not only interesting but poignant and heartfelt. A story that wasn’t in the book that she shared with me touched me even more because it was about Africa, a continent I’ve explored and even better dealt with children from the Ubuntu tribe.

Ubuntu means in their language, “I am because we are.”

As the story goes, an anthropologist visiting the area decided to play a game with some of the children. He placed a large basket of delicious fruit at the base of a tree trunk and announced that whoever reached the basket first would get to keep it all for themself.

When he gave them the start signal to begin the race, he was surprised that they walked together, holding hands until they reached the tree and shared the fruit! When he asked them, “WHY? When every one of you could get the basket for you and you alone!” They answered with classic Ubuntu astonishment: “How can one of us be happy while the rest are miserable?”

Those children know how to GO DO GOOD and definitely know the secret of happiness that some civilized societies have lost and yet thinking they have transcended Ubuntu and their mantra, “I am because we are.”

Little do they know how much they have to learn from the mouths of babes who know how to LOVE.

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