While Americans tend to have an embarrassment of riches, tribal people have little. Are we happier?

Oh, Lord Won't You Buy Me...? By Elaine Masters As we approach the annual shopping season, trying to find the perfect gift for the person who has everything, I think of my experiences with tribal people in Thailand. On one trip, up a mountain in a bamboo village, we were given breakfast each morning by a cheerful former resident of Myanmar (Burma). We sat on the floor around a low woven-bamboo table, each with a bowl and a spoon and one common glass for hot tea. “I’m a rich man,” our host told us through an interpreter. “Last year, we fled the soldiers in Burma, my wife and daughter and I. We had nothing, only the clothes on our backs.” I looked around the room. No furniture. No electricity or electrical appliances. No car parked outside. What made this man rich? He continued. “Now, I have a water buffalo. My wife has two sarongs. We have a good house. We have a rice field and the crop was good this year.” For a host gift, I gave him six Tupperware glasses. Next day, we had an extra guest at breakfast: the mayor of the village. “Now that you have given me more glasses, I can really entertain,” he smiled. Another year, we encouraged three tribal boys to go to Bible school in Bangkok. A Canadian missionary who took them under his wing realized their wardrobes were woefully small. He offered to buy them spare shirts. “Oh no,” one boy said. “We already have shirts, one apiece.” When I take Americans on mission trips to the tribal areas, they are initially appalled at the poverty. Then, as they observe the villagers, they become puzzled. “They seem so happy,” the Americans say. “They don’t know they’re poor.” Indeed, many of the tribal people are content with what they have. They have more time than we do for their families and friends. They have no alarm clocks, waking when they are rested. It is only as electricity and television reach the villages that they realize, compared to the lifestyles they see on TV, that they are poor. Then they become discontented. This translates well into the Hawaiian setting. We, too, are greatly blessed. Few of us are truly in want. All of us have ocean waves and mountains and rainbows. Let’s stop looking at the material things other people have and do what the writer of Hebrews said: be content with what we have. This Thanksgiving, let’s truly give thanks. THE END This article appeared in the "Honolulu Advertiser" newspaper November 16, 2002.