The Weight of Plenty: What the West Calls Poverty, We Call Peace

Two men rise with the same sun. One owns almost nothing. One owns almost everything. Only one of them is rich.

Senegal — The Village

Ousmane does not need an alarm. The village wakes him — the low percussion of a pestle against a wooden mortar, the answering crow of a rooster, the first call to prayer dissolving into cool air that still smells of earth and last night's cook-fire. He rises from his mat in a single unhurried movement, the way a man rises who has nowhere to be at a precise number of minutes and nowhere to go that does not already belong to him.

The walk to the well takes twelve minutes. He knows because he has walked it ten thousand times, and yet he does not count. On this morning he greets Modou, the weaver's eldest son, who is carrying water on a shoulder-yoke and laughing about something his wife said at dawn. He greets the three sisters who have been collecting firewood since before sunrise, already arguing cheerfully about who will cook and who will refuse to. He greets the old man Babacar, who sits at the same stone every morning to watch the light change over the millet field, and who offers nothing more than a nod that contains, somehow, a complete philosophy.