( Ed. note: Our intern, Katon Lunsford, has returned from her study abroad trip to Zimbabwe. She will chronicle her trip in detail in later editions, but in this first report, Lunsford explains the lasting impression left upon her by the people she came across.)

Exuberant joy. Community. Hope. Drive. Generosity.

Abundant generosity.

Those are the words I would select to describe the people I met.

During my time in Zimbabwe for my study abroad...I was humbled.

We are told, frequently, how much these people lack.

They live in a poverty so extreme there is no picture in America similar enough for me to paint a comparison.

These people have no running water, little access to education, no electricity, they live in mud huts, food is scarce and disease can run rampant because no health care is available.

Yet they do not lack, unlike what we are inclined to believe.

Everywhere we visited, the people were quick to prove the American’s perspective wrong.

No matter the amount they possessed, we were offered food, what very well may have been the last of theirs. But we were visitors, even ones who admittedly come from a place much less generous, with many more things.

Each school, which did not have enough desks for children to sit, or roofs to protect from the sun, or food to give to their students, gave us chickens or guinea for us to eat.

They did not accept our refusals.

We observed classes and while many students did homework on a dirt floor, our host, Dr. Trent, told us they cried and begged their families to go to school if they had to miss due to sickness.

At the end of our visit at a primary school, Chivakanenyama, the students filed out into the yard and sang for us. I did not understand the words or their dances, but I understood the joy.

They were alive another day, they were at school, so joy would be shown.

The students even taught us the dances, just as we watched them help a struggling 5-year-old stumbling over his feet.

Community was not just a word to them, but an action they lived out continuously.

Even to newcomers.

The whole week we uncovered new depths to their joy, community, hope, drive and generosity.

Each night was spent in a circle of some sort- around Dr. Trent’s mango tree, clumped up beside one another with the food in the middle, sitting circling a fire.

This was an act taken so consciously everywhere that I noticed.

It is easier to share stories in a circle, to provide support, or to let your friend beside you rest their head on your shoulder in a circle.

Long tables prohibit that as there is a great space between your neighbor and you. There is more room for disconnect.

Community happens in the circles, on the dirt, with people you adopt as your own.

Their morals and values were so deeply ingrained in their life, that small actions could go unnoticed if not looked at closely. Each of their actions were so authentic and genuine, but not fascinating, because this was merely a way of life for them.

On the last night, as I sat grouped together with my now close friends, I understood it was not them who lacked, but us.

We lack the gratitude for the small, simple things. The ability we have to walk five feet, instead of five miles, for water. Our water that is filtered and safe and not muddy from a river.

We lack community. We are quick to turn on one another, to sit chairs away from each other, to listen but not hear and to post our support, but fail to show up in real life.

We lack the joy that they exhibit daily. To express happiness at another day at life.

While there is no question they do not possess as many physical items as we do, they still are far better off than us.

We lack what makes humans human.

One of the last questions we were asked was, “How can there be hope if Africa has been this way for generations?”

The villagers, children and students are proof there is not only hope for a better country, but hope for humankind.

There are still generous people, joyful people, kind people and people who value the act of community.

I am grateful that I was able to experience a way of life so unlike mine, but qualities I want to mirror and exhibit, because they are an example of who we should strive to be- exuberantly joyful, full of community, unwaveringly hopeful, driven and generous to our last scrap of food.