Laughter in the face of disaster

I was working in a village today and interviewed a 69 year old woman who has lost her husband and all three of her adult children within the last 5 years. All she is left with are 3 orphaned grandchildren and a drafty, cold cinderblock house on the side of a hill. The house has been broken into 4 times over the past 2 years and all of her cattle were stolen. Her vulnerability made her a ripe target for local hoodlums who need to make some quick cash (unemployment here is a major problem and young men either turn to selling marijuana or theft to bring in money). This story is like so many others that I have encountered in rural Lesotho. Almost every house that I've been in has some tragic story, not to mention several orphans living under its roof. You would think that the amount of tragedy and death the Basotho face on a daily basis would break them. How can a body/soul take that much grief? But at the end of the day the survivors pick themselves up, go on with their lives, and have laughter as their tool of survival. My father once said to me that sometimes life can be so painful that if you didn't laugh all you would do is cry all the time, and life is too short to waste crying! The woman I interviewed today at one point almost broke down in front of me but after two minutes we found ourselves laughing at the antics of her 5 year old granddaughter. She and so many other older bo 'me (married or widowed women) have taught me a valuable lesson: life is short, sweet, and often painful but it's the moments of shared laughter that keep us sane.