Community by Choice
Reaching the tiny Karanko village of Eastern Sierra Leone, on the border with Guinea, is almost impossibly difficult. A dried-out riverbed littered with huge boulders was the only way to reach the village, and many times over, my off-road 4x4 became trapped in the deep crevices, making progress frustratingly slow. But finally, the bushland opened up to reveal the small community living about as remote a life as I have ever witnessed.
My arrival in the village caused something of a commotion; it had been more than a year since the last outsider came to visit. All the villagers came to the central square to greet me, dancing with abandon, laughing with enthusiasm, and offering me a gift of Kola nuts, which hold a special place in their culture. The sense of belonging within the village was undeniable.
If ever you want to experience the value of community, travel to where reliance on each other is not a choice but a necessity. In this village, where life's challenges are unrelenting, community is everything. Every meal is shared, every triumph celebrated together, every burden lifted by many hands. These aren't bonds born of convenience but by necessity, as generations have shared both struggle and triumph.
How many of us can say we have truly experienced this level of togetherness? In our world of modern convenience, we have exchanged this interdependence for individualism. Technology may provide the illusion of human connection, but it rarely fosters the depth of relationships found in villages where the notion of mutual support is not a relic of the past.
Perhaps it is time for us all to reclaim our sense of community. Not out of necessity but out of choice—a deliberate effort to restore what modern life has eroded. Because in the end, no matter how far we advance, the true measure of a life well lived is not what we achieve alone but the strength of the connections we forge along the way.
