STORY 2. ABOUT GREED
Do you know how to catch the monkey? In their habitat, a heavy box with holes in it is placed on the ground. The hunters pour roasted nuts into the box as bait. The monkey hides in the foliage and watches the commotion, the smell of the roasted nuts teasing him. When the people leave, she jumps from the tree and runs curiously towards the box.
She sticks her paw into the hole and grabs a handful of nuts, but cannot get her fist out. The monkey sticks his other paw in another hole… and the whole thing repeats itself.
The monkey cannot understand a simple thing: just open your fist, leave the nuts and you are free! Greed has overtaken its consciousness! And so the stupid creature is trapped, a victim of its greed.
In our village, you can catch snapper, barracuda, and even a big grouper by fishing from the shore. But these fish feed on rubbish from the seabed. And the tastiest fish live offshore, on the coral reef. This is where our fishermen take their boats. When they return in the late afternoon, they sell their catch to the locals. They cut off the fillet and throw the rest, including the head, into the water. Huge seabirds such as frigates and pelicans circle the area and dive in for their prey. The spectacle attracts crowds of locals and tourists.
So the locals buy a fillet of tuna, mackerel, snapper, dorado, and whatever else has been caught from the fishermen. But why throw the head away? It makes an excellent soup. Maybe they throw their heads away because there are so many fish here.
Once the fisherman was cutting the fillet of a huge yellowfin snapper and I asked him for a fish head, which he was about to throw into the water, as he always does.
‘You can have it,’ he nodded at me.
A few days later I approached him again with the same request. This time he wanted 5 local dollars for a fish head. That was fine with me, it’s two and a half US dollars. I gave him five dollars and brought him a bottle of beer and one of my cigars as a courtesy. I used to be a fisherman myself and simply wanted to thank the man for his hard work. As it turned out, I had made a rash mistake and once again fallen into the trap of the local mentality.
The third time I asked him to sell me a fish head and asked him the price.
‘Well… I don’t know…’ he continued to hack the fish with a knife.
I was confused by his answer. He seemed to be waiting for more money.
After I decided to buy fish from other, less greedy fishermen, the man stopped greeting me.
‘Damn you, stranger,’ I heard him say once behind my back. He was angry because he had lost me as a customer. But did he realize that he was cheating himself by turning me away with his greed..?
Nowadays, no fisherman throws away fish heads, there is a demand for them. And frigates and pelicans are left with guts and tails.
With our generosity we allow others to catch us in trivial things. And how are we different from that monkey?
*****
STORY 3. THREE PIGLETS.
My friend Joe is originally from Texas. One day he moved further south to enjoy life on the sunny Caribbean coast. That was Belize. One day, Joe decided to fatten up a piglet for a Christmas party. But he was renting an apartment, so there was no way he could carry out his idea. So he made a deal with a local farmer. Joe bought three piglets and gave the farmer two piglets for free on the condition that he would fatten the third piglet for Joe for free. The deal went through and the farmer took the piglets.
But after a few days, he asked Joe for money for feed.
Reluctantly, Joe gave him some money and explained the terms of the deal again. The farmer nodded obediently, but a few days later it happened again.
This went on for several months until desperate Joe suggested that the farmer can take all three piglets and leave him alone.
The farmer scratched the back of his head and said:
‘I’d rather you paid me the money for your piglet…’.
Hearing such insolence, Joe was speechless.
And the peasant continued:
‘Well, if you won’t buy your pig back, then buy my child!‘
‘What the hell is a child?” giggled Joe.
‘My daughter’s child,’ the farmer shouted, waving his hands,
‘She is seventeen years old and you can marry her, but I want the money for her child!’
Joe jumped into his car and disappeared into the clouds of road dust. I think he became a vegetarian after that pig story.
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