Fiction REINCARNATION, Vol. 1

Curiosity about Outer Space

<10> Curiosity about Outer Space

In the middle of October, I left for Salaban as a member of the Hidden Valley Club. After arriving there, we did volunteer work according to plan in advance and watched the coffee cherries ripen. We sampled the ripe fruits and tasted the liquid. All the volunteers who participated in the tasting said that they were very satisfied with the taste and aroma. Confident, we rushed to order pulping machine, mobilized villagers to harvest ripe coffee cherries and got about 120 kilograms of raw beans. We will take the beans to Korea, make them into brewed coffee and hold a tasting event for the rest of the members.

Although we achieved our first real achievement on the farm we have created as part of our volunteer work, we are also under pressure to purchase coffee beans harvested in the farm. If the quality of the coffee beans drops or we fail to market, our coffee business can be in danger and the club can also face difficulties.

The villagers who have participated in coffee cultivation will be fully compensated by considering the international price of raw beans. This year's raw bean production is expected to be around three tons, but the yield will continue to rise every year. We plan to continue expanding the farm until the average household income from coffee farms reaches $ 5,000 a year. That amount of household income is a huge amount of money in rural Laos.

During the month of volunteering, I was sweating on a coffee farm during the day and talked with In-gyu a lot at night. Our conversation always begins with a business topic, but soon it turns into issues about UFOs and aliens. When we talk about how to develop the coffee beans business in bed, we often pass the time to sleep and watch the night sky and spend all night talking about stars and aliens.

In India, where we volunteered for the first time, we used to sleep all night watching stars shining through tents. We envied the star-filled sky, saying, 'It seems that all the stars that could not show off their light in our country have moved to remote villages without artificial lighting.'

A person's feelings and habits are bound to be controlled by the environment. For people who live in areas full of artificial lighting and noise pollution at night, moderate noise can be a sleeping aid. Because we were used to such an environment, a quiet night in a remote village disturbed our sound sleep.

Every day we imagined what the mysteries of life would be hidden among the countless stars and fell asleep at dawn. But even in such a lack of sleep, we didn't feel very tired. Perhaps because we have absorbed the vigor of life from the clean air, nutritious natural environment, and abundant stars.

The pristine natural environment seems to make the people of remote villages more relaxed. There are many countries in the world with very low income levels in monetary values but high happiness index for their people. In such countries, people live environmentally-friendly in rich primitive ecosystems. The level of income and the level of happiness people feel is never proportional. People in developing countries eat a day's meal with money equivalent to the price of gum in advanced countries. This is because they can get daily necessities in nature cheap and plentiful.

The income level of Lao people is similar to that of Korea's 40 years ago, but people are living at ease without complaints. They have no reason to accumulate a large fortune for living because they can easily find the materials of food, clothing and shelter in the forests surrounding the village. Hot weather is also a factor that distracts people from greed and avoids very hard work.

How about Koreans? They must study hard and get a steady job to avoid starvation. They must be willing to do anything that makes money. This challenging environment has driven people into fierce competition and made the people diligent and clever, but at the same time it has spread a stark personal relationship and materialism.