The drummer by the waterfall

At the edge of a great waterfall stood a small village.

Travellers passed through from time to time, bringing stories from distant lands.

The villagers loved these stories.

They spoke of grand cities beyond the oceans. They admired foreign fashions, foreign music and foreign inventions. Every new traveller was welcomed and listened to carefully.

Among them lived a young drummer.

Each evening he sat beneath a wild fig tree and played his drum as the mist from the waterfall drifted through the valley.

The villagers barely noticed.

After all, he was only the son of a fisherman.

One day, a traveller passing through the village stopped to listen.

Then another.

And another.

Soon people were arriving from distant places carrying notebooks, cameras and curiosity.

They crossed mountains and rivers just to hear the drummer play.

The villagers were puzzled.

“What do they hear that we do not?” asked the village elder.

An old woman selling fruit beside the market smiled.

“They hear what we stopped listening to.”

The elder frowned.

The old woman pointed towards the waterfall.

“Every day we hear its thunder and think nothing of it. Yet travellers journey for weeks to see it.”

She then pointed towards the young man beneath the fig tree.

“And every evening we hear his drum and think nothing of it.”

Word of the drummer spread.

His rhythms travelled to distant cities.

His songs crossed oceans.

One season, the village square became too small to hold all the visitors.

The elder watched as strangers danced to a rhythm born beside their own waterfall.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

The old woman laughed.

“It did not happen overnight.”

“What do you mean?”

“The drum was always special.”

She looked around the village.

“The miracle is not that the world discovered it.”

She paused.

“The miracle is that we finally did.”