The Journey of the World" in English

In a quiet coastal village where the waves kissed the shores and the hills echoed with songs of old, a young woman named Elina dreamed of the world beyond the horizon. She was no ordinary dreamer—Elina had a gift for languages. From an early age, she could mimic accents, learn grammar by ear, and memorize phrases from books her parents brought from their travels. Her mother was a historian and her father a translator, both passionate about the preservation of world cultures.

Elina's home was filled with maps, globes, music from around the world, and shelves lined with books in different scripts—Arabic, Hindi, Cyrillic, Chinese, and more. At age twelve, she had already learned five languages fluently. But it wasn't the words alone that fascinated her—it was the people, the rituals, the way cultures shaped the heart.

One evening, sitting by the fire, Elina declared her dream: “I want to travel the world—not just as a tourist, but as a learner, a witness. I want to collect stories, voices, and traditions. I want to create a book that shows how different we are, yet how deeply connected we remain.”

Her parents smiled. “Then call it La Vojaĝo de la Mondo—the journey of the world,” her father said in Esperanto, the international language they often spoke at home.

At age twenty-one, after studying anthropology and linguistics at university, Elina packed her bags with little more than notebooks, a camera, and an open heart. She began her journey in Morocco, where the sun painted the city walls golden and markets were alive with color and scent. She lived with a Berber family in the Atlas Mountains, learning Amazigh words and helping tend to goats. Elders shared stories around the fire, tales of stars and spirits, which Elina wrote down in careful detail.

From there, she traveled to Turkey, where East met West. She wandered the ancient streets of Istanbul, listening to the call to prayer echo beside church bells. In a small Anatolian village, she learned to make bread with elderly women who taught her Turkish proverbs like "Bir elin nesi var, iki elin sesi var", meaning “One hand has no sound, but two hands together make noise.” Elina wrote in her journal: “Cooperation creates harmony. Every culture seems to know this.”

Her next stop was India. She arrived during Diwali, the festival of lights. In Varanasi, she joined a family that lit hundreds of oil lamps and floated them on the Ganges River. She learned Hindi phrases, watched dancers move like poetry, and listened to the sitar echo through the night. One woman told her, “Every lamp is a soul. Some burn bright, some flicker—but all are part of the same light.”

In China, she stayed with a calligrapher in Xi’an, who taught her how brushstrokes carried meaning beyond words. They would sit in silence for hours, ink flowing across rice paper. Elina discovered the concept of guanxi, or human connection, which influenced every interaction. “Respect is a thread in every human fabric,” she wrote.

Months passed. In Kenya, she danced with the Maasai under a blood-orange sunset and recorded their songs, each a piece of oral history. In Brazil, she was swept up in the rhythm of samba and learned Portuguese lullabies from a grandmother who had raised eight children alone. In Norway, she joined reindeer herders in the north and heard Sámi joik singing—a haunting melody meant to honor the land and its spirits.

As Elina’s journey continued, so did her understanding of humanity. In each place, she saw the differences: foods, beliefs, ceremonies, values. But beneath them all was a shared longing—to belong, to be seen, to leave something meaningful behind.

Still, not every moment was beautiful. In parts of the world, she encountered suspicion, even hostility. There were border checkpoints where she was questioned for hours, villages that rejected outsiders, and nights she spent alone in the cold. In Eastern Europe, lost and hungry in a forested region where no one spoke her language, she knocked on the door of a small wooden cottage. An elderly woman answered, wary and silent.

Elina, unable to explain her situation, simply smiled and bowed her head. She held her hands together, then mimed eating. The woman watched her for a long moment before finally stepping aside. That night, over a bowl of stew and herbal tea, they exchanged stories not with words, but with eyes, laughter, and music. The woman played a flute, and Elina sang a lullaby she had learned in Morocco. They didn’t speak the same language, but they communicated in kindness.

Years later, Elina returned home. Her journal had become a treasure trove, nearly a thousand pages of songs, idioms, maps, drawings, and personal reflections. Her clothes were patched with threads from many lands, and her heart was full of names and faces.

In the village square, she hosted a gathering. People of all ages came, curious to hear about her travels. She spoke in Esperanto first, then switched between languages, each representing a part of her journey. She showed pictures, told tales, and cooked food from five continents.

At the end, she said, “The world is large, but the heart of humanity is one. If we learn each other's stories, we can never again be strangers.”

The people cheered. Her story became a movement. Schools introduced cultural storytelling days. Musicians collaborated across borders. A local publisher helped her print her journal as a book, titled La Vojaĝo de la Mondo: Unuiĝo tra Diversaj Kulturoj.

And so, her journey lived on—not only in pages, but in every reader who dared to cross borders, learn a new language, or open their door to a stranger.