Imagine being in a sun-baked rural village of around 5,000 people, where many residents barely have enough to eat. It's the type of hamlet where drought, disease and disasters typically occur. You are served a simple meal of yams inside a dilapidated hut by your guest, who can only find work in the city five hours away from the village. In the same city, you frequently meet street hawkers who make less than $3 a day. On Sunday, your guest takes you to church where you meet a person who had been imprisoned for a long time. All around you are people who worry about the next meal, a good job, and a promising future for their kids.
Do you think these people are happy? Believe it or not, many of them say they are. And these people happen to live in Nigeria in Africa, which often portrayed by the international media as a setting for poverty, famine, political tumult and racial strife. A 1999-2001 inter-university study made by the World Values Survey and reported in the New Scientist magazine, reveals that Nigerians are the happiest people in the world.
The survey, which has studied happiness patterns and trends for more than half a century, also reported that Mexico, Venezuela, and El Salvador rank next in the number of happiest people.