Get the value of the current node

The xsl:value-of element and current() function should do the trick:

<xsl:value-of select="current()"/>

I don't know the exact structure of your template, but for instance the following one outputs the language names:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="/countries">
    <xsl:for-each select="country">
      <xsl:value-of select="current()"/>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>