I stepped into another world the other day – a place where there are no words for numbers higher than 3 or 4, a world with a simple god but no religion, with time but no calendars, a tribe with customs but no laws, a world of primitive peace, singing, dancing, storytelling and rational priorities. And it was so removed from the life I live (and my life is very simple compared to others’) that I was stopped in my mind, and then began to laugh.
Here is that world, and you can visit it here: http://bit.ly/2oMIqi
This is the Hazda tribe of Onwas (named for their elder) living in the bush in Tanzania. Leave some quiet time for a long read and longer think.
Some excerpts that made me laugh:
“I asked Ngaola if he’d waited a long time for me. “No,” he said, “Only a few days.”
“No Onwas I met…seemed prone to worry….Why grow food or rear animals when it’s being done for you, naturally, in the bush? When they want berries, they walk to a berry shrub. When they desire baobab fruit, they visit a baobab tree. Honey waits for them in wild hives. And they keep their meat in the biggest storehouse in the world –their land. All that’s required is a bit of stalking and a well-shot arrow.”
“The school-age kids I spoke with…had no interest in sitting in a classroom….It’s far better, they said, to be free and fed in the bush than destitute and hungry in the city.”
“A significant number of Hazda women who marry out of the group soon return, unwilling to accept bullying treatment…. Woe to the man who proves himself an incompetent hunter or treats his wife poorly.”
“Onwas was interested in a picture of my cat. ‘How does it taste?’ he asked.”
Please visit this other world, and let your reflections take you where they will. My thanks to author Michael Finkel for the journey (and the abuse to his body during the trip) and to National Geographic for sponsoring this adventure. We are the richer for it.
