Whether you go to the outback in Australia or visit many parts of Africa or South America, we see countries primitive in comparison to our own. They wear decorative traditional clothes and sometimes head-dresses. They seem to have a gift for making and blending materials. They wear multi-coloured beads to decorate themselves and have a natural talent for combining fabrics. They often show off that ‘Kodak’ smile to strangers.

Take the Massai People.  How tall and elegant they stand in spite of their third world existence.  They live mainly in East Africa, Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania.  They graze cattle, goats and sheep on sometimes very arid land until the rainy season.  Their houses are made, by the women, of mud, sticks, grass, cow dung and cow’s urine, usually in a circular shape.   The women collect water, milk the cattle or goats, and cook. The men, or warriors, take care of security, making sure wild animals don’t break through fences and kill their livestock.

In many of the more primitive regions of the world, imposed government and foreign concepts of development have taken away these peoples natural way of surviving, and in some cases, impoverishing them.

Left to their own devices, they don’t suffer from diseases that afflict Western Countries. Their lives are basic.  They enjoy ceremonial occasions. They sing. They dance.  They celebrate marriages in their own traditional way, and the birth of a child.  They mourn the death of a loved one.  Their belief in something greater than themselves sustains them.

We’re not so different after all.