S1 • E1
Ray spends time learning, by experience, about what life is like in a band of the Johansi, a tribe of Bushmen in eastern Namibia (Southwest Africa). Their culture is based on perfect knowledge of, and harmony with, nature in the inhospitable Namib desert; virtually unchanged over thousands of generations. Family life flow over in the small, close community, political structures or sedentary enterprise are unknown. It's about survival and simple pleasures in life, using ingenuous tricks and artisan techniques to find water and food, and manufacture all they need where anyone else would die from ignorance without imports and modern technology.
S1 • E2
S1 • E3
Ray is dropped by helicopter on a nameless location, roughly 63N 96E, in the vast wasteland, to experience the nomadic way of life of Sasha's 'brigade' (tribal unit) of the native Ivenk (Ewenk) people. These people herd reindeer in the taiga, a calorie-poor semi-barren forest gripped by permafrost. He learns general ancient artisan-techniques like building fences by lightly assembling fresh-cut branches, slaughtering and processing reindeer, lasso-throwing and knot-tying, packing for their monthly camp-moving. Ray also admires specialist work, like sowing baskets from birch bark, tailor-boot-and-sock-making from fur and fishing with nets and rafts in icy water not fit to swim in.
S1 • E4
Ray visits Savii, one of the rather isolated islands of Western Samoa, where the traditional Polynesian culture is preserved rather well. The staple food is fish, caught using various ingenious ways, but carefully avoiding over-fishing. Other traditional skills include fire-making, cooking and making and sailing lightweight canoes (from a single tree, using ropes instead of nails). They also build open 'fale' houses, which demonstrate their superior resistance in cyclone storms and that traditional know-how remains, which is proudly preserved and transferred from fathers to sons, under supervision of the strong chieftain system in a highly social system of solidarity.
S1 • E5
S1 • E6
Self - Presenter