Saturday, 31 May 2008

Paradise awakening !

A helicopter on a routine mission over the Amazon jungle made a remarkable discovery. A tribe of Indians living an undisturbed life near the Brazilian border with Peru.

This tribe has had no contact with the rest of the world, and yet their life seems idyllic. There are several communal huts for shelter and a well tended garden to supply food. The tribe are equipped with bows and arrows - and these weapons were aimed at the encroaching helicopter. It would have been seen as a threat, but the villagers could also have wondered where this large, noisy bird had it's nest - because captured and cooked it would provide a feast for the entire village.

Unfortunately - for these people the twenty-first century is about to overwhelm them.

Across the globe news and media organizations are planning how to get a reporter and a cameraman into that part of the jungle to record a " scoop " - the first interviews with a primitive people untouched by civilization.

The various churches will be grooming missionaries - keen to be the first to arrive and " save souls ". These primitive Indians will be urged to renounce their sinful ways - and embrace the modern world with it's more sinful ways of greed, avarice, war, poverty and repression.

The medical fraternity will be keen to explore whatever remedies these people have developed. Perhaps they have simple cures for ailments that have so far eluded the well funded laboratories of big pharmaceuticals.

The mining industry will be very interested in a patch of jungle that has so far not been exploited for it's mineral resources. Perhaps there is oil or gas beneath that surface - and certainly the timber industry will be interested in a new source of logging material.

For those Indian people the simple life will come to an end. They will encounter diseases from which their bodies have no immunity because of isolation - and they will be seduced by the marvels that the modern world has to offer.

A decade or so from now the world they knew will have been decimated - and perhaps the happiness that came with the simple life will have flown out of reach - just as that great, noisy bird brought unwanted change to their village.

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