WRIT340 ramblings

As mentioned in my first post on The Wayfinders, Wade Davis shares the unsung wisdom of unsung heroes; “from warriors in the Sub Saharan plains, to matriarchal pillars to their communities and Polynesian wayfinders.” The first remote people we are introduced to is The San. Commonly called Bushmen, they are the members of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, with territories spanning some 84,000 square kilometres over Botswana, Namibia and southern Angola. Amazingly, Davis explains that they could be referred to as the oldest culture in the world; “ if the Irish and the Lakota, the Hawaiian and the Maya are the branches and limbs [of the human genealogic tree], the San are the trunk.” To me, this ancientness, the living antiquity of a people who, unlike many before, around, and after them, have disappeared, is mind boggling. Here, on our Earth, we have a community which has ridden the wave of time, unchanging and ever present, unbeknownst to the clueless Westerner...

For my second book, I chose Wade Davis’ The Wayfinders. I’ve always been in search of wisdom, which to me is knowledge relevant to anybody, anywhere, at any time. In other words, it is knowledge we can use in and for life, whether to improve our relationships, better ourselves, or find meaningful fulfilment. Not only would The Wayfinders offer me such wisdom, lessons I would be able to apply to and recognise in areas of my life, this wisdom had also gone unnoticed to Westerners like me. Davis shares what is essentially, to us, unsung wisdom from unsung heroes; from warriors in the Sub Saharan plains, to matriarchal pillars to their communities and Polynesian wayfinders. After all, until a few months ago, I’d lived in Europe my whole life, and eurocentric voices had always been the echoes in my chamber. This book gives me the opportunity to discover the ways and teachings of lives so remote, whether temporally, culturally, or geographically, that simply seeing a sign of their existence ...