Life Insurance Under Your Belt
See that shiny belt? That’s a primitive form of life insurance! Effective? Doubt it
That’s one of the great things of traveling, seeing all the “strange” traditions people have - from forcing women to wear different color clothes if they’re married or not, stretching their necks, or wearing belts to protect them from death - and just imagine what they must think of us, wearing the clothes we wear and carrying around a camera. Maybe they think it’s a magic omen we use for protection
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Someone should consider importing these special belts!
Do they have to wear that to sleep too?
We didn’t stay long enough to find out
Hi Pedro & Grace -
I love the idea behind Worldiki.tv and think you guys are really on to something here that could be very, very big. But to be absolutely honest, I don’t see that happening if you continue to post the way you’ve been doing. Image-wise, I think you’re failing to really grasp the reader. What’s worse, several of your posts are actually (unintentionally I’m sure) fairly offensive to the people and cultures you’re visiting. On multiple occasions I’ve read posts where you off-handedly mock the beliefs of people you’ve met, call them “primitive” or “bizarre”, laugh at their accents, etc.
Again, I have no doubt this is unintentional - I just want to point this out to you because I really would love to see Worldiki succeed. I myself am a web entrepreneur and understand the difficulties involved in making a smashing new site. I’m also a world-traveler and an anthropologist by training, so admittedly I may be more sensitive to these issues than the general public. But my gut feeling, strictly speaking as a somewhat successful web-entrepreneur, is that the tone of your posts really won’t attract many repeat visitors. The crowd you want to grab is the world-travelling set (and the wannabe world travelers), and on the whole, we tend to be quite sensitive to issues relating to respect for the peoples and cultures we visit.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. Best of luck with your journeys!
Hi Stephen,
Thank you for your feedback! I understand where you’re coming from and in no way would we want to disrespect people.
Calling something “bizarre” or “primitive” is not necessarily derogatory, especially since we always mention it in comparison with what the majority of people in “modern” society would think.
However, as an anthropologist I’m sure you are well aware that many cultures have, or have had values or traditions which cause harm, in some cases to particular segments in their group, such as women being forced to wear copper rings to extend their neck.
As much as we respect the people, we can in no way say we agree with any practice which discriminates or causes harm regardless of cultural sensitivities.
Not too far back, it was culturally ok for people to have slaves and perform human sacrifices. If one were to call that cruel, or primitive, would that be insensitive to their culture? Or is that what allowed humanity to improve through time, by constantly questioning what we and others believe to be correct?
We are always respectful to the people we meet, but we are also honest about how we view things we see, and we hope our readers will see it that way.
Oh and by the way, we didn’t laugh at anyone’s accent
we made one up just for fun. After all, humor is vital when traveling, if not it can get a bit stressful 
Pedro & Grace
Cheers for your fast reply.
I agree humor is essential when traveling, and while I don’t quite agree with your philosophy that humor is a tool to improve other cultures (or even that other cultures need “improving”), I also understand that this is your site and that your voices, opinions and values are what will be displayed here - not mine.
Best of luck with everything. Even despite my criticisms I will still pop over from time to time to see how you’re getting on. Perhaps one day I may try a Worldiki-tour of my own.
(By the way I hadn’t expected my comment to be published - I only posted it here because your contact form wouldn’t allow me to send it through for some reason…)
Lighten up, pedro and grace are just being honest.
Keep up your humor guys, if I’d wanted something serious, I’d be better off watching national geographic!
Hello Pedro and Grace, just wanna say I enjoy coming to your site. You say it like it is and do a good job at keeping it real.