SAVE THE FOREST, SAVE THE JARAWA TRIBE
At first glance this looks like a wonderful vacation destination, but there is so much more to unfold deep in the rainforest of the Andaman Islands, located on the coast of India. The image on the left is what attracts many tourists, a true dream and the image on the right shows the harsh reality and what these tourists cause. It is the main road that leads through the rainforest and hidden behind the heaps of trees is the Jarawa tribe. They consist of about 400 very self sufficient tribal people, who have been around for more than 55,000 years and had been living in peace until 1999. This was when tourists started visiting these beautiful islands, who didn't only bring diseases, which could have wiped out the total population, but they started invading the forests and becoming a very large threat for the Jarawa tribe.
As mentioned before the Jarawa people are self sufficient and they actually have all they need right in the foreset and are doing just fine. As seen by the images above, they are very peaceful and happy people, well at least before the tourist invasion occured. And now you might be sitting her wondering why you should even care about this random tribe in the middle of the Indian Ocean... It's not your problem right? Well think again, because tribal people have a brilliant understanding of survival and diseases, which we haven't even heard about. They can cure illnesses, which we are spending years and years of research to try and cure. All this valuable knowledge and useful skills would be thrown out of the window if the Jarawa tribe goes instinct. Is that really what you want? If not then read on about the threats they face and what you can do to help.