A few weeks ago I got an electronic mail message (e-mail) from a Zambian student who had discovered my Internet Tutor Web site. Over the past several months I have also received e-mail from Ireland, Australia, Germany, Canada and many other countries, but the Zambian e-mail made me stop and think about the exposure to cultural diversity that is created by the Internet.

While most Internet users may not regularly received e-mail from around the globe, many do get involved with Internet chat and, I would venture to say, that most people have visited Web sites that are foreign to American soil whether they knew it or not.

On the World Wide Web you can study the !Kung San, literally, "Bush People" who live off the arid land in isolated parts of Angola, Namibia and Botswana. Want to know why these nomadic hunter-gathers are called !Kung San with an exclamation mark? "The exclamation mark indicates that the language employs clicks in pronunciation" that can't be written.

You can also study Mauritians. These are not aliens from the planet Mars, but rather the former Australian colonists from Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean to the east of Madagascar. Learn about the famous extinct Dodo bird that was once exclusively indigenous to the island or the colorful and sensual Sega dance that originated as the passionate black Shega dance of the island slaves.

These and many other stories can be found on the Internet linked from places like Yahoo!'s Society and Culture page. From Acadian to Welch, most of the major cultures and many less-known ones can be found here.

W3 Servers is a listing of national information servers. These are the official or semi-official servers from each country that tell about their country and have links to sites related to it. Try W3 Servers when you want to more the country.

Probably the single best resource for information about countries comes from the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA World Factbook tells a huge amount of information on every country in the World as collected by the CIA.

As an example, here is a very small sampling of what I found out about Ecuador. The total area of the country is 283,560 sq. km, and has a population of 11,466,291 (July 1996 est.). There are 2.89 children born per woman, 55% are mestizo (mixed Indian and Spanish) and 95% are Roman Catholic. Ecuador exports $4 billion (f.o.b., 1994) with chief commodities being petroleum (39%) and bananas (17%). There is a total of 43,709 km of highways and, as of a 1992 estimate, there are 940,000 televisions. In 1995, the country spent about $386 million in defense expenditures, representing 2.1% of GDP.

While at the CIA World Factbook, I also viewed a map of the country and the official flag.

If you want to chat about cultures, look to Yahoo! Net Events: Cultures. From here you can link to chat sites as diverse as Armenian, Kababayan, Persian, Samoan and Y'all (Southern speak).

The Web of Culture "seeks to educate and entertain you on the topic of cross-cultural communications" and does a good job reaching its goals.

This award-winning Web site has quite a few topics listed. Some sections (like Resumes) are sparsely filled, but some, like Body Language and Gestures, are a real treat.

I have long believed that the Internet is the one tool that can help the citizens of the planet understand each other and start seeing each other as real people living similar lives, but in different ways.

Exploring the cultures of world via the Internet is one step toward tolerance, and acceptance of all people, regardless of race, religion or national heritage.