Just a thought...

I ended once -by accident- in a slum in Accra, Ghana, 
and people were so friendly to show me and other volunteers around. 
They showed me their house.
I was so surprised to see that there was nothing inside. Only a bed. 
No table, or books, or decoration, no paint, no chairs, nothing...
I thought they were poor...
... and I wondered why they don't give these depressive walls some color, to bring sunshine in their life. So... I remarked that "there is not so much to see here..;"
They told us they are not like Westerns decorating their houses with as much as stuff they can buy, because Western people live inside, isolated from each other, 
but these people live outside, in a community. 
They do not need to decorate the inside. Whole their life happens outside.
Their fridge was outside, and was shared by all of the people in that "street" there, 
to keep the soft drinks cold.

Jamestown, Accra, Ghana 2009.
After reading about it, I proposed other volunteers to go there.
I expected to arrive on a idyllic beach, but it was a fisher's town/slum.