'Worlds Apart' hits home

LOS ANGELES -- The Russell family likes comfort: their three-bedroom, three-bathroom suburban home in Birmingham, Ala.; a packed refrigerator with an automatic ice machine; central air conditioning, and, when mom doesn't feel like cooking, fast food restaurants.\nSo why would they trade all these middle-class amenities for a sweltering mud hut in Lungu, Ghana, with no electricity, no plumbing, and no golden arches for thousands of miles?\n"It just sounded like it would be a blast," said Lynne Russell, who, with husband Scott and their two children, signed up for one of the cross-cultural adventures on the National Geographic Channel's "Worlds Apart." The 13-episode series premieres 8 p.m. EDT Monday.\nEach week, one American family spends 10 days with a local household in a remote village, participating in its customs, rituals and livelihoods.\n"We thought, wouldn't it be amusing if we took a whole family and all of a sudden their neighborhood was totally different," said Glenda Hersh, the series' co-executive producer.\nAdded partner Steven Weinstock: "You take away some of the basic things we're familiar with, and project them into an environment that is culturally distinct and interesting, you're going to put them through both a psychological and emotional journey that's going to give them an appreciation of what really matters and what's important."\nLynne Russell said she jumped at the chance for what seemed the vacation of a lifetime, but acknowledged "I had no idea of what we would be going into. Even what I imagined was not exactly what we encountered." The Russells' journey to northwestern Ghana is featured in the series' premiere.\nFor the first few days, the Russells had to adjust to the culture shock of living in a primitive village with extreme poverty, unappetizing food, rudimentary toilet facilities, horrendous smells and harsh terrain.\n"The pen for the livestock -- the cows, the goats, the chickens, and all of that was about 15 feet from our room," recalled Scott Russell, a financial planner. "Where they cooked was no more than three or four feet from the livestock. It all hit me, it was really kind of a shock."\n"Essentially these families are cultural explorers," said Andrew Wilk, executive vice president of programming and production of the Washington D.C.-based National Geographic Channel.