Many African cosmological systems place nature not as backdrop but as protagonist — a living system with its own intelligence and moral weight, in relationship with human communities rather than subordinate to them. Ubuntu extends beyond the human: we are because everything is, and the 'everything' includes the forest, the river, the animals, the soil. Nasreddin would have recognized the philosophy without needing it translated: the village is only as wise as its relationship with what surrounds it.
Each step builds on the last.