Safari Part II: The People

Hadza Bushmen (n.)
Definition:
1. An ethnic group in central Tanzania, living around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. Only 300-400 Hadza Bushmen remain. They are perhaps the last functioning hunter-gatherers in Africa.
2. The craziest thing I have ever witnessed in my life
3. This one’s for all you creationists (a.k.a. Brobergists)

This is a story about a few guys in goat skin vests, running through the forest with wooden bows, hunting for small game to eat for lunch, just like they’ve been doing for tens of thousands of years. This is also a story about a young lady (yep, that’s me) staring dumbstruck as she is invited to observe the daily rituals of a prehistoric culture. This is also a story about how a few days of immersion in African tribal culture can alter your perspective of the world and its inhabitants. Let’s get started.

Safari Cultural Day 1: Five fifteen dawns early, but we are told to be bright eyed if we want to find the Bushmen. And find them we must, because they are nomadic, usually residing in one area for only a few weeks, or until the food runs out. Fortunately we have a lead. Mimoa, a young man from a neighboring tribe, has contact with the Hadza Bushmen once a month when they trade honey for arrowheads at the market. Here he finds out their current location in the forests above Lake Eyasi.

We pick up Mimoa on the roadside and he points the Land Cruiser up steep jeep roads for about an hour. Eventually we pull over, climb out of the jeep and are told to start hiking. Half an hour later we spot a crude shelter made of sticks and brush from a young acacia tree. A few more minutes and we are in the Bushmen camp. The scene is best described in snapshots.
Three small African men in their forties, shirtless, squat around an early morning campfire, in the shadows of a giant acacia tree. They take huge puffs off a wooden pipe, eyes glazed over, laughing. Thirty meters to their right near another campfire, four small but strong men in their twenties with feathers in their hair, sit on a gazelle hide, sharpening arrowheads on a rock. Forty meters behind, two very small women draped in sarongs with two children (one malnourished), huddle around another fire, staring blankly at us, two make-shift huts in the background.
We shake hands with the Bushmen family and they welcome us in the Khoisan language of clicks and grunts. The group of young men gathers all of their hunting tools and run up the hillside and out of the camp without a backward glance. Mimoa urges us to follow while explaining that they are taking us on their morning hunt. They don’t seem to be willing to wait for us while their stomachs growl and so we scramble after them as we glance bewildered at each other. Within ten minutes of squeezing under bushes, leaping over rocks and chasing bird sounds, the Bushmen shoot their first bird, a dove in a tree, with the wooden bow and arrow. The eldest brother doubles back to show us his kill and, stoic as he is, I’m sure I catch a small grin of pride on his face. And then……. he’s off again.

For the next two hours, we struggle to keep up with the Bushmen as they continue to hunt. They hunt not only for birds and small game, but also for honey. This they find with the guidance of a bird that leads them to a specific tree that is pollinated by bees. Upon discovery, one of the Bushmen climbs into the honey tree and begins chopping madly with his hatchet. After ten minutes or more, the limb breaks off and out oozes the sweetest, lightest honey I have ever tasted. The Bushmen go wild with excitement, dipping their fingers in the honey, licking it off and elbowing the others for another taste. Besides small game and honey, wild berries and roots complete the Bushmen diet. They also occasionally hunt elephants, giraffe and other large game.

We finally arrive back to camp where the Hadza women are digging up tuber roots from the soil. The older men are still sitting in the same position around the fire, smoking their pipe. Within fifteen minutes the young men have skinned and cooked their game and are enjoying breakfast while the youngest strums a song on a homemade instrument.
After glimpsing for a few more moments through this remarkable window to the past, we say goodbye and hike back out to the car.

I am unable to explain how this experience affected me, other than to say this: there are people in this world who truly do not care for material goods, societal progress and western ideals, and although we can not understand them, we can respect them and protect their habitat. The Hadza Bushmen are some of the few left in the world, and they have resisted attempts by the government to settle them in villages. They are currently allowed to continue their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but their land, and therefore existence is being threatened by overexploitation.

Safari Cultural Day 2: As if our visit with the Bushmen isn’t rewarding enough, we are treated to visits with four more tribal African families during the Safari. We spend a morning with a Datoga family of two husbands, their six wives and seven children. They invite us inside their small dung huts (continuously repaired with fresh piles of cow dung) to participate in their morning rituals of grinding corn and making butter. Later they milk the cows, and we join in as they perform their traditional tribal “jumping” dance. As we leave, I noticed sadly, a young handsome man lying on the hot ground, covered by blankets trying to smile and wave goodbye as he shivers with fever from malaria.

Later that day we share an afternoon with a Hadzabe tribal family who demonstrate how they make jewelry over an outdoor wood fire, heated by pumping homemade leather billows. I walk away wearing a brass ring and bracelet hand made and decorated by my new friends.

Safari Cultural Day 3: Today we visit schoolchildren from the Masaii tribe. They sit crowded on wooden benches, flies covering their faces, and sing happily to us. We also spend time in the village of Mto Wa Mbu touring the rice fields and banana farms and enjoy a traditional African meal of delicious garlic and ginger marinated fish, cooked spinach, roasted eggplant and fresh fruit.

The safari went far beyond animal viewing. It acted as my introduction to the Dark Continent and her beautiful, welcoming people. Africa is so much more than the violence, sickness and poverty portrayed on the news. It is also home to thousands of peaceful tribal cultures who are positive, polite, proud and hardworking.