Local Tribes - Tanzania

Hadzabe Tribe

The Hadzabe are hunter/gatherers, and semi-nomadic, following game and the seasons.  These folks were living in a hollowed out baobab tree, and other makeshift stick huts.  Honey is a main part of the Hadzabe diet... this tree may have originally been hollowed out in search of bee hives.

Jan's bemused look is because this gent is speaking their 'click' language, Hadzane, which is just that, making clicking sounds.  One can usually make out enough of most western languages to know what is being said, but not so much with this clicking business!

Jan was better with a blowgun in Peru a few years ago...

These kids were pretending to drive.  Our vehicles were fascinating to them...

And the highlight of the day...

While the rest of the group went on a hunting trek through the woods, Jan and I stayed back in camp and met Choqwa (sp?  still no clue how to click that).  Choqwa, dressed in a baboon skin, came out of the hollowed-out tree and, holding his forefinger and thumb up to his mouth just like a hippie of yore, asked me if I wanted to smoke some weed.  No kidding... our guide had told us that they smoked marijuana, trading game and berries for pot when they could.

I couldn't smoke anything, but we had a grand time with Choqwa.  It didn't matter that we couldn't understand a thing the other said.  Somehow we did.  Behold the commonality of human existence.

Choqwa wondered about our eyeglasses, and was blown away when Jan had him look through hers.  He's just as curious about our culture as we are about his.  We laughed and touched and connected.  Choqwa"s irrepressible smile is contagious.  This is what travel is all about!

Datoga Tribe

The Barabaig People are a nomadic tribe of the Datooga people, nomadic is so far as they follow the grazing rotation around the Hanang Plains.  We visited the clan known as the 'Blacksmiths.'  These folks go to town and get old scrap metal and then make beautiful jewelry with it.  They were making bracelets and other baubles from an old automobile water pump.  Hammering. Melting. Forming. Inscribing.  No power tools here.

The boy on the right below, operates a bellows made from animal skins to heat the metals to their melting points, which they then shape while in the molten state.  There is a natural lotion-like substance that coats the branches of this one kind of tree, some of them growing right where they were working.  They use it in the heating receptacles to keep the hot metals from sticking.  And really, it is just like lotions we buy to soften and lubricate our skin.

One of the bracelets, like what Jan bought, before being bent...



Truly nice stuff... from scrap metal!



We have yet to meet an impoverished soul in Africa.

They always have a song and dance to give...