Hadzabe Tribe or Hadza
Spend the day with the Hadzabe Tribe or Hadza (Bushmen) – an indigenous ethnic group in north-central Tanzania, living around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. You will be spending a half-day with the Hadzabe tribe (the world’s last hunter-gathering group) and experience their way of life.
This cultural day tour begins from Arusha or Karatu a small town located about 120 km northwest of Arusha. Departing very early in the morning our tour to visit the Hadzabe and go hunting with them takes us through on a very rough trail for 2 hours drive; the road circumnavigates the Ngorongoro crater and heads southwest to Mongola Village; have contact with local tribesmen.
The Hadzabe Tribe lives in the dry terrain near Lake Eyasi, south of Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania. They have existed in this region for over 3000 years. We have time to go hunting with them for about an hour or two, walking, running, crawling through bushes, and looking in the shrubs for birds, antelopes, and larger herbivores.
Leaving the cultural village we drive back to Karatu or Arusha. Arriving in the evening where we drop you off at your hotel/ residence ending our Hadzabe Bushmen Dagota Tribes Lake Eyasi cultural day trip.
The women gather fruits, berries, tubers, and greens. The local guide who is a member of the tribe teaches you more about how they hunt, track wildlife, make fires,s and even take honey from bee’s nests before introducing you to his people and explaining a little more about the customs and the way of life.
The Hadzabe people are nomads and thus don’t live in the same place for long. They only set up camp for several days or even months and then when they have harvested the resources of their current location, they move to another area.
They build homes by weaving small huts out of sticks from the euphorbia bush. The Hadzabe used bows, arrows, and spears to hunt for food. They eat roots, meat, and wild fruits and use alternative medicine to treat their illnesses. They utilize sticks and grass to start fires. Their unique lifestyle makes a stay with them an interesting and stimulating experience.
Time permitting we visit the Datoga or Barbaig Tribe (Blacksmiths). See the work of a local blacksmith where spears, rings, earrings, and local silver are forged and worked.
Trip Cost $250- Per person
* They smoke a lot of pot tobacco, even young boys
* There is an estimated-only 1,000 Hadza left around Lake Eyasi
* Their language called Hadzane – is rhythmic and punctuated by clicks
* In general Hadza tribe is nonmaterialistic and lives almost entirely free of possessions
* Hadza tribe has lived the same way, unencumbered by the outside world, for 10,000 years
* Hadza tribe is the world’s last hunter-gathering group in Africa that is collecting 95 % of their diet from wild foods
* Hadzas live a very free life. They don’t grow food, raise no livestock and survive strictly by hunting antelopes, baboons, birds, and buffaloes
* Hadze live in homesteads which are dotted through the Bush, in groups of 20 or so Hadza. These homesteads are not owned by any one group, each group will stay in one place for a few months, and then when the game is scarce they move on to a new boma, and at some point in the future other Hadza take their place in the old one