Cultural Experience

Overview

At Bageshi Tanzania Safaris, we believe the cultural diversity of Tanzania is one of its greatest strengths. By meeting and understanding people whose views and values are very different from your own, you acquire new insights and perspectives that change your attitudes towards them, towards yourself, and towards the entire world. This new depth of perception and wisdom opens new horizons, opportunities, and flexibility in your future life choices. You may travel to Africa to learn more about her wildlife, but through her people, you will learn more about yourself.

This may well be a most valuable and lasting aspect of your safari of the tribal people of Tanzania. There are more than 120 different ethnic groups in Tanzania that have migrated over many centuries: pastoralist Nilotic from the Sudan, nomadic, cattle-herding Cushites from Ethiopia, hunter-gatherer Khoisan from the Kalahari, agriculturalist metal-working Bantu from West Africa, and Arabian, Indian and Anglo immigrants. All these groups displaced, conquered, or assimilated each other over thousands of years to form the present Tanzanian population. Each of these groups had differentiated traditional religions, social practices, rituals, customs, art, music, and dance.

Maasai Tribe

According to oral history, the Maasai people are a fusion of North Africans and Nilotic tribe originating from the northern part of Turkana lake in Kenya, which they left in the 15th century, then moving south and into present day Tanzania over 200 years ago, when they displaced other tribes in order to claim rich pastureland for their cattle. A race in which warriors were the highest class and their religion claimed all cattle as theirs by gift of God, they righteously annexed all the cows they encountered.

A proud, charming, friendly and intelligent community, there are now a million Maasai living in the homelands of Tanzania and Kenya. Much of their tribal land has been absorbed into the National Parks in return for promises of cultural security and community wellbeing in surrounding reserves which have not always been kept.

In accommodating the inevitable, some have embraced the Tanzanian tourist industry, becoming the guides, guards, staff, and management of many of the new eco-tourism centers and cooperating in the conservation of the wildlife that attracts their clientele. Some own the land, camps, and lodges whilst others initiate self-help projects to supply foodstuffs, furniture, curios and craft items in return for assistance with education, health and community development. They also present their cultural heritage as a valuable commodity.

This can be done in a superficial way, as ethnic entertainment, presenting a popular tourist conception of red-robed Maasai warriors, leaping and drumming, singing and dancing as a touring concert party, or as a deeply felt collaborative project in which the past, present and future are confronted in an authentic setting by real people.

The Hadzabe Tribe

The Hadzabe are the original Tanzanian Bushmen with a Khoisan language of clicks. These primitive hunter-gatherers lived in the valley caves of Lake Eyasi in harmony with nature for over 10,000 years. There are now just less than 1000 of them left. The advent of the neighboring Datoga tribe and the development of national government together with climate change, tourism and commercial hunting, has resulted in the gradual destruction of their environment and their way of life, but their isolation has protected them from many modern diseases.

They usually get sick with malaria and yellow fever from mosquitoes or sleeping sickness from the tsetse fly. They are a pride but also an embarrassment to a modern nation for its failure to progressively uplift the declining community from extinction, but out of respect for their chosen way of life, they are now the only people permitted to hunt with bows and arrows in the Lake Eyasi area.

They live without a safety net, gathering the food they need day by day. They have no concept of religion or afterlife, nor of time beyond the phases of the moon. They live in collaborative groups with no social rules. Men hunt bushmeat while the women search for fruit, tubers, and other wild food. They sleep in an organic mini-dome housing made of our natural branches while others prefer caves or lie head to tail around a campfire. Life is ephemeral. You need not hunt baboon or a dik-dik, half-naked with a bow and arrow to appreciate the Hadza way of life, but you can if you wish. Time spent “living in the now” on a Lake Eyasi cultural safari that confers calmness, centeredness, and courage.

The Datoga Tribe

Like the Maasai, the Datoga were nomadic cattle herders but are now subsistence farmers, growing beans, maize and millet to augment their sheep, goats, cows and chickens rearing. Consequently, they are dependent on permanent water sources and are adversely affected by increasing drought. A Nilotic people, like the Maasai, their patched leather tunics blend with the landscape.

They wear collars and bracelets of beads and brass and tattoo circles around their eyes. They are polygamous, ruled by a council of elders, and are aggressive, adversely affecting Hadzabe and Iraqw neighbors, and sometimes refuse to cooperate fully with the government. Their attitude deters sympathy for their plight. They live in mud huts in stockaded cattle enclosures.

All parts of their animals are used, and they grow and kill only what they need, being reluctant to trade. Yet, like the Maasai, despite their fierce warrior reputation, they are paradoxically friendly, welcoming and happy to share their cultural traditions with guests on an East African safari. They look down on the Hadzabe, often preventing Hadza women from taking water at waterholes until the Datoga cattle have finished drinking. Like the Hadzabe, they claim to be the oldest Tanzanian people, with a 10,000-year old culture, but they came from Ethiopia about 3,000 years ago to settle around Lake Manyara and Eyasi. They resist development and education, have high infant mortality, and are seen by other tribes as primitive, disapproved and disenfranchised. Less than 7% speak the national language, Kiswahili.

Cultural Experience

Overview

Maasai Tribe

The Hadzabe Tribe

The Datoga Tribe

What They Say About Us

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