Hunting with the Hadzabe of Tanzania’s Lake Eyasi region

ANCIENT HUNTER-GATHERERS

Hunting with the Hadzabe of Tanzania’s Lake Eyasi region

While many visitors to Africa are familiar with the Masai people, Hunting with the Hadzabe of Tanzania’s Lake Eyasi region is no less fascinating or representative of African culture.

Still leading the same hunter-gatherer lifestyle that has sustained their people for generations, the Hadzabe make use of locally made poisons and ingenious camouflage to hunt.

Visitors to Tanzania can not only visit with these traditional people but also witness a thrilling sunrise hunt to see just how these hardy people have survived in the sometimes-harsh Tanzanian wilderness for thousands of years.

About the Hadzabe

With an estimated population of fewer than 2,000 individuals, the Hadzabe are one of the last tribes to stay true to their tribal history. Existing far from the crowds and globalization that inevitably follow tourism, they exist much as they always have.

Men typically hunt and bring home honey to feed their families, while women and children gather fruits, berries, and roots with which to supplement their diet.

Hunting with the Hadzabe of Tanzania’s Lake Eyasi region

The men are particularly adept hunters, and their daring and inventive hunting style is a sight to behold. Using parts harvested from other animals, they cunningly lure and put down the game. As this is their only source of food, they are the only tribe permitted to hunt in the Serengeti.

The Hadzabe people live in caves near Lake Eyasi, and their isolation and shrinking numbers have allowed them to avoid the HIV epidemic and other diseases that have spread due to intertribal marriages.

Their language

An interesting facet of Hadzabe culture is their language. Believed to have some kind of relation to the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, the Hadzabe language is a distinctive tongue of clicks that is similar to that of the famous Bushmen. Despite this and their similar physical appearances, DNA testing has shown no relationship between the two groups.

Hunting with the Hadzabe of Tanzania’s Lake Eyasi region

The tribe time forgot: Hunting baboons with Tanzania’s Hadza people who have lived a life unchanged for 10,000 years

Africa’s Hadza tribe is the world’s last hunter-gathering community living in the wilds of Tanzania

The tribe hunts baboons, birds, antelope, and buffalo with hand-made bows and arrows

There are about 1,000 Hadza living in caves around Lake Eyasi in Africa’s Great Rift Valley

The tribe has lived the same way, unencumbered by the outside world, for 10,000 years

Their language, rhythmic and punctuated by clicks, is believed to be the oldest still spoken

Hunting with the Hadzabe of Tanzania’s Lake Eyasi region

A cultural visit to the Hadzabe bushmen

Spend the day with the Hadzabe people, ancient hunter-gatherers who inhabit the land near Lake Eyasi, a gorgeous soda lake that’s part of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, and witness their unchanged, traditional way of life and harmony with the earth. Accompanied throughout by a Pamoja, guests have the opportunity to engage with the Bushmen and learn all about their time-honored hunting techniques, survival skills, food preparation, and cultural norms. A veritable step back in time, this is an undeniably authentic cultural journey into rural Tanzania that reveals the untold world of these charismatic people.

How they search for food

Amongst the world’s last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes inhabiting the scrubby bushland, Hadzabe men search for food alone and return home with golden honey, sweet fruit, or hearty wild game when, and if available. Women go out in large groups and forage for bright berries, baobab fruit, and tubers, depending on availability. In the rainy, wet season, sweet honey is the main staple of their diet along with colorful fruit, tubers, and sometimes meat.

Adjusting their diets to the seasons this tribe is incredibly skilled, selective, and opportunistic seekers and searchers. They have only themselves to rely on to feed their families and tribe.

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