Hadza

Finally there are the hunter-gatherers the Dorobo scattered throughout the Maasai area. There are about 8 different groups - some speak the Maasai language, but there are at least two other Dorobo languages one being closely allied to Nandi. Also included in this category are the Kindiga or Hezabi [Hadza] who speak a 'click' i.e. a Bushman-type lanuage which has similar sounds to, but is far removed from the neighbouring Sandawe language. Their main home is on the east side of Lake Eyasi in Mbulu district but they spread into Maasai country and into Singida.

In East Africa there are two main categories of vulnerable minority peoples who have been in consequence subjected to flagrant violations of community and individual rights. These are hunters and gatherers, namely the Hadza, Dorobo and Sandawe together with many ethnic groups who are pastoralists. The Maasai of Tanzania and Kenya are the largest and most widely known of he many pastoral peoples of East Africa. These minorities suffer from the common problems which characterize the plight of indigenous peoples throughout the world.

Gourds are still used by all tribes to hold water, milk, honey, and other liquids.

We met members of the Wagogo tribe (proof that we had reached Ugogo), and saw the typical settlements of flat-topped, thatched houses. We bumped our way a long distance down into the valley, then followed a meagre track through the mountains.

Along the way, we noticed a plant with a milkweed-like pod that is valued by the Hadza tribe. The plant contains an intensely poisonous, sticky substance which the Hadza use to coat the points of their arrows and spears. It easily kills pigs, deer, wild boar, antelopes � and human beings. Thad recognized the plant and stopped to gather some. I was careful not to touch any part of it.

Burton referred to all his camps when crossing the Rubeho Mountains as "Rubeho." He spent five nights in the hills before he dropped into the plains, which he called "Ugogi." As he prepared to attack the pass, Burton could hardly bear to face the difficulties of the ascent. The sicknesses of many different types that assailed them throughout the trip had already begun to take their toll: "The great labor still remained. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we contemplated with a dogged despair the apparently perpendic�ular path ... up which we and our starving drooping asses were about to toil."

The air of the pass seemed to help Burton recover a little, although Speke's condition worsened and he needed to be carried as they proceeded: "By resting after every few yards, and by clinging to our supporters, we reached, after about six hours, the summit of the Pass Terrible, and there we sat down among the aromatic flowers and bright shrubs � the gift of mountain dews to recover strength and breath�. At length a hammock was rigged up for my companion."

From 17th March until the 7th of April 1997, Richard Rainsford and Jane Lang, both of FPCN England and Hartmut Heller from FDN Germany, visited their friends the Hadzabe, around lake Eyasi, in northern Tanzania. Our trip began from Arusha and headed north west via Karatu from, where we left the road that circumnavigates the Ngorongoro crater national park and headed south west to Mongola.

At the southern end of Mongola were the first Hadzabe community we stayed with. In this place the traditional lifestyle of the Hadzabe can no longer continue due to the proximity of the neighbouring settlement. The main reason for their needing to be in this place is the fact that the Matete (Chem Chem) spring located 2 km to the south is the only source of spring water coming from the crater from 20 sq. kilometres. Not to long ago the area was traditionally a watering hole used by the Hadzabe. But now with the assistance of white expatriate settlers and the establishment of the newly formed village councils, the Hadzabe are not even allowed to go to the watering hole, unless FPCN representatives are present. We gave them three 20k-bags of maize over our visit and refused to pay the requested 2000 TSh for camping at the green site in sympathy for our friends.

The warden called over the chairman of the village council, Julius Meruss (Barabaig ), chair of the Qangndend village council, PO Box 255, Karatu, Tanzania. During the discussion it was learnt that the Hadzabe were allowed to go to the waterhole when the village council and warden had arranged a party of tourists to watch them sing and perform. It was quoted that while a 20 strong tourist group were paying 300,000 TSh to the council, for filming, only 10,000 TSh would be paid to the total 500 Hadzabe community. Julius Meruss told us that the village has a 25 counsellor committee with not one Hadzabe. When asked about this, Gudo Mahiya, a respected Hadza spokes person said "we are not interested in changing our culture to conform to the policy of the aggressors". He added "that even in Arusha there were some 250 counsellors, but still the Hadzabe have no representation, or wish to have". He does though want to go to Arusha to protest about the council here". "He went on to say they are charging the tourists while not giving the Hadzabe any of this income or allowing them access to the water". When asked about farming and cattle he said "we do not want cattle, just wild animals to hunt and water that we can drink".

FPCN International asks "Is it right that a people should be driven into extinction just for not wanting to change and adopt the western mentality of profit and greed driven motives". Needless to say we continued refusing to pay the campsite fee for visiting and giving humanitarian aid to our friends. Even after Police were called by the 'campsites' (Barabaig ) warden, Momoya Muhidoti of PO Box 120 , Karatu, Tanzania the police couldn't believe why they had been called and laughed about it at the end with us. Two other officials that were in attendance were Alfred Ligubi, District Commissioner of Karatu district, PO Box 5 Karatu, (Tel. 32) and Fready B. Meope, Assistant Officer Commanding, Karatu Police Station, PO Box 155, Karatu (Tel 9). Alfred said "he had no problem with what we were doing only that next time this could be prevented by writing to his office in advance and he would issue us with a letter that explained to all concerned the purpose of our visit". It was agreed that on the next visit this would be done in advance. The protest was felt and noticed and FPCN International advises any visitors to the Matete spring to do likewise, until such time as the Hadzabe are allowed full access to the water as are the dozens of cattle that are brought to the spring each day.

"One to thirty, was the ratio of game over cattle" a figured quoted by one of the occupying expatriate settlers, Ms Jeannette Hanby (Mama Simba) who lives with David Bygott in abstract denial over the rights of the Hadzabe. They can be written to at S.L.P. 161, Karatu, Tanzania. The ecologists Bygott and Hanby live on sacred Hadza ground but they deny that the Hadza have ever inhabited the area around the only spring fro 20k. Something that only a visit to the area will clearly show is a statement if denial.

There are three situations that FPCN International was asked by this community to communicate and present to the international community:-

CASE 1 Enslaved Prostitution

Through the middlemen, European priests and "sisters". Sabina's sister Mele Abande and Salibogo's daughter along with many others have been tricked into prostitution by being taken to Arusha with the promise of work. Only to find themselves enslaved in prostitution. FPCN proposes to act on the wishes of the Hadzabe and bring all held Hadzabe woman back to their homeland.

CASE 2 Enforced Schooling.

There have been times when the military has searched for Hadzabe children hiding in the bush to escape the duty of being schooled. Hadzabe girls often complain about being raped by the teachers in Endamaga school. This happens even with Hadzabe mothers. Later the Hadza girls are compelled into prostitution. FPCN has previously been successful taking back some of these unlucky girls to their bush homestead and families. But if caught again these school escapees have to fear severe corporal punishment. This kind of discipline is very common in these schools. When asked, all but maybe a handful of the brainwashed Hadzabe say that this schooling has a negative effect on them and they say is of no benefit to them. Some Hadzabe have even been taken to colleges in Dar es Salaam. Currently they are all without jobs and are now even more frustrated and irritated. They now also behave as being uprooted from their own society. One really must, when considering this difficult issue, try and not see it from our western educated stand point. For these people that are not even on the bottom rung of the surrounding social hierarchy, what use is learning English or reading Swahili or even mono agriculture for that matter. Quite clearly the only benefactors, would be there greatest emery, the manufactured and western propped up government of Tanzania and the countries they export to, on condition of aid.

CASE 3 Bad Religion.

Many times white parsons tried to baptise the Hadzabe and to destroy their admirable traditional beliefs and lifestyle. FPCN tells the Hadzabe that these missionaries are just business men who often have accumulated quite some wealth from their job. The hatred against these strangers grows among the Hadzabe. FPCN stands ready to sanction and assist with the burning out of churches on Hadzaland in following, with the similar successful explosion that occurred at Sanola.

After two days with them there it was decided to go down the eastern side of the dried out Lake Eyasi, to attempt, a trip around the lake in a clockwise direction. The intention being to visit the Hadzabe communities on the west side. Approximately 40k down the eastern side we stopped to visit and give food to what appeared to be the least well off community so far. This clan at Kambia ya Simba had the unenviable disposition of sharing a green and stagnant waterhole, some three hours walk, with the surrounding Barabaig ,s cattle. Even one of our party, a neutral journalist from Norway, Arild Andersen, found himself infested with worms after drinking from the source. It was clear to us all that most of the Hadza children had permanently to endure the same affliction. Whilst there were several hunting trips were made to ascertain the level of available game, that these people largely depended on. The only recorded sighting in their region was a couple of dik dik (Small dog sized mammals) to feed a population of around 200. The result was is these people are solely dependent on the gathering of the three types of berries they are lucky enough to have around them.

After two attempts to go south around lake Eyasi and being forced back by rain it was decided that a visit to important camps around Sanola. On first impressions Sanola didn't appear to be as welcoming as the previous camps. That was explained later due to the work of anti-traditionalist's like Bruce, a CUSO field worker, that had just the week before with Shanny the district game warden from Embola, been hunting in the area. We were also told that Momoya Muhidoti, the "camp site warden" at Chem Chem, from Mongola had also recently been with Arab's and Germans illegally hunting in the area. Proof of this was in the signed visitors book. It is also know by the inhabitants of Sanola that Bruce is responsible for the killing of the last Rhino in this area. A nice achievement for an aid worker! During his visit, the week before, Bruce had discussed with the Hadzabe how they had stopped all white trophy hunting in the area. FPCN says that is quite an accomplishment when you take into account that there really isn't any game left to hunt.

Sanola now, once rich in wild life, game and fresh water now has none. The displaced Barabaig herders with the expanding livestock numbers have completely taken over the water resource. The river a bit like lake Eyasi is in the main dried out, during the dry season. The Barabaig have erected small dams and water traps for their livestock, creating the same polluted water, not fit of human consumption, found at Nut//ko. FPCN finds this quite intolerable because it is not even a short term solution. FPCN asked and explained to the Barabaig that this can not continue. It is feared though that more than requests will be needed to persuade them to use only some of the available water holes. Methods of persuasion will be discussed, agreed upon and action taken.

FPCN says "We were all so alarmed to discover that these small communities had become so dispossessed by the ever increasing encroachment of the Barabaig settlers and cattle, onto their homeland. But the Barabaig are not the only intruders, the Maasai were also bringing more and more cattle into the region as a result of their expulsion from the Ngorongoro crater, to make way for a dollar earning national park".

The overall effect has been so devastating that the game the Hadzabe were dependant on have all but been decimated or moved off. Add to this the adverse effects on the few water holes, infected with amoebas by the cattle and you are left with a population worm infested and dependant on berries for their moisture and nourishment. The net effects were clear in the blown up stomachs and infections suffered by the children.

Is it therefore the underlying policy of the Tanzania government to only allow wild animals to be kept inside the national parks ? Rather than they feeding her people, she can profit from the tourist dollar. In the meantime, if your not contributing in some way to the countries economy, producing something for export, you deserve nothing more than, the right, to die in silence. Tanzania this is the impression you have left me with. I do hope that I am wrong.

In conclusion; it is the opinion of FPCN International that the biggest single detrimental affect that is dispossessing the Hadzabe of their livelihoods and homelands is the western worlds model of nation building, with its universally adopted legal system. Readers are asked to contribute to FPCN's petition to the Tanzania government. Hopefully then they will begin to see the value they have in their cultural heritage, before it is to late.

FPCN asks all interested groups and individuals to write to all mentioned in this report and ask them how their conscience is and whether they are interested in the survival of this culture and community.

Written by Richard Rainsford FPCN England.

BREAKING NEWS

Working independently in African wildlife conservation for many years, a group of dedicated researchers, tour operators and conservationists came together and pooled their resources and experience to form Tanzania�s best hope for preserving one of Earth�s last remaining edens. Tazama!Trust founder Kim Ellis-Josch teamed up with former Serengeti Lion Project researchers Jeannette Hanby and David Bygott to develop a more holistic approach to conservation. Joined in their quest by wildlife scientist Melly Reuling and the Peterson Brothers of Dorobo Safaris, they address the problems arising from the pressures of developing Africa and the effects on its people, environment and wildlife. Helping communities living in wilderness areas take charge of natural resources, Tazama!Trust works to empower Africans to save and protect endangered treasures for future generations.

FIELD REPORT:

'Help the Hadza?' by JP Hanby, 2000

Two Hadza men, in temporary alliance, came to ask us for some help. Written on their note was: 'Pleas can you help us about drawing picture of Hadzabe life. This is because we want our Right and our Land.' Signed: Naftal Zengu and Gudo Mahiya. PS. (from Naftal) 'I need help of lift to Karatu'.

Naftal wanted us to do a logo and pictures for his proposal to start a non-governmental organization, the 'Hadzabe Survival Organization' - a vague document about human and land rights. Gudo was being unusually supportive of Naftal�s proposal - he usually scoffs at paperwork and people who use 'blah blah'. Naftal insisted that the NGO was needed in order to raise and receive funds for certain Hadza to carry on political activities including going to International Conferences. It was not at all clear how the organization would 'help' the Hadzabe who still live out in the bush.

It was easier to help Naftal with the lift. On the way up the rocky road he and I had a spirited discussion about the Hadzabe. There are but a few hundred of these traditional hunter-gatherers living in their wild homelands around the Eyasi Basin. Whether they will survive as a cultural unit or get absorbed by their more numerous neighbours is always a topic of concern. The basic question is cultural survival. In this particular case, can people who gather wild foods survive under pressures from people with agricultural and livestock keeping practices? Are these different lifestyles compatible? If incompatible, is the hunter-gatherer lifestyle doomed? Realistically, can anything be done to 'help' them retain land and lifestyle? Or should one 'help' them change their ways?

A widespread assumption is that the hunter-gatherers - nowadays called foragers - do not want to change. In the Hadza case this assumption may not be completely valid. I have asked several which they would rather have, the random bag of grain from 'donors', cash and t-shirts from tourists, free housing, hoes and seeds from the government, or their homeland protected from outsiders so they could continue to gather fruits, tubers and honey and hunt wild animals. After pondering, the answer usually is: 'All of it'.

Development often means degradation, and as we lurched up the gullied road, the ravages from charcoal burners and meagre maize farmers made us qustion where there was any 'land' left for the Hadza to have rights to. Suddenly besides the road appeared a small group of Hadza. They came out of the bush complete with their bows, arrows, babies, and bags of freshly gathered wild fruits. We stopped. Naftal wanted to tell them about his proposed organization and how much they needed the help. They looked totally bemused. The contrast between Naftal in his western-style clothes and the Hadza group in their earth-toned rags was dramatic. So too their postures, the lithe family group loose and ready to walk, Naftal gesticulating like a man in Hyde Park, in shoes made for carpets and conferences. You would never have known that they were from the same tribe except that they were all using the same click-filled Hadza language.

Naftal went onwards to the other side of Hadzaland, where he continues to promote his own view for Hadza development, for settling down, mainly in his appointed village of Mongo wa Mono where he feels the Hadza should become Christians as well as farmers. After coping with chores in the burgeoning town of Karatu, I rocked back down the long dusty road. At the little oasis near Eyasi which we call home I found Gudo still there. He was waiting to be 'local guide' for some tourists. He represents the other view of Hadza development, expressing the vague hope that they can retain their old ways in spite of profound changes to their homeland.

Among Gudo�s many endeavours, from beekeeping to tour guiding, he has put together some of the traditional stories of his people (see box story). Because of his skills and even temper Gudo has been an essential informant, translator and helper of many visitors. He is both tolerant and sceptical about people�s aims. He frowned and said 'What do we Hadza want with this NGO run by Naftal. Does it help us to have Naftal and those other Hadza go to these conferences in Geneva or wherever? Maybe it helps them. Maybe it helps the conference, but what about us?'

It is a hard question to answer. Does advertising the Hadza in films, articles, on the internet, at conferences do anything more than promote simple sympathy and curiosity on the part of oursiders? Gudo wanted to know specifically about an article written recently about the Hadza in an East African wildlife magazine. At my suggestion, the author had used Gudo as a guide on his two day excursion through Hadzaland. This led to an article with Gudo as hero or victim who laments the loss of homeland. I tried to translate it for him from the English to Kiswahili. Gudo was distressed at the article�s superficiality. He suggested that I write something to tell about the current Hadza situation - a plea to other people for understanding. So here I am trying to 'help' the Hadza by sketching out for you the confusing and chaotic nature of help in Hadzaland. Bear with us, the Hadza are worth a little understanding.

Much has been written about the Hadza but there seems to be little widespread knowledge about them. And that goes for inside as well as outside Tanzania. Most of the information available is hidden away in myriad reports and obscure articles written by researchers, government officers, charities or aid agencies. Although there is quite a large body of anthropological work published there is no major book or report or monograph on these people since James Woodburn�s work in the 60�s. (Woodburn, at the Dept of Anthropology in London School of Economics, continues to visit and publish about the Hadza concentrating on social aspects.)

Research on the Hadza continues. A team headed by Nicholas Blurton-Jones at UCLA with colleagues Kristen Hawkes and James O�Connell at the University of Utah have come repeatedly and send students. Archeologists also find the traditional Hadza useful for insights in the way humans might have lived in the past. Most of the recent work emphasises the importance of the Hadza in their ecological context and tends to focus on particular questions - workers gather data on topics such as how much food grandmothers or fathers actually provide to their relatives. Studies of the Hadza people have provided disparate and important data for many discussions and articles on themes from nutrition to menopause. (for one example see New Scientist, 7 Feb 98 pg 14)

The worth of the traditionally living Hadza to the academic community is great. So what have all the researchers learned over the years? The following is a sample from hours I have spent with the Hadza, talking to researchers and reading many reports and papers (for some references see: http//www.gseis.ucla.edu/facpage/blurtonjones.html)..

Who are the Hadza? They call themselves Hadzabe (had-za-bay), Hadza for short. Most of the Hadza are short too (160 cm on average), but a few, like Naftal, are tall, because some Hadza have intermarried with other peoples. Although their appearance is not a distinctive trait, their language is unique in the world and their lifestyle is now as rare as digging sticks are at your local market. Probably less than 1000 people still speak the Hadza language - which is not closely related to the Khoisan click languages of southern Africa, the language family that includes the !Kung - it seems to be unique. Many fewer than 1000 Hadza speakers still roam the semi-arid bushlands around the Lake Eyasi basin of western Tanzania (see map).

Eyasi is a large soda lake; dry for most of the year (until El Ni�o filled it up this year). To the north-west is a steep escarpment, part of the Great Rift Valley system. A few Hadza live on top of this Eyasi scarp and have access to Serengeti and surrounds. But the heartland of the Hadza�s once extensive range is the grassy Yaeda Valley and wooded Kidero hills to the east and south of the lake. Here there are rocky mountains and valleys, small springs and stretches of seasonal marshland. Rainfall over the whole area is normally low, about 300mm to 600mm (similar to southern California). Trees grow slowly and have lots of thorns. There are huge baobabs with nutritious seeds and homes for bees. Bushes are often laden with delicious small fruits. It is an area of stark beauty. And to the Hadza, bountiful.

Remarkably, the lifestyle of many Hadza today is very like that reported by early visitors. The Hadza men still hunt, especially at night from blinds and in daytime from walking about. Women and children still forage for wild food. Honey is still traded with neighbours for tobacco, iron, clothing and cooking pots. The Hadza still live in small kin groups and move frequently. They still tell stories around their campfires; they still live in camps. Shelters built of sticks and grass are all they need in the dry climate. Sometimes the Hadza return to their rock shelters, many of which still bear the paintings and designs left by their presumed ancestors, but mostly they make temporary, seasonal camps which deteriorate quickly when they move on.

Hadza living traditionally do not have to work hard to supply themselves daily with enough food. However, they have to be ready to survive extended difficult periods. Bush food is very nutritious. The bulk of Hadza food is roots, tubers, shoots, fruits, mainly gathered by women who spend 4 - 7 hours foraging per day, almost every day. Hunters about the same. Fertility and birth rate of Hadza are below that of national averages but the population has been slowly increasing. Hadza children contribute a great deal to their own diet. Hadza grandmothers and post-menopausal women really do contribute significantly to their offspring�s survival. Hadza fathers contribute more care to their own children than to their step children and they appear to adjust their parental effort in response to mating opportunities.

Hunting supplies only a small but a socially important part of the diet. An exceptionally good hunter may earn high status, worth more to his reproductive potential than his contribution of meat is worth to the tribe let alone his family. Meat is shared widely. Scavenging occurs but does not contribute a major part of food intake. The Hadza lifestyle is a very healthy one. Health deteriorates when they live in settlements.

Decision making is consensual and includes both men and women. Camps are named after men. It is often the women who decide when to move camp and all Hadza squabble about where they will go and what they will do. The Hadza do not traditionally have chiefs or leaders, nor even a village elder system but occasionally a single powerful man influences the community. In contrast to surrounding tribes the Hadza are very egalitarian.

Most of the older Hadza haven�t been to school like Gudo and Naftal. The bush-dwelling Hadza are wary of their educated, 'modernized' tribesmates. They cannot read nor write but they can start a fire with a stick, find bush food, make sandals, adornments, bows and arrows, hunt animals, gather honey and look after the interests of their kin. The older Hadza twinkle with teasing, teach their grandchildren their stories and songs as well as where to find water and food. I wish you could hear the strong, shrill voices of the women as they tease, scold, soothe and sing. If nothing else, the Hadza are joyful people; to be among them lifts one�s spirits - when they aren�t begging and cajoling you for something!

On dark nights especially, the Hadza sing and dance. They are a musical people. Travelling with two or more in the car invariably leads to merry singing on the trip. Once I organized a safari to the rock paintings of Central Tanzania with archaeologist Mary Leakey. The aim of the trip was to show a few Hadza the rock art; we wanted to get their opinions about the pictures. Here is a song Gudo and Kampala invented during the dusty drives between rock shelters: (Transcription by linguist Bonny Sands)

Likiko, Leakey,

musiyobakwa she is troubling us

shauri ya koeta because of them

Hadzabe kenebe the Hadzabe of long ago

Hukwa maha�a Get up! Let�s go!

�isawabi�I The caves!

(dental click) iyetabita We�ll see them

Hadzabe kenebe the Hadzabe of long ago

In contrast to the majority of present day East African people, the Hadza seem not to have come from somewhere else. They are indigenous. Outsiders have been coming into the Eyasi area for many years, mainly agro-pastoral Iraqw, pastoral Datoga and Maasai and agricultural Bantu groups. All these immigrants found the Hadza roaming the hills and valleys, hunting and gathering. Immigrants almost universally share a negative attitude to the Hadza who are seen as primitive, backward, poor and with disgusting food habits. Most local people consider themselves superior to and better off than the Hadza. To them the Hadza as a source of barter, as guards for crops and homesteads or simply as childlike primitives, to poke fun at, criticise or ignore. Left alone, the immigrants would probably slowly swamp or displace the Hadza.

But the immigrants are not the only people to come to Hadzaland. Outsiders come and go. It is mostly outsiders that want to 'help' the Hadza. In addition to the 'traditionalists' who wish the Hadza could stay as 'wild' foragers there are many more who want to help guide these people into the modern world. The Hadza themselves, as well as outsider, all have different points of view, aims and actions. It creates a real muddle.

An obvious question is why do so many outsiders want to help the Hadza, in stark comparison to the lack of desire to help many other rural groups. The answer is that outsiders find the Hadza attractive. They are fun; they inspire people. A classic romantic version of the Hadza was told by Peter Matthiessen after visiting them in the 60�s, in his charming book, The Tree Where Man Was Born. The fascination with these cheerful, bush wise people seems endless.. Besides the reams of researchers, samples of students and piles of professionals there are the medicos, the maverick and messianic individuals who now come to study, save or document the Hadza. They bring their dreams, diseases and religions, food and material objects all to 'help' the Hadza and all of which inevitably change the Hadza.

One of the most disruptive sources of help is money. Hadza economy was never on a cash basis, hardly even barter, for the Hadza were used to sharing freely. Sharing seems not to be so much reciprocal as what one researcher calls 'demand sharing' and another, to make the point even more emphatically, 'tolerated theft'. This still seems to be basic. When I gave a woman a kanga (colorful printed cotton wrap-around), it next appeared around her son�s loins, next over the head of a sister�s child, and finally around the waist of her cousin before it disappeared. I asked her where her kanga was, she waved and said with a fake pout 'It went'.

Items obtained by one�s own efforts, such as a hunk of meat, a bit of clothing, some fruits, are all to be shared with whomever wants it. This attitude causes great consternation when sums of money are brought to the Hadza. For instance, there was a recent foray from the BBC. They came to film the way the Hadza cope with bush life. They said they wanted not to interfere, to be low key, yet brought in the usual team which photographed, recorded, then vanished. Before leaving they proudly donated many pounds, by local standards, to 'help' the Hadza. All who participated in the BBC film expected to get a share. Ousider onsultants got good pay; local guides a little. But the lump sum was removed from the Hadza, the responsibility for the use of the money remains with outsiders. The Hadza are very distressed by this. Likewise, money from tourism often goes into accounts which can only be operated by a few individuals who all too often misuse it for their own ends (e.g. booze).

One of the major gripes of the Hadza and all indigenous peoples is that they have so little control over their future or land. Governments seldom see foragers as having rights to the land or wildlife where they traditionally lived. The Hadza feel powerless to keep out the immigrant pastoralists and farmers, government officials, the filmmakers, the curious, the 'helpers'. But what to do? Pastoralists everywhere are also suffering from displacement and the lack of communal land. The Maasai and Datoga have their sympathizers because they too are fighting against environmental degradation from the more numerous agriculutralists.

With more and more people crowding into their land, both the Hadza and the wild animals lose out along with the loss of vegetation cover and water. And the Hadza, to survive traditionally would need a lot of land, especially for hoofed animals. For instance a simplified case might be as follows: if each of the let us say 1000 Hadza people ate on average 1kg of meat per day and that wild animals average 150 kg, which when butchered might provide 100 kg of meat, then Hadza hunters would have to kill or scavenge roughly three and one half zebra like animals for each

person per year. Some 3 to 4000 animals would be needed to support that population with plenty of meat.* *

Hunting and sharing of meat may not be critical to Hadza physical survival but it probably is to their social survival. Gudo and all Hadza men pride themselves on the way they can shoot animals with their strong bows and variety of prey tailored arrows. But are there nowadays enough wild animals to support Hadza hunting? All would agree, no. So where have all the animals gone? Replaced by livestock, almost every one. No one knows the absolute numbers of wild animals left in the area but the last census (an aerial survey in 1992 by Tanzanian Wildlife Conservation Monitoring) revealed more than thirty head of livestock for each one of the estimated 2200 (large enough to count from the air) wild animals in a portion of the Eyasi basin. In addition to competition with livestock the wild animals are pursued by plenty of people eager for bush meat, or to hunt for 'sport' and even for export as live animals. Wildlife is heavily utilized here, legally and mostly illegally, and in any case, not in any sustainable way.

Competition for land, water, wood and wildlife are the Hadzas� main worries. There are some other concerns. There are miners that prospect and dig for gemstones in Hadzaland; they make roads and holes (and kill animals) all over the area. This activity encourages local people to try their luck too. All too often they dig at rock shelters (after all, the archeologists did there implying there is somethng of value!). Add to the competitors, immigrants and treasure hunters a whole array of transient do-gooders and you begin to perceive the situation. (see cartoon).

There are missionaries proselytising and building churches, educators taking children away to schools, bureaucrats and politicians trying to get the Hadza to settle down and farm, health workers trying to build roads and new clinics, donors and aid workers such as CUSO, Oxfam-UK, CARITAS, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, each with its own form of help. Finally there are some truly amazing self- styled Hadza saviours who come from time to time, tossing out money and bags of grain, filming dances done grossly out of context, encouraging school children to run away and churches to be burnt down; taking individuals off to Europe; all this done in the name of helping the Hadza to remain traditional hunter-gatherers! It is truly astounding how much effort and money has been spent 'helping' the Hadza.

Tourists and other visitors to Africa want a share, a glimpse of the joy and the expertise of real, honest-to-goodness, wild humans. Firesticks and digging sticks, poison arrows and all, the Hadza are a great tourist draw.. Only a few safari companies are sensitive to the destructive effects of their tours. One company uses Hadza guides and gives back a portion of income to help the Hadza help themselves. But most companies don�t care, they find the Hadza useful as a tourist attraction in a cheap area to visit. Disruption is inevitable and sometimes ugly.

So how can any or all realistically help the Hadza? There are a few people genuinely concerned with the wider issues of land rights and life styles.. One utopian scenario would be to get the concerned folk to coordinate their efforts. They could then support local residents who would develop and implement their own plans for resource use. All the residents in the area would have to agree to let the Hadza hunt and gather with safeguards against livestock and farming in certain places. They would have to forbid outsiders to settle, make charcoal and kill wildlife as they please. Tracts of land would have to be kept as wildlife corridors between the conserved areas of Ngorongoro-Maswa-Serengeti and the Yaeda valley and hills so that animals could move about seasonally. By-laws would have to be enacted to protect the land and wildlife, such as a system of restrictions and fines for misuse. None or these negotiations would be easy nor fast. It would be a real challenge. Is it worth a try?

The application for a special Hadza organization brought to us the other day by Naftal and Gudo highlighted all the problems. Much help on paper is what Gudo calls 'blah blah' - jargon and buzz words - but down at the bottom is a genuine feeling that the Hadza should have a voice in their future and rights to some of their remaining land. Maybe there are people who might care and have patience enough to devise long term ways to 'help' the Hadza with more than bags of food, Bibles, or confusing advice. Help the Hadza sing their own song.

Stop for a moment and imagine a dark night full of stars, holding a warm child asleep in your lap, your campfire burning low, singing along with Gudo and his little group in the immensity of the African night. Maybe the Hadza will add to an old song (about the danger of nearby volcanoes and earthquakes).

Hadzabe, we�ll sing the night away Hadzabe, we all want to stay

What if the sun turns round Where we can see the sky

and the sky falls down Animals and fruits close by

We can�t go away, Here children play,

it is here we�ll stay we don�t want to go away.

* I base this estimate on data that we have used in our studies of lion predation in Serengeti. Wieght of ungulates obviously vaires eg. gazelles rather less than elephants and buffoloes! I take a rounded estimate of 150 kg for large animals and use 33% as the inedible portion of a carcass. See Schaller, 1972 The Serengeti Lion, U. Chicago Press and also Serengeti 1973 edited by A.R.E. Sinclair and M. Norton Griffiths and Serengeti II 1995 ed by A.R.E. Sinclair and P. Arcese. My estimate of 3.5 animals needed per Hadza per year compares well with that estimated for Kenya hunter-gatherers by I. Burchard (Swara 20:6 & 21:1). Compare this with estimates for poachers in the Serengeti with its much greater biomass who are estimated to take almost 9 animals per hunter per year.

Frequent acrimony, currently depicting the relationship between game Hunting companies and rural communities in Tanzania, will be a thing of the past after the government adopts a new wildlife policy.

Designated as wildlife management areas, the communities will benefit from the spoils of game Hunting, presently paid to local authorities by companies operating in those areas.

The proposed policy seeks to amend Tanzania's obsolete Wildlife Act of 1975, and, according to the natural resources and tourism minister, Zakia Meghji, 'it is of utmost priority and should be tabled before parliament for debate soon'.

She said the government would repossess all Hunting blocks allocated to professional hunters and hand them over to respective local authorities.

In turn local governments, together with the communities, would be empowered to allocate the Hunting blocks to whichever company they prefer to do business with.

'Guidelines of the policy are ready and are just being fine-tuned,' she said.

Communities set to benefit from this policy are chiefly those bordering rich game controlled areas and parks. They include the Maasai, Ndorobo, Hadzabe, Bahi, Sianzu and Kimbu in northeastern Tanzania.

Members of these communities are often arrested by game wardens and fined for trespassing on game conservation areas. As a result, they have been extremely bitter about being denied access to wildlife resources, which they believe, naturally, belong to them.

Under the new policy, Meghji said, the government will ensure that people undertake increased wildlife management responsibilities and get benefits to motivate them in the conservation of wildlife resources.

..They have been eating monkeys for 100 years

..They believe iron sheets cause blindness

Tired of their forest life, the Tindiga bushmen from the remotest parts of Mbulu and Karatu districts have decided to migrate from the forest and join civilization.

One of the Tindiga tribe elders, Jacob Ndakwena, confirmed that his tribe of 3,000 people will move from their bush residences in an official procession on the 15th of October.

According to Ndakwena, his people have been living in the forest for centuries, feeding on roots and animals but especially monkeys. He noted that the Tindiga people even used to scavenge rotten carcasses without qualms.

Ndakwena said that his people are backward when it comes to development because they believe that houses covered with iron sheets normally cause blindness, and that if they allow their children to attend schools built with iron sheets then those children will become blind.

Various government leaders and NGOs such as the World Vision have tried to persuade the Tindiga bushmen to join civilization without much success, until recently when the tribesmen themselves realized that they could actually be missing out on something.

The move to transform their lives was also made possible with help from the Mang'ola village chairman; Adam Chora whose village is in the Karatu district. Chora was successful in persuading the Tindiga bushmen to drop their savage life, because; having married a Tindiga woman, the bushmen regarded him as their clansman.

Meanwhile, the Mbulu District Commissioner (DC) Gabriel Songayi confirmed that the tribal elders have already contacted him and that he and the area Member of Parliament Phillip Marmo will be there to receive the bushmen's exodus procession.

'This is quite amazing really!' said DC Songayi. 'We have been trying to coax these people to leave their bush life for the past 10 years without any success, but we are glad that they decided to do it themselves.'

Some Tindiga bushmen however, have already tasted modern life, through clothes that they have been begged from visitors and those given to them by the area MP; Phillip Marmo.

Women however were never allowed to wear modern clothes, and prompted to stick to their animal skin outfits.

The Tindiga bushmen wash their bodies rarely before smearing them with monkey's bone marrow for moisturizing their skins.

But the bushmen exodus from the forest to their new life won't be without problems. Speaking to journalists recently, one their representatives revealed that Tindiga have one crucial ultimatum; they must be allowed to smoke marijuana (Bhang), as they are very much used to it, and treat it rather religiously.

However he defended the bushmen by pointing out that, Tindiga men hardly ever cause any problem.

Trees almost hid the grass huts. The fireplaces were still warm. When Barbara Zucker-Pinchoff held her palm over a circle of rocks, she could feel heat from the embers. The ground was littered with feathers, mostly from guinea fowl. A group of Hadza people had just left the campsite. They had taken all their possessions with them.

Barbara and Barry Zucker-Pinchoff, both doctors from New York City, took their three daughters on a walking safari last year in Tanzania. Barbara told about their experience in Kinbero, "the most remote place I have ever been," camping with a few other Americans, two Tanzanian guides, and several Hadza who had time to sit and chat because they had just killed a giraffe.

About 400 members of the Eastern Hadza tribe (also known as the Tindiga or Kindiga) live in Tanzania today, the only hunter-gatherers who reamain in Africa. It was a mere 12,000 years ago that our ancestors domesticated plants and animals. Until then, hunter-gatherers dominated Africa as they did the rest of the world. Since human beings first appeared in the form of homo habilis two million years ago, according to anthropologist Richard B. Lee, we have been hunter-gatherers for 99 percent of the time. To look at it another way, of the eighty billion people who have walked the earth, 90 percent of them have been hunter-gatherers.

The Hadza hunt game, gather edible plants and honey, and move from place to place whenever the weather changes, or the wild herds migrate, or they just feel like moving. In small groups of about eighteen adults and their children, they pitch camps among the rocks and trees of the dry savanna where they live on 1,000 square miles near Lake Eyasi, a salt lake in northern Tanzania. Every two weeks or so, they move to a new campsite.

At the Pinchoffs' campsite, three Hadza men stopped by to visit and ended up staying three days. Barbara described their first interaction. One of the guides gave the men a cigarette. They took out the tobacco, put it in a pipe, and lit the pipe with fire they started by twirling a wooden firedrill.

It takes less than two hours for Hadza women to build a new camp. They make huts by bending and weaving branches into round structures about six feet high, then covering them with thick clumps of long, golden grass. Or, if the weather is very wet, the women may skip the hut building and choose a dry cave to set up a camp that includes a hearth, cooking vessels, sleeping mats made of animal skins, and tools for sharpening stones and scraping skins. Some rock caves have been used intermittently over thousands of years and are decorated with ancient rock paintings.

Whether they sleep in huts, caves or in the open, the Hadza cover themselves only with thin cloths and rely on fire to keep them warm. It takes them less than 30 seconds to start a fire by rotating wooden firedrills between their palms and creating friction in a hollowed-out scrap of soft wood.

A couple of days later, the Hadza men were sitting at camp when one suddenly called for silence. "He told our guide that he had heard the bird they follow to honey," Barbara said. "The three of them ran up a hill, and a few minutes later we saw smoke. One of them ran down to borrow a big, metal basin from our cook. A while later, they brought it down full of honey and comb. They had wood in their hair, they had been stung in several places, and they were laughing away. Our guide later told us they make money selling honey, but they seemed very happy to share it with us, with no thought of saving it for cash."

The Hadza steadfastly refuse to be "settled" into villages or to adopt the life of sedentary farmers. For seventy years they have resisted efforts by the English colonial government, and later the Tanzanian government, to limit their living space or make them grow crops. From time to time, substantial amounts of money have been spent to move the Hadza into government-built housing and teach them to grow cotton. The Hadza may stay for a short time, while free food is available, but then they return to the bush. The largest resettlement occurred in 1964, when the government of Tanzania provided brick houses, piped water, schools, and a medical clinic, but many of the Hadza got sick or died because of the monotonous diet and the boring lifestyle. By 1979, almost all of them had returned to their old, nomadic ways. The Hadza may be the only tribe in Africa that has never paid taxes.

James Woodburn, an English social anthropologist, studied the 400 Eastern Hadza people intensively from 1958 to 1960 and revisited them frequently in later years. The following information is derived from his numerous published articles.

The red paintings can be subdivided into those found in central Tanzania, some of which may have been made by Sandawe and Hadza ancestors; and those found in a broad band stretching from Zambia to the Indian Ocean, which are thought to have been painted by Twa.

The Tanzanian paintings include early large, naturalistic images of animals (fig. 157) with occasional geometric patterns and later images of people and animals, sometimes in apparent hunting and domestic scenes. People are drawn wearing skirts, with strange hairstyles and body decoration (fig. 159), and sometimes holding bows and arrows. The Tanzanian red paintings have been quite extensively studied, first by Mary and Louis Leakey in the 1930s and 1950s and then by Fidelis Masao and Emmanuel Anati, all of whom have recorded numerous sites, divided the art chronologically into broad categories and dozens of styles, proposed dates, and made tentative interpretations about meaning.

The Sandawe and Hadza, who claim their ancestors were responsible for some of the later art, live in the general area ofTanzania's rock art concentration and speak languages employing click consonants distantly related to Khoisan.These peoples have practiced, until very recently, a hunter-gatherer econony and even today some Sandawe spend time in the forest collecting honey and wild food and hunting small animals.

Men and boys hunt with bows and arrows, and they almost always hunt alone. Women and girls do not hunt. By the age of 10, an Eastern Hadza boy will have made himself a sturdy bow and a set of arrows to kill hyrax, rabbits, squirrels and birds.

Men tend to make long bows, about six feet in length, which are exceptionally powerful and heavy to pull. By testing several Hadza bows in the field using a spring balance, Woodburn determined that more than 100 pounds of force were required to draw an average bow fully. He concluded that Hadza hunters prefer powerful bows to accurate ones, which matched his observation that the Hadza hunt from very close range, 25 to 50 yards to shoot impala, zebra, eland or giraffe. Some Hadza also eat predators, including lion, leopard, and other wild cats, or perhaps scavengers like jackal, hyena and vulture, but they draw the line at reptiles like monitors, snakes and lizards. They use poisoned arrow tips to hunt large animals. Once a beast has been wounded, the hunter waits a few hours for the poison to act and then tracks the wounded animal until it dies.

Most meat is eaten where it falls. Hunters take each day as it comes and generally hunt alone to feed themselves. They take meat back to camp only if there is a surplus and they feel like making the effort. Woodburn's articles are laced with references to the laid-back ways of the Hadza, who "meet their nutritional needs easily without much effort, much forethought, much equipment, or much organization." Most men do not hunt large game at all, he notes, but content themselves with vegetable foods and small animals. Far from resenting these non-hunters, the few big-game hunters readily share meat with them as well as with women and children. The tenet "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" seems to apply to the Hadza. Good hunters hunt, and hungry people eat. Naturally a good hunter will be favored by women and will tend to be welcome, perhaps even pampered, when he joins a camp, but the interactions of Hadza people seem remarkably free of jealousy, resentment, elitism, tyranny, or any concept of private property. (See more on this under the heading "Social Life" below.)At about age 45 men stop hunting, but they continue to carry their bows for the rest of their lives.

Woodburn documented only a single situation in which Hadza men hunt as a group. They occasionally go out at night, encircle a troop of baboons, and kill them all. How similar this seems to the behavior of chimpanzees observed in Gombe National Park and the Mahale Mountains, who occasionally form hunting parties to go on binges and wipe out large numbers of red colobus monkeys. Neither the Hadza nor the chimpanzees really need the meat they get from these encounters, so their violent clashes with members of another species must be about something else. (See Thomson Safaris' May newsletter for more information on chimpanzees.)

Gathering begins early in Hadza childhood, when babes help their mothers, big brothers and sisters pick berries, dig edible roots, and gather seeds and pulp from baobab trees. This food supplies 80 percent of the normal diet by weight. Hadza people obtain the remaining 20 percent of their food from meat brought back to camp and wild bee honey taken from hives in the bush.

The Hadza are remarkably unconcerned about food conservation. When they dig up roots, they leave no part of the plant in place to sprout again. When they harvest honey, the seldom bother to seal the broken honeycomb with mud or a stone, which would encourage the bees to return and make more honey. They may know how to dry or smoke meat, but they tend to avoid the effort. Instead, they live for the present.

To while away the afternoon in the manner of many Hadza men, follow these simple instructions:

1. Find one to three other players.

2. Make one large disc from the bark of a Baobab tree.

3. Each player makes a smaller disc from bark or wood. (Tops and bottoms of discs must appear different.)

4. Choose one person, usually the loser of the last game or a newcomer to the group, and give all the discs to him or her.

5. This person piles the little discs on top of the big one and throws the whole stack at a tree. The discs fall on the ground and roll about.

6. The winner is the player whose disc is the only one to land the same way "up" as the large disc. (Keep throwing until only one player's disc matches the master disc.)

7. Bet any valuable thing you own on winning this game. Hadza men lose their bows, arrows and food this way all the time, according to James Woodburn.

Hadza women wear three pieces of clothing. They make skirts from the skins of female impala, softened with fat and rubbed until supple, sometimes decorated with beads, cowrie shells and bells. The skirt covers the buttocks and hips. A second garment, made of cloth and beads for a married woman, or strings and beads for an unmarried woman, hangs in front. The upper garment, also made from impala hide, can be used for warmth or to carry berries, babies, firewood or meat.

Men and boys of the Hadza tribe wear the skin of a small animal as a loincloth, its tail hanging down between their legs. The hide is held in place by a leather belt which may also hold a sheathed knife.

Men, women and children wear sandals to protect them from the thorns on the savanna. These were traditionally made from zebra or wildebeeste hide, but soles made from old car tires are now more popular.

Hadza people generally come and go as they like. They may travel alone, join a camp, move to a different camp, or gravitate to a small area and live there with any group that happens to come along. The major exception is demonstrated by married couples, who stay together an average of 20 years and tend to live with the wife's mother. If husband and wife live apart for two weeks or more, they are likely to be considered unmarried. Spouses of either gender may abandon the marriage and seek a new partner by reverting to the dress of unmarried members of the tribe.

A camp has no organized leadership and no sense of itself as a permanent group. The idea of private property must seem absurd to people who carry everything they own on their backs or heads. The Hadza similarly disdain the concept of private territory. They wander and settle where they can. If some other tribe takes over a site they have been accustomed to using, they are far more likely to move on than create conflict. Even within the Eastern Hadza tribe, Woodburn noted, dissidents are more likely to leave a camp than face a conflict. Conflict is often concealed behind ecological excuses, such as an announcement that the berries are better or the game more plentiful somewhere else.

The forest may no longer be as paradise for the bush men of Hadzabe tribe in the Mang'ola division of Karatu district, because a recent strike of famine is reported to have driven the hard core forest dwellers into a new trade of posing for the tourists who nowadays visit the area frequently.

The Hadzabe bush men, who throughout their lives have been surviving on hunting wild animals, fruits and plant roots have finally found the going getting tougher with each passing day since the animals have disappeared from Mang'ola forests while the vegetation are also drying up.

Again, it is reported that civilization has also had a hand in their plight because "their' forest has also been invaded by people who chops down trees for commercial purpose.

It's due to this therefore, that most of them are now being subjected to pose for tourists who give them some money before taking their pictures.

The Chairman of Karatu District Council, Lazaro Massay confirmed the presence of such activities, saying that hunger has forced the Hadzabe people to find means of providing for themselves, and that they use the money to buy food.

Previously, the bush men had even started feeding on animal skins once used for their clothing.

However, it is also reported that the tourists don't exactly pay the bush men directly, since a team of self appointed "middle men", acts as "talent agents" for the gullible Hadzabe people.

The middle men, are also reported to rip-off the bush men on their earnings since they only pay them between Tsh.300 and Tsh.500 per single shooting while they are said to charge the tourists thousands of money.

There have also been allegations that, the bush men are forced to pose naked or performing sexual acts but efforts to contact the district council chairman by phone to verify whether these claims were true failed since he was always out of his office when ever we called.

Last week, the Karatu Member of Parliament, Wilbroad Slaa also visited the Qanded area where these bush men live and managed to witness for himself how bad the situation was.

Meanwhile, the priest of Mang'ola Catholic Parish, Padre Miguel has given out a total of 8 sacks of maize to the suffering bush men.

Padre Miguel is also reported to have adopted about 20 Hadzabe young girls in a bid to try and assist them for their plight.

Karatu district is one of the country's 33 districts which have been very much affected by drought.

The World Food Programme recently distributed over 1,000 tons of food to Karatu, Hanang and Mbulu districts in Arusha region.

Also, the CARITAS office in the Mbulu Catholic Diocese distributed over 20 tons of cereal seeds worth Tsh.37 million, to the 19 villages in the Karatu district.

THE Hadzabe in Manyara region turned up happy and in large numbers to be counted in the National Population and Housing Census after they were supplied with monkey and zebra meat last weekend.

Celebrating with their traditional ngoma dance at Mang'ola village in Karatu district the whole night, about 100 Hadzabe thanked the government for considering their request and said the gesture succeeded in bringing them together to get counted.

The district authorities however did not provide them with bhang and illicit brew as requested since marijuana is legally prohibited. Though zebra are also endangered species whose hunting is legally prohibited, according to Karatu District Commissioner Abdallah Kihato they hunted nine zebras and several monkeys in Mbulu and Ngorongoro districts for the Hadzabe.

This, he said, was with the objective of collecting the tribe to be counted instead of them dispersing for hunting in the day. They did warn the Hadzabe though not to get drunk during the exercise otherwise they would miss the meat.

"We are so happy that the government has heard our requests. This shows that the government cares for us," said one clan leader Salbogo Dofu. Speaking on behalf of others, Dofu also asked the government to allocate them special areas in order to avoid interference from livestock and farming activities, which destroys their natural food.

He said it would be better if there was a protected area for them to reserve some fruits, roots and animals they eat since this will save them from starvation.

According to Karatu DC, the 1988 census showed that there were over 1000 Hadzabe in the area, but the number has reduced to at least 800.

The Hadzabe who still recognise Mwalimu Nyerere as the leader mostly live in bushes and caves and are found in Karatu, Mbulu, and Ngorongoro districts in Arusha, Iramba district of Singida and Meatu in Shinyanga.

Occupying a shallow trough in the shadow of Ngorongoro's Mount Oldeani is Lake Eyasi, another of the Rift Valley's soda lakes. In the dry woodland around its edges live the Hadzabe tribe. Numbering between 500 and 2500, depending on how "purely" you count, the Hadzabe are Tanzania's last hunter-gatherers, a status they shared with the Sandawe further south until the latter were forced to settle forty years ago. Sadly, the Hadzabe appear to be heading the same way: much of their land has been taken by commercial plantations and ranches, which also form effective barriers to the seasonal wildlife migrations on which the hunting part of the Hadzabe lifestyle depends, whilst the unwelcome attentions of outsiders is rapidly destroying their culture.

Being absolutely destitute in monetary terms, the Hadzabe are in no position to resist the more pernicious elements of modernity, with its trade, evangelical missionaries, enforced schooling, the cash economy, AIDS and indeed tourists, the majority of whom consider the Hadzabe to be little more than primitive curiosities. The supposedly backward and primeval form of Hadzabe society has also attracted a welter of researchers, whose dubious activities range from the "discovery" that grandmothers are useful for feeding their grandchildren, to thinly veiled attempts by multinational pharmaceutical companies to patent their DNA.

In 2000, a news report stated that the Hadzabe were preparing to leave their land and way of life for the brave new world of Arusha. Though at that time the story turned out to be a hoax, sadly, within five to ten years, it may become a reality. Short of convincing the Tanzanian government to protect Hadzabe land and its wildlife routes (most unlikely given the government's previous attempts to forcibly "civilize" the Hadzabe), the best thing that you can do to help preserve their culture is to leave them well alone.

Hadzabe bushmen residing within the Yaeda Chini escarpments of Mbulu district in Manyara region, have expressed their concern regarding the current increase of human activities in reserved areas.

Speaking in Arusha last week, representatives of the indigenous tribe said, of late, there has been an influx of hunters, poachers and farmers whose combined activities are slowly but surely destroying their eco-system.

Aided by an interpreter, the two Hadzabe spokesmen, Magandula Kizali and Maloba Masanga who were attending a special workshop on Wildlife Act review at the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC) said such activities were threatening their survival.

According to the Hadzabe, groups of people have been invading their forest dwellings, armed with heavy guns with which they kill large numbers of miscellaneous species of animals a move which has caused most of these wildlife components to disappear either by death or migration.

Farming is also reported to be currently destroying the natural vegetation at Yaeda Chini and surrounding areas. Because human immigrants have been doing some large scale deforestation in their quest to convert the previously virgin land into large farming plots.

Hadzabe, who live on small wild animals, roots and wild fruits for food, find these human activities a sign of their extinction.

The Mbulu District Wildlife Officer (DWO), Allan Shani admitted that such activities indeed exist and that the Hadzabe bush men have been playing an important role in protecting both the wild animals and the environment in the past, but now things have gone out of control.

"Animals had been having a profitable symbiotic relationship with the bushmen", said Shani adding that the Hadzabe would protect the wildlife and benefit by eating little animals such as squirrels and monkeys.

"They never killed animals for fun or in large numbers and never bothered with big game", said the DWO of Mbulu explaining that, animals were much used to the Hadzabe and never attacked them.

Mbulu District Commissioner, Gabriel Songa said people invasions of Yaeda Chini reserve areas have so far resulted into a myriad of court cases but many of which are later solved traditionally with agreements done out of court.

Human activities in both national parks and reserved areas are posing great danger to both the environment and wildlife throughout the northern zone of Tanzania according to recent studies.

The Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) in conjunction with the Mweka College of Wildlife are currently conducting an extensive research on the effect of human activities in reserved areas.

Hadzabe bushmen are currently found in Iramba districts of Singida, Mbulu in Manyara, Karatu in Arusha and Meatu district of Shinyanga.

The Hadzabe community sparsely scattered in the Manyara, Arusha and Singida regions have blamed individuals who are tarnishing their image by accusing them of consuming monkey meat and smoking marijuana.

Four representatives of the community who were in Arusha to attend a meeting to review the Wildlife Law Act Number 12 of 1974 said that they were being victimised for no apparent reason.

The representatives led by Mr. Magandula Kizali, Chairman of the Mongo wa Mono sub-village in the Mbulu District said that it is not true that they eat monkey meat and the allegations that the community rejoices in smoking marijuana are absurd.

Mr. Magandula who was accompanied by Mr. Maloba Masangu and two interpreters, Paulo Ntua and Athuani Magandula said that there has been a tendency of certain people who pretend to be members of Hadzabe community and claim that they know their culture very well.

"We are living in the bushes and neither do we cultivate nor engage in any trade. Now, how can we obtain marijuana?" queried Mr. Magandula.

He said his community does not eat apes nor does it offer monkeys for dowry as claimed by some people whom he said are out to mud sling the community.

Heart of the Rift (30 min.)

Produced by the BBC

The eastern shore of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania is home to the Hadza, one of the few remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers in the world. Ray Mears travels with them through their magnificent country as they hunt with their five foot long bows and poisoned arrows, eating their bush foods along the way. Ray samples natural honeycomb "grubs and all" and the sweet-tasting, venison-like dik dik before turning to nature's natural bathroom cabinet by chewing on a twig of the "toothbrush tree." He marvels at the skills of the young Hadza who, at the age of two, start practicing their hunting skills, shooting their bows and arrows at butterflies and insects before graduating at the age of 10 to birds and small animals. Ray learns how to make the poison for their arrows from the roots of the beautiful but deadly desert rose, a process that without great care can prove fatal for the handler.

Ray travels to Africa to spend time with the Hadza of Tanzania, one of the last groups of true hunter-gatherers on Earth. Ray explains why he has such deep respect for their way of life.

The Hadza of Tanzania are one of the world's few remaining bona fide hunter gatherer tribes. It's a way of life that demonstrates a profound connection to the natural world, one that's greatly admired by the survival expert. Here, he returns to the home of bushcraft to film the people with whom he has created a close connection.

Karatu district authorities have rejected a request by an Arab hunting firm from acquiring large tracts of land for hunting in Lake Eyasi basin after failing to meet conditions given to them.

Instead UAE Safaris from Abu Dhabi moved to neighbouring Mbulu district where it has been promised thousands of hectares of land for hunting, a move which has raised public outrage.

The Karatu district council chairman Lazaro T. Maasay said the councillors rejected the application because they were suspicious on the nature of hunting the firm intended to carry in the area.

According to him, UAE Safaris applied to the district council in 2005 to have Dumbechand, Matala and Laghangareri villages on the shores of the alkaline lake into their hunting bloc.

"We gave them conditions which they failed to fulfill. But instead of moving out, they went to the villages where they cheated the Wananchi with countless promises", he explained.

He said the firm, which moved to Karatu reportedly after their application for a hunting bloc in Longido district was turned down, did not specify if they intended to kill or harvest live animals.

Mr. Maasay, a councillor for the opposition Chadema party which has retained Karatu constituency since the first multi-party elections in 1995, cited other reasons why the Arab hunters were not granted a hunting bloc there.

He said one of the reasons they objected UAE Safaris to operate in Karatu was that the district authorities had no alternative place to resettle the people living in the villages earmarked as a hunting bloc.

"Most importantly we realised that the same area is occupied by the hunter-gatherer Hadzabe tribesmen who survive on hunting wild animals and fruit gathering" he told representatives of the marginalised communities living in the district.

The district council chairman added that the survival of the hunter-gatherer Hadzabe would be endangered if their land was leased to the Arab firm. He was speaking at a meeting in Karatu.

The firm later moved to neighbouring Mbulu district and is reported to have been promised 4,000 square kilometres of land at Yaeda Chini plains for hunting.

Recently residents in Mbulu, notably the Hadzabe hunter-gathers and nomadic pastoralists living in the area, called on the government to stop "the Arab investor" from taking their land.

The controversial deal is said to have divided the Mbulu district leadership with some opposing the leasing of the land to UAE Safaris and others openly blaming non-governmental organisations for "instigating" the villagers against the project.

Sources close to the district council told The Arusha Times over the weekend that leaders of at least six villages in Yaeda Chini area have signed Memoranda of Understanding with the hunting firm to allow it operate there.

The villages include Yaeda Chini itself, Mongo wa Mono and Eshkesh. The majority of people living in the villages are the hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists.

A district official, speaking on condition of anonimyty, said UAE Safaris intended to enhance conservation of the semi-arid area by re-opening the wildlife corridor that links Lake Eyasi and Marang forests on the edge of Lake Manyara.

"This firm would not go into hunting immediately. It would enhance conservation so that the animal population can increase and at the same time involve Wananchi in fighting poachers" he said.

At least five game posts would be established, according to him. The firm, which has already set up a big camp in the area, has also promised to support Mbulu people in water, school and health projects.

But Mr. Maasay said by rejecting the offer by the Abu Dhabi-based hunting firm, Karatu district had avoided land crisis that would have pittied the Wananchi and the government.

He was speaking at a training seminar organised by TAPHGO, an Arusha-based NGO for pastoralists, hunterer-gatherers and other marginalised communities in the country.

The seminar brought together representatives of mainly the Datoga/Barbaig and Hadzabe tribes and local leaders from several wards and villages within the Lake Eyasi basin in Karatu and Mbulu districts.

A team of Arusha-based journalists which visited the area recently wondered if Yaeda Chini could ever be attractive to international hunting firms. The wild animal population has dwindled over the years.

Researchers and human rights organisations have often warned that the Hadzabe, one of the last surviving hunter-gatherer tribes in Tanzania,may become extinct in the next few years because of pressure on their dwindling traditional habitat.

A just-concluded study by Oxfam says the tiny tribe, whose population does not exceed 3,000, is threatened by dwindlig wild animal population which they depended for food.

They are scattered in the hills surrounding Lake Eyasi, hunting the wild animals and gathering wild fruits and tubers for their daily survival in a harsh environment often hit by severe droughts.

Five districts in four regions have Hadzabe people.These are Meatu in Shinyanga region, Iramba (Singida),Mbulu (Manyara) and Karatu and Ngorongoro in Arusha region.

Three tribes have a particularly ancient history:

- the Iraqw in the Mbulu region with their distinctive physical features are the only tribe of Cushitic origin in the region as they grew totally isolated from their original Cushitic cluster. They inhabited the Engaruka fields and traces of occupation around Lake Natron, Manyara and Eyasi) go back to the Upper Paleolithic Period.

- the Sandawe and the Hadzapi or Tindiga: the first group lives in central Tanzania and stems from the ancient tribes who occupied the area with the Bushmen with whom they shared the Khoisan click language; nowadays they are fairly assimilated. The second group however is still organised in the simplest form of society based on hunting and subsisting mainly on roots and fruits and animal hunting with bows and arrows during the dry season. They are thought to be the only remnants in the whole of Africa of the ancient Paleolithic Times.

Grouped in clusters or divided into clans, tribes are not always easy to identify or to locate with definite accuracy and to those who search in vain for their presence on the map, I request their indulgence.

The fourth and smallest language family of Africa is the Khoisan. Most Khoisan languages are spoken by the so-called Bushmen and Hottentots of southern Africa. These peoples include a few cattle-raising groups such as the Nama, totaling perhaps 50,000 speakers, and hunting and gathering groups in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana and Namibia. Many of these are bands of fewer than a hundred speakers of distinct languages. Also included in the Khoisan language family are two languages in northern Tanzania: Sandawe, which is spoken by perhaps 25,000 people, and Hatza, which is spoken by only a few hundred people. The study of language relationships reveals the dramatic and pathetic absorption, dispersion, and isolation of peoples such as most of the Khoisan speakers. Many of the Pygmy groups found in Zaire and Cameroon are thought to be Khoisan peoples who have adopted their neighbors' Niger-Congo languages.

Tribal names can be altered by pronunciations or written mistakes (Rangi or Langi, Longo or Kongo) and the proper grammatical use of the language, to non-Swahili speakers, can cause confusion:

the Ha tribe in one instance appears as Muha and several times as Baha,

and the Hehe tribe appears as Wabehe.

Some are an improbable mixture of mistakes such as the Yao tribe, which is also known as Achawa, Adjao, Adsawa, Adsoa, A)awa, Ayo, Hiao, Mudao, Mujano, Mujoa, Myao, Veiao, Wahaiao, Wiayau or Wayao etc.

Others bear various names totally unrelated to phonetic interpretation: Iraqw or Mbulu, Hadzapi or Tindega or Kangeju.

Numerous archaeological finds around Tanzania prove that vast immigration movements occurred around the 1st and 2nd centuries AD with agriculturist tribes from Cameroon and Nigeria emerging into East Africa and Tanzania and absorbing or expelling the local Bushmen and Hottentots into the Kalahari desert.

More than a thousand places with Rock Paintings, especially around Kondoa at Kolo, Cheke and Kisese, testify that there was an intensely active Stone Age civilisation in the area.

The Hadzapi and Sandawe tribes who lived in that region kept their khoisan click language and, numbering only a few thousand, still live in such primitive conditions that they can rightly be considered as today's only survivors, throughout Africa, of the Stone Age civilisation.