Encountering one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes of Africa.
BY RAMDAS IYER
WHILE HUNTER-GATHERER SOCIETIES ARE found the world over, one among the last few in Africa are the Hadza of Tanzania. On a recent trip to Tanzania, I spent a day with the Hadza people to study their preferred non-industrial lifestyle. All societies until 12,000 years ago were foraging but that the Hadza continue to do so was worth observing. Genetically, they possess one of the oldest lineages of modern humans.
The Hadza live around Lake Eyasi, a large salt-water lake that completely dries up in the dry season. An estimated 1,300 Hadza live in an area about 4,000sqkm with around 25% still making a living by hunting game, collecting honey, digging tubers, gathering berries, and harvesting baobab fruit. The remaining members shift between foraging and various other activities. They live in temporary shelters of branches and dried leaves but also use rock shelters during inclement weather.
I was particularly fascinated by their speech that employed clicks and popping sounds. Anthropologists
have determined that Hadzane language is autonomous and may be a linguistic isolate with a distant relationship to San, who speak the Khoisan click language.
I joined a pair of Hadza hunting men just before sunrise who were attempting to drive game into ambush while others in pairs followed the honeyguide birds to find honey. Within minutes of walking away from their rock shelter, we were in open scrubland cut by several dry water beds. I struggled to keep pace with their fast movements and in addition, my presence did not help in locating quarry since they are very silent hunters. The two parties that went out that morning returned with two birds, a bat, and a squirrel. The Hadza employ four types of arrowheads for their hand-made bows depending on the animal hunted.
Their diet primarily consists of plant-based food but also includes honey and meat. They find a large animal like a Zebra at least once a month which they share amongst the group. The baobab fruit provides them with ample beans and a reliable source of Vitamin C.
The immediate threats to the Hadza way of life have been new immigrants to the area. The largest of them, the Datoga, are Nilotic pastoralists who number 15,000-20,000. They have been in the general area since the 1700s, when the Maasai expelled them from Ngorongoro Crater which borders Hadza country on the north. The herds of the Datoga drink the scarce water in the Hadza dry season waterholes and eat much of the vegetation needed to support wildlife, which poses one of the main threats.
Despite these obstacles and the many attempts by the colonial and Tanzanian governments to settle them, the Hadza people have chosen to be foragers.
Their success can be attributed to many reasons. By embracing socialism with independence, development in Tanzania remained slow until recently. This lack of development meant less change came to the Hadza area than would have occurred otherwise.
The presence of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Serengeti National Park, which border Hadza country, allowed wildlife to persist. Protected big game animals migrate through Hadza country allowing them to continue to hunt as well as gather. The Hadza have long adopted a low-key response to outsiders by hiding from them. This behavior may have helped avoid confrontations that could have resulted in their eventual extermination. Despite their resourcefulness and resoluteness, their way of life is threatened by external forces squeezing them out of their hunting grounds.
When I asked the young hunter, Ndulumu, to say a few parting words in Hadzane, all he said was: “This is our home and please keep us here.”