Another beautiful African sunrise… and then out with the
Hadzabe to hunt for breakfast! We met up
with Gorjo our guide who took us to a Hadzabe village. The Hadzabe are a bushman tribe that 2000
years ago migrated north from the Kalahari and speak a language with clicks
like the San (those little bushmen in the great movie “The gods must be crazy”). They welcomed us into their village and we
watched as they prepared for the hunt.
They were dressed in skins and typical African Goodyear sandals (sandals
made from tire treads and inner tubes) and were sitting around the camp fire
smoking marijuana getting strength for the hunt. These “men” were actually young boys… the
youngest about 7-8 and the oldest about 15.
You can imagine Jen and I trying to figure out how we were going to
explain taking our kids to see other kids smoking pot!
Our guide Gorjo and the merry band of hunters - smoking pot!
Anyway, they rounded up their bows and arrows and we
followed them off into the scrub in search of breakfast. Turns out there aren’t many Impala running
around there so the menu appeared to consist of squirrels and small birds (they
managed to bag one of each). We also saw the women gathering water (in a
five gallon pail with her hands from the apparently dry stream bed). We were gone about 2 hours and walked about 5
kms to catch this meagre breakfast.
One of the lads breaks out his knife, finds a chunk of
softwood, scrapes a depression in it and a gash running from the depression off
the stick (horizontally). He then breaks
out a long hardwood stick they were carrying around, plunks the end in the
depression and starts to spin it back and forth with his palms. Within 15 SECONDS, he has smoke in a pile of
carbon that has trickled out of the gash onto the knife blade and they transfer
this to a pile of loose brush and flames pop out. Very cool.
I’m not sure I could have found a lighter and got a fire going much
quicker. They then gave the stick to
each of us to try our hand at it.
Shawn/Rachel didn’t have any luck, I got some smoke going and Jen put us
all to shame by getting a spark going on her first try. She’d do OK with these people!
They then had a fairly small fire going so threw on the squirrel
and the bird just as they were… once all the fur/hair had burned off, they
opened them up, gave the intestines to the dogs and then put them back on for a
bit more on the flames. Then of course
they sliced up some squirrel and offered it to us. It was clear that they were giving us the
best pieces so Jen and I graciously accepted a small morsel – it tastes like
BEEF (not chicken). The kids wouldn’t
have anything to do with it. About 10
minutes later after some more pot smoking, they stamped out the fire and took
us back to camp. I’m very good with a
sense of direction and would have got us within a few thousand feet but they
had us directly back which was amazing as every bush looked the same and there were
no visible landmarks.
They then showed us a log they use for target practice and
gave us a bit of a demonstration from about 100’ away. I was surprised that only one of them was
able to hit it. It was obvious he was
their ringer but all of them came within a few feet of it. They then gave a bow to Shawn and showed him
how to do it. It’s a good thing Shawn
wasn’t born in Africa because he’d starve to death as he couldn’t come within
20’ of it. They then gave it to me and I
was able to shoot as well as the worst of them, glancing the log with one shot. This quite impressed them and our guides and
they kept throwing more arrows at me to shoot as I’m sure they thought they
were lucky shots. I
guess there is some Indian in my blood somewhere!
We bid farewell to the Hadzabe and very much enjoyed our
time with them and left to visit another tribe that is noted for being
blacksmiths. They would formerly hunt
down special rocks but now rely upon old junk (valves, door handles, hinges,
car springs) that people bring them.
They had a small fire of charcoal they’d made with two bellows made from
animal skins blowing into a hollow rock next to the fire. They threw in an old 2” copper valve and
within a minute or so had it white hot, took it out and broke it into small
chunks they put in long thin tray. That
went back into the fire and they pumped away at the bellow and and after a few
minutes, liquid copper. They poured it
into a mold for braclets and then covered it with a small amount of water to
cool off. The Hadzabe buy their arrow
heads from these folks and we could see that they’d made crude spoons, knives
and forks out of steel. Finally, we
watched the local tribe irrigating onion fields that they had planted (and scratched
out of the hard plains) with 1’ hoes made by the blacksmiths. They sell these onions on the market.
To recap, we witnessed a stone age tribe on the hunt and
then an iron age tribe fashioning steel, bronze and copper to farmers using
irrigation and tools to make nature more effective. Thousands of years of human progress in one
morning. What a fantastic way to end our
Safari!
From Lake Eyasi, we had a 4.5 hour drive back to Moshi… and
we suffered another flat! Sam and I had
that tire changed within about 10 minutes.
We were becoming pros at this. It
was very clear why they always carry two spares on the back of the Land
Cruisers! The rest of the drive was
uneventful and we arrived back at the guest house, safe, dusty and very
happy. The kids immediately rushed off
to find the puppies.
We loved that Safari.
This was always the big splurge of our trip and while we found a
relatively inexpensive way to do it compared to most people, was still many
multiples of our average daily costs but to us, it was worth every penny. Eight days was a perfect amount of time and
we were anxious to get the kids back on schedule to learn stuff (and do some
much needed laundry!). Highly
recommended!
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