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The Hadzabe Tribe in Tanzania

Hadzabe, is one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes on Earth. It is one of the tribes living in the northern part of Tanzania. Hadzabe community is known for shunning. fashionable society, material possessions and social hierarchy, the Hadzabe move as needed to find game, tubers and wild berries. Hunter-gatherer societies understand that their survival depends on natural resources.This tribe is considered to be the last tribe living under the traditional way of life for hunting and gathering activities in Tanzania, East Africa, and Africa at large.

The Hadzabe ( Wahadzabe, in Swahili), are a protected hunter-gatherer indigenous ethnic group from Tanganyika . They live around the Lake Eyasi basin in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. The Hadza people are said to be very few. They are approximately 1,300. 

Since they are hunting and gathering society, they have no permanent settlement and domesticated livestock keeping. They are neither growing nor storing their food. They are just surviving only by hunting food stuff by using their bows made by their hands. Also, they are using arrows for edible plants.  Their diet is fundamentally planted in nature. They are also eating honey, fat, and meat. 

The Hadza people are speaking the unique and peculiar language commonly known as the "Hadza." This language includes clicking sounds. To some extent, it also includes pop sounds as well as some other familiar sounds. Based on their historical background, which they are preserving through their oral traditional stories, this culturally oriented tribe has been living in their contemporary settlements near the Great Plains of Serengeti since time immemorial as a unique and small group. Biologically, the Hadza tribe is one of the tribes that shows the traditional way of life that people used to live more than a million years ago.

The current environment and agricultural practices of the Hadza are threatening their lifestyle. They are losing their arable land daily. It is said that the Hadza have lost more than seventy percent of their land over the past fifty years ago.

The young men and boys are practicing hunting activities by using the traditional weapons known as bows and arrows which are made by their own hands. These boys and young men are practicing hunting activities alone. Young women and girls are not practicing hunting activities. They have their kind of activities to perform that suit their biological and gender bases.  Young men and boys are subjected to hunting activities since when they are at the age of ten years only. They are starting by hunting and killing small animals like rabbits, birds, and some more others.

The Hadza men are the ones who manufacture these bows and arrows. They are making longbows almost six feet in length. These bows are said to be exceptionally heavy and powerful to pull. They are then testing their weapons in the field to check their strengths by using the spring balance. These bows when being used in hunting activities are placed in the range of almost twenty-five to fifty yards that can shoot animals like the giraffes, impala, and zebras.

The Hadza are said to be able to eat some predators such as lions, leopards, other wild cats. They are also using arrows which are very poisoned in hunting activities especially when they are hunting large animals.

The Hadza people usually eat the meat soon after hunting them. They eat as the animals fall. The Hadza hunters are hunting every day and they only hunt just for subsistence on that particular day. Whatever they get on that particular day, they are going to eat them on the spot. Also, the meat taken back to their camps and local settlements is only the surplus meat but if there is no surplus, that means nothing is going to be taken back to their camps. In most of their families, older men are not hunting but just a few of them. They are usually contenting themselves with small animal foods and vegetable foods. The rest of few big hunters usually share their meat with these elders of the families including women and children.

The Hadza seem to be very smart in the distribution of duties and responsibilities as you can see an individual is performing their duties. Again, the Hadza strong men who are usually recognized as hunters are usually hunting so that the hungry people can get something to feed. Naturally, the strong men who are hunters are mostly preferred by women and are always favored and welcomed mostly as compared to any other group.

The Hadza people do retire their activities. They do this when they become older. For instance, the Hadza men retire from hunting activities when they are 45 years though after retiring they continue carrying their bows for their safety purposes from predators and other wildlife for the rest of their lives.

The Hadza people also, do practice hunting activities during the night. They never hunt during the day. In their hunting missions, they are said to be usually in groups. When they get to the field, they are trying to encircle a group or troop of a certain animal species and try to kill all of them. For instance, when they go hunting and meet a small group of baboons, they normally encircle them and kill them all. This habit looks to be similar to the chimpanzees living in Gombe and Mahale mountains national park, whereby chimpanzees are said to be hunting in groups as well and when they usually go hunting, they tend to encircle the whole group of animals, especially the colobus monkey and killing them all.

The reason behind killing these species all of them when they are in groups is not exactly the need for food, there may be another reason. This is not for the Hadza people only, even the chimpanzee species are doing this. They do invade the troops of some animal species for the specific reason that Is quite different from the food search, The Hadza Tribe in Tanzania.

Apart from hunting activities, the Hadza are also practicing gathering activities. Gathering activities begins as soon as possible early in childhood. The Hadza babies usually are helping their mothers, sisters, and big brothers in picking the berries, digging the edible roots, and gathering the seeds and the pulps from potential trees such as the baobab trees. The food obtained from gathering activities is said to be able to supply up to about eighty percent by weight for the normal diet. The remaining twenty percent is obtained from hunting activities performed by the strong Hadza men where they are used in bringing together the food from meat brought from the field back to their camps. Also, they are carrying with them the bee honey obtained from the wild, especially from the beehives in the forest.

The Hadza people are very powerful in minding their own business. They never care for the environment nor conserve it. They are not caring about conserving and preserving their foodstuffs. For instance, it is said that when the Hadza are hunting and digging up the roots for plants they never replace them to allow growth to take part again. Also, when they are harvesting the wild bee honey, they are normally bothering in sealing the broken honeycombs with any coverage such as mud or a stone, which may in one or another way encourage the bees to turn again and continue making more honey. The Hadza people may be aware of drying and smoking their meat so that they can eat them later on but they are pretending to forget by avoiding their efforts. Hadza people is one of the finest tribes living only for the present in the world 

Hadzabe dressing code

The Hadza women are usually wearing pieces of clothes which are approximately almost about three of them. Women are making their skirts from the soft skins of the female impala. They are trying to soften the skin obtained from female impala by using fat and rubbing them until they look supple. Sometimes the Hadza women are trying to decorate their clothes with beads, bells, cowrie shells, and other ornaments. Their skirts are covering only their buttocks and the hips. There are different clothes worn by married women and unmarried ones. The clothes for the married women are made up from the cloth and the beads while the cloth for unmarried women is made up of beads and strings hanging up in the front.

Young men and boys are wearing the skins of the animals which are small like the loincloth. The tails of the clothes are hanging down and between the legs. All of them, the males, females, and the children are wearing sandals to avoid the thorns that are available in most savanna land, The Hadza Tribe in Tanzania.

Hadzabe is generally coming and going as they wish. When married men and women go apart from each other for a particular period, they are said to be unmarried. Their camps have no leadership at all. Come and visit this interesting tribe withholding a unique way of life.

By: Simon Mwangi