geosand

We ( couple in our late 60's) in the very early stages of planning our first safari to East Africa - likely for June 2012. Still trying to decide what to include in our itinerary for Kenya and Tanzania. A full day cultural tour with the Hadzabe and Datoga Tribes has been proposed. Does anyone have experience with this?

I am certain I will return often with other queries. Thanks!

aby

Hi geosand

it's easy to get answers to questions like this one
just insert "Hadzabe" in the <Search the Forums> box (up right)

examples:
http://www.fodors.com/community/afri...he-hadzabe.cfm

http://www.fodors.com/community/afri...zabe-hunts.cfm

safari njema

aby

ShayTay

I did this back in 2007. It was quite strenuous, hiking several miles in the early morning, sometimes through sand. Only the strongest of our group was able to keep up with them.

atravelynn

I investigated and was even interested in spending several days in this region with these tribes. After the research that I did, I reached the conclusion that tourism has prompted excessive killing of animals for the purpose of demonstrating the hunt. The game that is killed is not even eaten because of the excess. I decided against including this region and activities on my upcoming trip. In the past I don't think there were as many problems with killing animals for demonstration purposes.

ShayTay

That may happen in some cases, I guess, but the one bird and mongoose they killed on our hunt was eaten by the Hadzabe after we returned from the hunt. Perhaps there are more people visiting them now. I think the main problem for the OP would be how strenuous it would be.

sandi

... yeh, do you want to be running around with a bunch of kids?

atravelynn

ShayTay, I think things have changed since 2007 with the volume of killings for visitors.

But you can visit without doing a hunt as I understand.

keah05

We did the hunt with the hadzabe tribe in 2007 and it is quite strenuous as ShayTay pointed out, we found it difficult to keep up sometimes crawling under shrub and running over rough ground. They are hunter/gatherers so you could always go with the women they will show you how to find the roots that they eat, this is much easier.
You visit the Datoga tribe in their home were they will show you how to grind Maize (they will encourage you to join in)and make snuff which they offered us to try but we politely declined.
Next we visited the blacksmith and watched him make a bracelet out of brass padlocks, it was very interesting as they use the most basic tools. You can buy any of the items they make.