Lake Eyasi

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17/09/08 - 19/09/09

We were up at 5am this morning with a cup of tea and half a banana. We visiting the Hadzabe tribe who are hunters and gathers, and we were lucky enough to be going hunting with them. The Hadzabe tribe is apprx 300years old and numbers only around 2000 tribesman and women within the area. Their numbers are decreasing due to inter family marriage and pregnancies, there is a large number of babies being still born or dying of complicated birth defects due to the small gene pool.
We were greeted by the all the tribe members of this this area, and soon found ourselves hunting with 5 of the younger boys of the tribe. They use bows and arrows to hunt with, speak a language simular to the click click speak of the Kalahari bushmen. They use three different types of arrow depending on the game, and this includes the poison arrow. These can bring down an elephant in ten minutes.
Game is getting harder for them to find with the encroachment of human popultion. On this occasion they ended up with 3 squirrels. They had a fire going in 60 seconds, with no matches, and proceeded to cook the squirrels and eat them. They offered some to us which we all tried. To quote Brianna, "it looked gross, but tasted yummy".
Note the squirrel attached to the belt of one of the boys.
You have to be a good shot with a bow and arrow to hit a squirrel, as they are not big.
The people in this tribe also constantly smoke marajauna leaves and seeds (the seeds are supposed to be stronger) boys as young as five were smoking while we were there.

After a midday rest we wen't out to vist the Datoga tribe. This tribe don't hunt they are blacksmiths, they make arrows, then sell them on to the Hadzabe tribe. While we were there they made an arrow head out of an old bolt that they got from the local village. Kevin and I got offered 50 cows and 2 goats for the promised marriage of Brianna to one of their sons.
The boys and girls usually get married at 14 years old and the girl is usually pregnant by the age of 15. The usuall going rate for a "promised marriage" is 10 cows, but because Brianna is white and educated she is worth a lot more. Brianna was embarressed when the young boy pointed to Brianna and said something that we could obviously not understand. Our guide laughed as he told us what the boy had said.

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