Why Cultural Safari?
Cultural safari tours has become the most fundamental part of the tourism industry in Tanzania spearing an increase in tourist arrivals into the country, thus empowering rural communities to reap the fruits of globalisation and the ever-growing tourism industry.
This type of tourism allows visitors to experience authentic, indigenous cultures by combining nature, scenery, folklore, rituals, art and crafts, ceremonies, dances, and local hospitality of Tanzanians to give a unique perspective into the daily lives of the local people, simultaneously allowing them to experience the wildlife safari in Tanzania and Zanzibar holidays has to offer.
Why choose Tanzania Cultural Safari?
Tanzania’s people are among the most warm hearted, welcoming and approachable on earth, with the range of fascinating cultures ready to be shared with visitors. Kilimanjaro to the world-famous Maasai cultural excursion safari or a longer stay among local peoples is likely to become one of the most rewarding experiences of and holidays in Tanzania.
If not the Maasai then you can choose to head out hunting with the Hadzabe bushmen, gather roots and seeds with the Datoga women, or learn how to cook the Swahili cuisine.
Cultural groups
The cultural safari to the Maasai is fascinating because they are a native ethnic group in Africa of semi-nomadic people settled in the northern part of Tanzania and the southern part of Kenya for centuries. Due to their distinctive traditions, customs, how they dress, and residence near the many national game parks of East Africa such as Ngorongoro Crater.
Good to experience this tribe being one of few tribes in Tanzania who still continues in keeping their age-old customs and traditional lifestyle (semi-nomadic) famous for their amazing traditions and dances.
Although the two neighboring governments (Tanzania and Kenya) have started programs to urge the Maasai to abandon their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle, the people have persisted in their age-old customs. Recently, it has been claimed that the lifestyle of the Maasai should be incorporated as a response to climate change because of their capability to farm in deserts and scrublands.
Maasai’s civilization is strongly patriarchal in nature with elder men, sometimes hinged by retired elders, decisive most significant matters for each Maasai group. A full body of oral law and order covers many aspects of behavior. Formal execution is unknown, and usually, the payment in cattle will settle matters. An out-of-court process called ‘amitu’, ‘to make peace’, or ‘arop’, which includes a substantial apology, is also practiced
Traditional Maasai lifestyle centers around their cattle which represent the primary source of food. The extent of a man’s wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is reputable, and the more children the better. A man who has an abundance of one but not the other is considered to be poor. A Maasai myth says that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the principle that stealing cattle from other tribes is taking back what is technically theirs, a habit that has become much less common.
Shelter
As longtime nomads and then semi-nomads people, the Maasai have habitually relied on local, readily accessible materials and indigenous technology to construct their housing. The traditional Maasai house was in the first instance designed for people who don’t stay in one place for a long period and was thus very impermanent in nature. The hats are either loaf-shaped or circular and are constructed by women.
The structural skeleton is formed of tree brunches poles fixed directly into the ground and interwoven with a lattice of smaller branches, which is then plastered with a mix of mud, sticks, grass, cow dung, urine, and ash. Within this space, the family cooks, eat, sleep, socializes, and stores food, and other household possessions. Small livestock is also often accommodated within the house.
Villages are engulfed in a circular fence built by the men, usually of thorned acacia. At night all cattle are placed in an enclosure in the center, safe from wild animals.
Staying with the Datoga tribe for a cultural safari will complete your cultural knowledge and experience at Lake Eyasi. The Datoga are experienced farmers and craftsmen. When you visit their habitat you will be able to experience their culture first hand.
Location:
Datoga people habitat is in Tanzania. The most normal name for this widely-dispersed ethnic group is Datoga, though it is sometimes spelled Tatooga. In the outside world, they are commonly known by the Sukuma name for them, Taturu. Very few sources have data about the Datoga people. The best recognized and most numerous sub-tribe of the Datoga peoples are the pastoral Barabaig, who inhabit chiefly in that part of the northern volcanic highlands ruled by Mount Hanang (3,418 meters).
The sacred nature of this mountain makes it a significant theme in Barabaig myth and song. In some people lists, the Barabaig are listed as separate people, but as speaking the Datoga language.
History:
There is a little concrete history of the Datoga people. Their relocation history has been reconstructed through reasonable linguistics and study of oral traditions of the Datoga and their neighbors. The Datoga are linguistically and culturally categorized as Highland (Southern) Nilotes. Their roots are thought to be in the Southern Sudan or western Ethiopia highlands, probably 3000 years ago.
Gradual southward relocation of their ancestors caused habitat on highland areas of Tanzania and Kenya by speakers of Nilotic languages, herding and eventually farming in those rich highlands by about AD 1500. These Highland Nilotes now are occupied by two groups, the Datoga whose language is more distantly related and the Kalenjin cluster of peoples in Kenya, speaking several closely linked languages.
Identity:
The Datoga people fuse in with their environment, their clothing being the color of the reddish-brown soil. Only on closer examination will they appear colorful with their reddish, patched leather dresses, beadwork, and brass bracelets and necklaces. A prominent decoration is the tattooing of circular patterns around the eyes. These people are part of the broad Nilotic migration from Sudan along the Nile River centuries ago.
They were cut off from other Highland Nilotes by later relocation of Bantu and Plains Nilotic peoples like the Maasai. The Highland Nilotes are remotely related to the Plains Nilotes like the Maasai, Samburu, and Karamajong-Turkana, and the River Nilotes like the Luo. They were herders, but have differentiated to include agriculture in recent times. The Datoga are proud people, with reputation, and fierce warriors.
Traditionally, young men had to demonstrate their braveness by killing an “enemy of the people,” defined as any human being not a Datoga, or one of the dangerous wild animals, such as a lion, an elephant, or buffalo. Other Tanzanians and outsiders consider the Datoga primitive because they oppose development and education. They a have high infant mortality rate because of poor hygiene.
The Hadza cultural safari, or Hadzabe’e cultural safari, take you to an intrinsic group of people in the central part of Tanzania, living nearby Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley area and are neighboring the Serengeti Plateau. The Hadza number just under 1000 as a tribe. Less than 400 Hadza live as hunters and gatherers, much as they have for thousands or even tens of thousands of years; they are the last functioning hunter-gatherers in Africa.
The Hadza are not closely linked to any other people in terms of originality. While habitually considered an East African branch of the Khoisan peoples, primarily because their dialectal has clicks, modern genetic researches suggest that they may be more closely linked to the Pygmies. The Hadza language appears to be detached, unrelated to any other.
There are four native areas of Hadza dry-season habitation, West of the southern end of Lake Eyasi, between Lake Eyasi and the Yaeda Valley marsh to the east, east of the Yaeda Valley in the Mbulu plateau, and north of the valley around the town of Mang’ola. During the wet season, the Hadza camp outside and between these areas, and freely travel between them during the dry season as well.
How to get to them through the western area is by crossing the southern end of the lake, which is the first part to dry up, or by following the escarpment of the Serengeti Plateau around the northern shore. The Yaeda Valley is simply crossed, and the areas on either side border the hills south of Mang’ola.
Hadza men usually search widely for food or provisions individually, during the course of the day usually feed themselves while foraging, and also bring home some honey, fruit, or wild game when available. Women search for food or provisions in larger parties and usually bring home berries, and baobab fruit, depending on availability.
Men and women also search for food or provisions co-operatively for honey and fruit, and at least one adult male will usually accompany a group of foraging women. During the wet season, the diet is composed mostly of honey, some fruit, for tubers, and occasional meat.
The contribution of meat to the diet increases in the dry season, when the game becomes concentrated around sources of water. During this time, men often hunt in pairs and spend entire nights lying in wait by waterholes, hoping to shoot animals that approach for a night-time drink, with bows and arrows treated with poison. The poison is made of the branches of the shrub Adenium coetaneous.
The Hadza are a highly-skilled, selective, and opportunistic hunter-gathers, and adjust their diet according to season and conditions. Depending on local convenience, some groups might rely more heavily on tubers, others on berries, others on meat. This variability is the result of their opportunism and adjustment to prevailing conditions.
