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50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe
Gonga Petro perches on a rock in the Yaeda Valley, where the Hadzabe still hunt with hand-hewn arrows.
(By Stephanie Mccrummen -- The Washington Post)
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Although the Hadzabe characteristically avoid confrontation by fleeing into the bush, a group of men recently greeted a passing convoy of Land Cruisers with bows drawn.
"I don't even know what an Arab looks like," said Kaunda, who was among them. "Maybe he's black. Maybe he's another color. I don't know. But we are ready to die."
A few groups that advocate on behalf of indigenous peoples are working with the Hadzabe to promote a dialogue with the government and the company, a task that poses its own challenges. The Hadzabe are highly decentralized, living in remote, mobile settlements of two or three families scattered throughout the valley. They are also egalitarian, with no real hierarchy or leadership, and tend to reach decisions by consensus.
Even if the tribe came up with a solution, it remains unclear whether the Tanzanian government or the UAE company would be willing to compromise. Marmo said the Hadzabe -- who until recently had no use for money, organized religion or standard time -- are "the one backwards group in the country."
"We want them to go to school," said Marmo, who is Tanzania's minister for good governance and represents the valley in parliament. "We want them to wear clothes. We want them to be decent."
Messages left with the UAE Embassy in Washington and a company representative were not returned.
The Hadzabe are believed to be the second-oldest people on Earth, and they still hunt and gather as a way of life, if occasionally before audiences of khaki-covered tourists, who flock to northern Tanzania by the thousands.
All live in the Yaeda Valley and surrounding hills, where one of the wanted men, Gonga Petro, lounged against a rock recently and reflected on his difficulties.
"It's very important to go to work and hunt, but now, you can just walk from morning to night and if you're lucky, you might come back with a dik-dik," he sighed, referring to an animal that is embarrassingly small for someone who once slew two zebras, an antelope and a buffalo in a single day. "But there's always an alternative. The baobab. Together with the herbs."
It was morning in his settlement, the four straw huts nearly invisible amid waist-high grass, thorny bushes and thick-trunked baobab trees.
The four children were out gathering fruits and pretending to be frogs. Their mothers sat outside, picking leaves off branches for lunch. Gonga sharpened arrows.
His family and one other moved to the spot three years ago to escape a cholera epidemic, he said, one of a multitude of problems the Hadzabe face.
