50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe

The Yaeda Valley once teemed with elephants, zebras, antelopes and other animals migrating to the Serengeti Plain, but the wildlife populations have dwindled in recent decades because of heavy poaching and because several farming and cattle-herding tribes have drifted into the area, competing for water and grazing land.

Some Hadzabe have tried to adopt their neighbors' ways, starting small farms. Others have headed to villages to look for jobs. Mostly, the Hadzabe's economy depends on selling wild honey in exchange for something called money, which Gonga once used to roll his cigarettes.

"Money was just papers," he recalled. "It was very strange, because we learned you could take this paper to a shop and get a pen. It was very interesting."

He lit a cigarette, rolled with a piece of newspaper that described a papal visit.

Government efforts over 40 years to forcibly integrate the Hadzabe into modern society have mostly failed. Instead, the Hadzabe seem to have preferred changing at their own pace, adopting bits of modern life over centuries.

A program to move families into a village of metal houses ended with Hadzabe fleeing to the bush after only a few days. "When it rains, those houses make a lot of noise," said Sarah Makungu, who tried them. "In fact, to be honest, we don't want to live in iron corrugated huts, but we would keep our plates and such in there."

The introduction of standard time has also come slowly. "What is the need for time?" Kaunda asked. "You wake up, you get honey. What do you need time for?"

Though some Hadzabe children attend primary and secondary boarding school in the valley, programs to build new schools and provide medical care and water have mostly benefited neighboring tribes and have lured more people to the overpopulated valley.

Missions to spread Christianity have also failed. "We just go to church as if we are pictures," one man said. "Our hearts and minds are not there."

Though the Hadzabe have managed to survive for millennia, Gonga and others said the UAE deal is particularly worrisome because it comes on top of the other pressures they are facing and because the newcomers will be hunting with the support of a government that seems hostile to the tribe's complaints.

"If we had been involved from the beginning, the issue could have been resolved mutually," Gonga said. "We need development, but when things are done this way, it gives us the feeling we are being cheated or used for other people's benefit."

He wondered why this tribe, the Arabs, did not seek his opinions. "Why were we not called upon?" he asked, explaining that he would share a cigarette and talk if they came.