Tanzania: 50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe

[marksimonbrown]

50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe
Tanzania Safari Deal Lets Arab Royalty Use Lands
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060901465_\
pf.html

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 10, 2007; A01


YAEDA VALLEY, Tanzania -- One of the last remaining tribes of
hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the
modern world.

The transition has been long underway, but members of the dwindling
Hadzabe tribe, who now number fewer than 1,500, say it is being unduly
hastened by a United Arab Emirates royal family, which plans to use
the tribal hunting land as a personal safari playground.

The deal between the Tanzanian government and Tanzania UAE Safaris
Ltd. leases nearly 2,500 square miles of this sprawling, yellow-green
valley near the storied Serengeti Plain to members of the royal
family, who chose it after a helicopter tour.

A Tanzanian official said that a nearby hunting area the family shared
with relatives had become "too crowded" and that a member of the Abu
Dhabi royal family "indicated that it was inconvenient" and requested
his own parcel.

The official, Philip Marmo, called the Hadzabe "backwards" and said
they would benefit from the school, roads and other projects the UAE
company has offered as compensation.

But dozens of Hadzabe interviewed deep in the scruffy hills
surrounding this valley said that while they are ready to modernize,
slowly, they were not consulted on the deal, which is a direct threat
to their way of life because it involves hunting.

While they have through 50,000 years survived the coming of
agriculture, metal, guns, diseases, missionaries, poachers,
anthropologists, students, gawking journalists, corrugated steel
houses and encroaching pastoral tribes who often impersonate them for
tourist money, the resilient Hadzabe, who still make fire with sticks,
fear that the safari deal will be their
undoing.

"If they are going to come here, we definitely will all perish," said
Kaunda, a Hadzabe man who prefers khakis but still hunts with
hand-hewn poison arrows. "Our history will die, and the Hadzabe will
be swept off the face of the world. We are very much afraid."

Their fear is based on a similar agreement the government struck years
ago with another company that resulted in dozens of Hadzabe men being
arrested for hunting on tribal land. Three of the men died of illness
in the bewildering environment of prison, cut off from the open world,
their daily hunting and their diet of herbs, roots and honey. Three
others died soon after being released.

"We're not used to that kind of life in jail," said Gudo, an elderly
Hadzabe whose best friend, Sumuni, was among those who perished.
"Sumuni was my age. Our fathers were friends. We played together,
learned how to hunt together," he said, looking away. "I don't want to
talk anymore."

A recent meeting in the Yaeda Valley on the issue ended with several
Hadzabe men shouting at Tanzanian government officials for ignoring
them. One of the men was later charged with disruptive behavior and
jailed for several days. Two others who have spoken against the deal
said they have been threatened with arrest and are now on the run,
moving from hut to hut to elude police.

Others seem prepared to fight an intruder they barely know.

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.

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.

His wife, Veronique, who said she married Gonga not for his hunting
skills but because she loved him, answered: "These people knew from
the beginning we were nothing. That's why they didn't invite us to
their meetings."

It was afternoon, and Gonga got back to work, straightening arrows
with his teeth.

Veronique walked with other women into the wiry tangles and green of a
thousand different bushes and trees, in search of roots.

The orange sun slipped away. When it was dark, the families talked
around a fire under a black sky dusted with stars.

"It's like we have to marry someone we don't know," Gonga said of the
deal. "It's like an imposed wife. You have to talk to someone before
you have to live with them."

He told some jokes about his encounters with the modern world, such as
toilets, which he finds unsanitary and strange.

He did impersonations in a high, shrill voice of various researchers
he's met over the years. And he looked up and asked about stories he'd
heard of people going to the moon.

"We hear some people were lost in the stars," he said. "Is this true?"

Researcher Charles Ngereza contributed to this report.