Another fascinating ethnic group found in Tanzania is a small tribe of hunter-gatherers who live in the eastern rift valley in the northern part of the country, the Hadza people. They live near the salty shores of Lake Eyasi which depending on the amount of annual rains it may completely dry up in the dry season. Hadza speaks a click language, similar to other Khoisan speakers found in Southern Africa and Botswana, their lifestyle also relates.
Owing to their nomadic lifestyle, they do not build permanent settlements. Instead, they stay in open camps, campgrounds shift due to migration caused by weather and food sources. Sometimes the camp is completely deserted when someone is ill or dies, they tend to associate the evil caused the disease with the place where the sickness has occurred, and they will never come to that place again, as they consider it taboo.
Today about 200-300 of 1300 remaining Hadza still live almost exclusively from hunting game, collecting honey, digging tubers, and gathering berries and baobab fruit. They have a unique lifestyle completely different from other tribes in Tanzania. There is no social hierarchy thus they don’t recognize the authority of a leader, and the group is based on a voluntary agreement, each assuming different roles in the community. Women are in charge of building the shelters, which are made from simple materials nature could provide they would use thin branches, grasses, and rocks. Also, women and children would go out compulsorily accompanied by at least one man and pick the plants and herbs for food.
Men would hunt using bows and arrows, with the tips dipped in poison from the Adenium shrub, camouflaging to lure their wild game. A day walking in the wild trying to catch dikdik, baboons, bush baby, or anything less fortunate to cross their way it is one of the activities available to visitors. Like Maasai, the Hadza people have been more conservative and maintain their way of living.
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