HADZABE TRIBE OF LAKE EYASI

One interesting activity that we include in some of our tailor-made safari itineraries is a day trip to Lake Eyasi in Tanzania’s Karatu district to visit the Hadzabe tribe and learn about their way of life. The Hadza people is a protected hunter-gatherer indigenous ethnic group that live around Lake Eyasi basin in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. Around 400 of them still survive exclusively based on the traditional means of foraging. As descendants of Tanzania's aboriginal, pre-Bantu expansion hunter-gatherer population, they have probably occupied their current territory for tens and thousands of years, with relatively little modification to their basic way of life until the past hundred years. Hadzaland is just 31 miles from Olduvai Gorge, an area referred to as the “Cradle of Mankind" because of the number of hominin fossils found there, and 25 miles from the prehistoric site of Laetoli.

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However, the increasing impact of tourism pose serious threats to the continuation of their traditional way of life, which we see is becoming more and more fragile. Due to this we are extremely selective on who we take to visit the Hadzabe ancestral lands. Not all my signature itineraries include a trip to Lake Eyasi. If ever we do include, we limit group size at a maximum of 4 guests and make sure that participants are culturally sensitive individuals and who would appreciate this kind of cross-cultural interaction. At Safaris & Treasures we do strongly advocate for sustainable and responsible tourism.