It’s A Long Way To Tipperary

As the 10th of January is a very special day (my birthday – 23 now, how old is that!!) we decided to just chill at Lake Eyasi.

We headed off to see the Hazabe tribe who lived nearby. Now myself or Dara wouldn’t usually partake in this kind of activity, we’ve seen enough ‘Masai cultural bomas’ to realise that most of the time these visits are little better than petting zoos with people instead of animals. The reason we decided to chance this one was because the Hadzabe are such a unique group of people.

The Hazabe are the last group of hunter gatherers left in Africa and one of the last in the world. According to some estimates there are only about 1000 left – and of these only 300-400 living their traditional lifestyles. Everything about them is unique, infact right from the birth of humans as we know them they have been unique – to quote the every reliable wikipedia:

…the Juǀʼhoan and the Hadza have the most divergent known mitochondrial DNA of any human populations, suggesting that they were the first, or at least among the first, surviving peoples to have split off the family tree. In other words, the three primary genetic divisions of humanity are the Hadzabe, the Juǀʼhoansi and relatives, and everyone else.

After initially getting a bit lost as the group we were going to see had moved since our guide had last visited them we found the. Well, meeting these amazing people lived up to expectations! There’s little that I can say that isn’t better described in photos so here we go – check out that baboon hat!!

That’s a Hadza house you see there in the background!

This old man wore that sack with as much pride as you would see a Yuppie wearing a brand new Gucci suit

Digging for mice/dinner

The guys were just unique, I won’t wax too lyrical here and just recommend this National Geographic article instead.

Betsy liked the Hadza so much that she didn’t want to leave and refused to start, I found the loose battery connection after a few minutes searching and we were on our way once more.

We arrived back at the lodge beside the campsite just in time to have my birthday lunch – a present from my distant but always loving Mummy!

The guys in the lodge cooked up a lovely lunch which left us satisfied all afternoon, when we managed little more than a stroll down on the beach…

…before having some lovely sundowners looking down on the lake.