Safari ya Tanzania

A welcomed site in Arusha upon our arrival. This man had his shop set up right next to the notable "Hillary Clinton Shop".  Photo Credit: Julia Hall

Karibu Kenya! We've just returned from our two-week safari with Dorobo in Tanzania, where we had the opportunity to view wildlife, learn about the savannah and forest ecosystems, and live with two indigenous groups practicing their traditional lifestyles. Dorobo is an environmentally conscious tour operator based out of Arusha, Tanzania that has had a working relationship with indigenous people's in the Yaeda Valley for almost thirty years, since the company was started by three brothers in the 1980s. Our two weeks with Dorobo were chock full of excitement and learning as enjoyed the natural beauty of the ancient landscape and the culture of the people's who have lived in harmony there for thousands of years.

We spent the first week of our guided safari (in Kiswahili 'safari' translates to 'trip') in Tarangiri National Park, a 4000 sq.km protected park which covers a large swath of northern Tanzania and is home to hundreds of thousands of migratory species throughout the year. During our stay in Tarangiri, we went on several full-day 'game drives' (what the locals call 'safaris') across the diverse landscapes of the northern section of the park. In addition to the hundreds of birds pointed out to us by our avian-enthusiast guides, we were able to catch sightings of many of the iconic African savannah species, including many African elephants, lions, wildebeest, antelope, giraffe, zebra, ostrich, and warthog.

I snapped this picture of the larger Dorobo truck crossing the Tarangiri River. Unlike many in the park, this river remains wet throughout the year, which means many animals come to drink from it in dryer months.

Although blurry, this picture shows two lioness resting in the shad of some Acacia trees as they watch nearby zebra grazing near the riverbank. They eventually made a half-hearted effort to take some zebra after they wandered very close to their tree, but it proved unsuccessful as it appeared they were already full and didn't care to waste the energy on a kill. 

A better photo of the lions taken by Meghan

Photo Credit: Meghan MacGregor

Photo credit: Meghan MacGregor

Rachel climbs up the baobab near our lower Hadza camp. Photo credit: Meghan MacGregor

I took this photo of elephants in the marsh playing and cooling off in the heat of the day. They also like to cover themselves in mud to keep their skin cool and damp and parasites from entering through their skin.  

This curious zebra took a break from his grazing to stare at us for a bit as we snapped some photos from the Land Rover.

While many of the animals are now beginning to migrate outside the park in preparation for the mating season and as food grows scarce inside the park, we were fortunate to catch sightings of most of the big game in the park that are still around. Evidenced by the ear-to-ear grins sported by most of us during the close encounters with these impressive animals like elephants and lions, the opportunity to witness these animals so candidly in their natural habitats was nothing short of incredible.The beauty, grace, and power of these animals alone was truly awesome; be it lions stalking zebra and other prey from the camouflage of the grassy plains or elephants casually grazing and throwing mud on themselves at the waterhole.

This is a view from our drive up into the mountains to our camp in the Nuo Forest.

After several days in the park, we headed west towards the Yaeda Valley, where Dorobo has an excellent working relationship with the native Iraqw (pronounced hear-ock) and Hadza people, both of which have inhabited the land in and surrounding the Yaeda Valley for thousands of years. Our first two days were spent high in the mountains (7,500 ft) of the protected Nuo Forest, located in a region densely populated by communities of agro-pastoralist Iraqw people.

Here we had the opportunity to discuss the problems associated with land shortages and forest conservation, issues incredibly pressing in their community as there is not adequate land to support the growing population and land-intensive practices of these people. In addition to fruitful discussions with local men and women we had lots of downtime in camp, which we spent birding, playing soccer with locals, going on nature walks, hiking to gorgeous natural waterfalls, tossing the frisbee, and simply sitting around the campfire sharing stories. This portion of the trip was pretty amazing, especially in contrast to the savannah, as the high-mountain forest ecosystem offered a completely different, yet equally diverse array of wildlife and scenery.

I spent much of our afternoon visit to the local village playing soccer with some of the children. Although they were a bit shy at first, they loved soccer and soon warmed up to playing with me. Photo Credit: Julia Hall

Following our time in the Nuo Forest, we drove another four or five hours down into the Yaeda Valley to spend our remaining days living and learning with the ancient Hadza people, a group of hunter-gatherers whom are believed to be direct descendants of the earliest known human civilizations discovered just north near the Ngorogoro Crater ('Lucy' and many remains of the earliest hominids were found here). The Hadza are an incredible people with a modest population who have managed to survive as subsistence hunter-gatherers in this region for thousands of years despite the extinction and assimilation of many other cultures with the advent of European settlement here.

Our move from our lower Hadza camp to the higher mountain camp involved an eight mile hike across the valley, which had some swampy sections. Photo Credit: Julia Hall

The Hadza start fires using a traditional fire drill made of a special wood. 

Once they have created an ember with the drill, they transfer it to a tinder bundle to start the fire. 

With the Hadza we had the opportunity to join them as they conducted their daily activities, including digging tubers for food, harvesting honey, gathering berries for eating, and even hunting for game. Many of us also enjoyed climbing a massive baobab tree with help from Mika (one of our guides) who slung a rope for us. We were able to walk, work, and hunt alongside these indigenous people, an incredibly genuine opportunity to experience their culture and lifestyle in its most pure form. Further discussions with the Hadza helped us understand just how unique they are as a people and how wholly content and satisfied they are with their lifestyle, which many (including the Tanzanian government) would consider primitive and/or backwards.

Additionally, we participated in other traditional cultural practices of the Hadza like dancing and gambling, which serves as one of their main mediums of exchange (some of us gambled clothing and other small items and won some cool Hadza arrows). Surely the time spent we with the Hadza will prove to be special memories treasured by young people from a culture and world so foreign from theirs.