Jordan, the hunter?

In the morning, we had to wake up before sunrise to go hunting. I was in a group with Bond, Anna and Emily Fleming and was paired with three boys under twenty. One of the boys was ten haha. They walk so fast and sort of left us in the dust. In the beginning, I thought they were hunting baboons but then I realized we were hunting small rodents called pimbis. They actually lost of a few times and I had to yell “wapi?” to find them in which they whistled to us to come. When they hunt, they communicate in a lot of clicks and whistles. They have amazing hearing and their language is based around clicks so they are better hunters. Finally they realized they would have to lose us to catch anything. When we found them, I looked up on the rock I was climbing and had a dead pimbi in my face. WIN! Of course they don’t speak English so all I could say was “Muzuri” so they knew were thought it was good they killed something! They ditched us again on a really cool rock in which we relaxed and talked. We wandered to other rocks and eventually got honey with them. But by the end I was done, the flies and bees were SO ANNOYING. And it was very hot.

Pretty miserable afternoon. First true day of African heat and bugs.

That night we had a question and answer session with the Hadza so we could create our presentations. We all informally sat on a rock and talked. MY questions were based on formal education for my presentation. The most interesting thing about this talk was that the outside world has come to their land to research with they have tails. The outside views them as animals that are uncivilized when within their community they have never had conflict. In the end, we asked them if they had any questions for us and all they wanted to know was if we could date in college. So interesting.

I slept on the rock that night and the stars were even better and the rock was soo comfortable. I fell asleep to watching fires the pastoralists had created in the distance and the Darjeeling Limited soundtrack. Epic.

The next day we took the open air bus alllllll day to the Dorobo site. I basically did not talk and just listened to music. It was wonderful. I was truly sad to leave this place and these fabulous people.

When we arrived at Dorobo, we roughly put together a presentation on education. We concluded that they only needed formal education to keep their land. They need Hadza to fight for their land. Also, primary schools need to be closer to their land so that people actually want to go to school and can keep their culture. We came up with some solutions to the issue but the government support most likely would not be there.

In the morning, we met up with Njao and Sinnary and also met the people who are the head of Dorobo. Ironically, they are from Minnesota. They observed our presentations on land, education, tourism, and outside perception. The guy from Dorobo had a lot of useful information. He educated us on their lack of religion. Even when missionaries come in, they take some morals but then use bibles as rolling paper. They are true to their culture always and believe just in life. When you are dead, you are dead. After the presentations, we departed for another long, long journey. But we got to see zebras so it was worth it.