About Oreteti   |   Arusha & Around   |   Maasai Villages   |   Mt Kilimanjaro   |   Volunteering

Safaris & Tours   |   Lectures and Courses   |   Northeastern Tanzania   |   Blog  |   Contact Us
The Hadzabe – Tanzania’s last remaining hunter-gatherers – have fascinated Westerners for generations. Yet until recently, visits by outsiders have been a source of controversy, to the extent that some guide books even suggest that the best way to protect their culture is to leave them well alone. All that is about to change, as Oreteti Cultural Discovery joins forces with the Hadza Survival Indigenous Network – a community-based organization that has successfully defended Hadza land against appropriation by the Emirates royal family – to launch the first ever community tourism project designed by Hadzabe themselves.

As the Hadza society is still largely a non-cash economy based on voluntary sharing, community spokesman Naftal Kitandu recommended that we don’t pay individuals at the same rates as participants in our Maasai village programmes. Instead, he told us, we should bring beads for the women and a token gift of money for some of the key players, but the focus should be on creating a collective project that would bring benefits to all three villages 

It was agreed that an automatic donation of 40,000 TSh (about £18/$36 at current exchange rates) per visitor, as well as 10% of the profit from each program, would be paid directly into a designated account for community projects. The Hadzabe also agreed that the first project should be the construction of a pre-primary school teaching literacy in the Hadzane language and in Swahili, as the majority of children and youth in the community – except those sent away to urban boarding schools – are illiterate.

Oreteti’s Hadzabe Bush Camp programme provides an opportunity for visitors to get to know the Hadzabe, not as ‘Stone Age people’ or a ‘primitive tribe’, but as living, breathing human beings with a zest for life, an indomitable spirit, infinite pride in their culture, and a keen sense of humour! It’s a unique, thrilling and profoundly humbling experience that you’ll never forget.

  • These are some of the activities that we offer:

  • Digging for edible tubers, roasting them and sharing them

  • Gathering wild fruits, seeds and berries

  • Joining a hunting expedition with Hadzabe men

  • Following the honey-guide bird to find sweet wild honey hidden in hollow tree trunks and branches

  • Building a traditional (and astonishingly waterproof) hut from branches and grass

  • Singing and playing the zeze, a two-stringed violin made from a hollow gourd

  • Visiting the pre-primary school project (from August 2008)

  • Chatting about daily life and the challenges facing the Hadzabe people

  • Climbing to the top of a sacred rock for a traditional blessing

 

Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology

  • Sacred trees, forest retreats: traditional conservation strategies in a Maasai village
  • From ‘pure’ pastoralists to agropastoralists: subsistence change among Tanzanian Maasai
    Ethnobiology research methods
  • The ethics of ethnobiological research: international and local agreements
  • Environmental education: more than just books about trees
  • Medical Anthropology and Ethnopharmacology

Medical Anthropology and Ethnopharmacology

  • An overview of Maasai health care systems
  • The oloiboni (Maasai spiritual leader) as a ritualist-herbalist
  • Placebo and psychological aspects of African traditional healing
  • The forest retreat of olpul: holistic health care in the bush
  • Ethnopharmacology vs. the extractive approach
  • Traditional health care systems and public policy in Tanzania and elsewhere

Oreteti can also offer assistance to visiting academics conducting research for higher degrees, such as commenting on draft proposals, advising on applications for research permission and residence permits, providing translators and field assistants, and linking visiting researchers with relevant local institutions such as the National Herbarium of Tanzania or the National Natural History Museum. 

Please contact us if you are interested in any of these researcher support services. 

Please note that lecture schedules may be subject to change without prior notice and that we are unable to offer transferable credit, although we are happy to set assignments for assessment by academic tutors at students’ home institutions. 

Oreteti Cultural Tourism Discovery is a company registered in the United Republic of Tanzania, Reg. No. 150884