Culture shock

RIFT VALLEY, TANZANIA -- They talk to birds? Yes, the doctor from Charleston told me; they talk to birds, and the birds talk back to them. In fact, he added, bird and man sometimes quarrel like an old married couple.

The doctor was Dilan Ellegala, a neurosurgeon from the Medical University of South Carolina. During the past few years, he has helped train people how to do brain surgery at a small hospital in Haydom, a bush town near the Serengeti Plateau.

While exploring the area, Ellegala learned about the Hadzabe, who live in the Rift Valley. The Hadzabe are among the rarest tribes on Earth -- the last functioning hunter-gatherers in Africa. They speak a distinct language that includes "clicks," and some researchers cite genetic evidence that connect them to the Pygmies. They number between 400 and 1,000.

Anthropologists have documented how the Hadzabe and birds have developed a symbiotic relationship where birds guide people and badgers to nests of wild bees. This relationship enables the birds to get some wax, while the Hadzabe get honey. Ellegala said he was amazed when a bird showed up and seemed to urge a tribesman about a particular tree, and how the man and bird seemed to argue about whether the tree had good honey.

I was anxious to see these people myself, and during a recent trip to Haydom, I made arrangements with an employee at the hospital for a truck and a guide. He suggested I buy sacks of maize and salt as a gift, which I did. The next morning, we woke up early and headed toward the Yaeda Valley. On the way, we picked up a translator, Samuel, and a guide named Emmanuel, who said he was an evangelist and "knows everything about the Hadzabe." We also picked up a guy who turned out to be a construction worker.

For the next three hours, we took a neck-jarring drive down a series of highlands that opened into a vast green and yellow plain. We passed fields of sunflowers and maize and passed spear-wielding Datoga tribesmen herding cattle. At one point, a giant python slithered across the road tracks. On the other side of the plain, we spotted towering baobab trees and grass huts. "Hadzabe," Emmanuel said, motioning toward the shacks, and it was hard not to think of the movie, "Avatar."

We stopped a while later at some shacks next to a brick church he was building. The contrast between the fragile grass shacks and thick brick walls was a little jarring and soon would become symbolic of what is happening to the Hadzabe.

Like a good tour guide, Emmanuel showed us a family's shack and urged us to look inside. He urged a couple of Hadzabe to go in with us. They smiled uncomfortably as they squatted for a photograph. Then he showed off his church, with the construction worker at his side. He asked several women to show how they pound maize with rocks and asked villagers to do a traditional dance. It was fascinating, but it also began to feel like a tourist trap.

Emmanuel gathered the villagers onto some rough-hewn seats next to the church and began to preach. He directed the villagers to get the sacks of maize and salt. Then, through the translator, he said the villagers were willing to sell us some of their bows and arrows and beads.

When we returned to Haydom and I told Ellegala what we saw, he was furious. He said the evangelist was effectively teaching the Hadzabe that if they become Christians, they'll get food and money. "It's the worst thing that could happen to the Hadzabe."

Ellegala's group, Madaktari Africa, along with MUSC, plans to expand their program in Tanzania. Their goal is to train local doctors to do medical procedures and ultimately reduce dependence on foreign health care professionals. He said the last thing he wants to do is create more dependence by generating a new industry that changes a self-sufficient culture that has survived the ages to one that exists to entertain tourists.

Ellegala had a good point. In my eagerness to learn about a rare culture, I was used by a missionary, who probably thought he was doing God's work.

The Hadzabe are as independent a group of people as you'll find on the planet. The Hadzabe have lived by hunting and foraging for tens of thousands of years. They are peaceful and require few possessions. They move with the animals they hunt. "They do not believe in an afterlife and there are few religious restrictions," Frank Marlowe, an anthropologist, wrote in 2002. "There are few rules in general, and what few there are often go ignored with little consequence, except for the rules about eating the men's special epeme meat."

But the missionary was trying to tie them to his church, agriculture and tourist cash. In retrospect, I find it hard to believe that these things would help them.

People have been trying to convert the Hadzabe in one form or another for generations. Travel companies have dangled money in front of the tribes to help create a new tourist destination. The Tanzanian government has tried to build schools for the Hadzabe to little avail. "We want them to go to school," a government official told The Washington Post three years ago. "We want them to wear clothes. We want them to be decent."

Meanwhile, Datoga and members of other tribes have moved into this remote area, planting crops and raising cattle. Hunters and poachers have pushed out the elephants, zebras and other wild animals the Hadzabe depend on. Three years ago, a wealthy family from the United Arab Emirates tried to lease 2,500 square miles of the valley for their personal hunting ground. The deal fell through because of international pressure.

The Hadzabe are thought to be the second-oldest people on Earth, but in a shrinking world, will there be room for them in the future?

Reach Tony Bartelme at 937-5554 or tbartelme@postandcourier.com.