Last Sunday I had an 'opportunity' to become a tour guide for a day.
There was this group of friends from Italy, driving thru Southern Africa, they started in Namibia, drove thru Zim, Zambia and wound up in TZA, they had gone places and still were going places. It wasn't their first, it seems, they have done it for years. They have a doctor friend in Arusha told them about Mang'ola, they wanted to see. It happened that the doctor knew my headmistress and the headmistress knew me and the latter had me get them around.
Of the places that any tourist coming these parts wants to see is the Hadzabe, mistakenly also referred to as 'Bushmen'. Mistakenly because they aren't that 'bushmen' you see in South Africa or Namibia; they are blacker and genetically not linked to the San but Bantu pygmies of the Congo. So you see how un-bushmen they are.
Well, they are thought that way and I'll lave it that way, Bushmen way. They are the primitive, they still live the same way their ancestors lived. Hunters and gatherers by trade. Even for their fellow Africans they are 'way wrong'. They don't farm, rear goats or cattle, build a 'proper' (definitions can vary here) house and a lot more. Even their fellow Africans get a 'tourist' taste on seeing them. They are an 'object' of tourist interest to both Westerners (tourists from places rather than TZA) and those from within.
So, the tour companies that organise packages for L. Eyasi would like their guests to see the 'primitive' people remaining. But, you see there is always a but. They are not 'primitive' in the way that primitive mean. They were primitive and then came the Iraqw and Datoga and bunch lot of other 'Waswahili' to Mang'ola Valley, and the primitiveness just remained in the fact that they don't want to mix. And above all, there came MONEY.
Back to the tourists. Most of them are disappointed, they are coming thinking of some very primitive 'things, objects' to see and wonder. The problem is that these primitive people got the taste of money and they all went wasted. Alcohol, just like any other 'indigenous' peoples in the world. All what they see is a Hollywood-type show, they take photos and these guys know how to pose, really good poses you'd not want not to believe. They are primitive remember?
End of Part I
Plato once said, 'We can easily forgive a child who's afraid of the dark, but the real tragedy of life is when men afraid the light.' I write about me, about people I like and admired, about what I do, what I see, and about where I live.
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