Lots of New Pictures!!!

FYI: The following pictures are out of chronological order, for some reason.



Rift Valley Music Festival at Fisherman's Camp, Lake Naivasha. Pretty cool, and supposed to get bigger, and better. Maybe a trip next year?


Me, Zena and Bob tired and dirty after our day-long hike. The Yaeda valley is at our backs.



Bob looking our over the Yaeda Valley. One of the most incredible views I have ever seen.

Target practice with a Hadza bow and arrow. I have a lot of respect for these hunters after trying to hit a cardboard box 40 feet away (I missed every time by feet while they peppered the box without much apparent effort).

Hunting just after dawn with two Hadzabe. We saw two giraffe, an eland, many impala and dik dik, leopard prints and many types of birds and small rodents, but unfortunately, we returned to camp empty-handed.

Annie, Zena and Lindsay watching the sun set over the Rift Valley escarpment after a day-long hike across the Yaeda valley. This picture was taken at our second camp, which also had a nice big rock to hang out on (as seen here), but with an even more incredible view.


Arturs hiking across the very hot and dry Yaeda valley floor. This picture was taken moments before a herd of twelve Impala ran across our path (I was too slow to get a good picture).

Moschi, one of the Hadzabe's best hunters, making arrowheads from steel nails by cold-hammering.

Lamik ascends a Baobab tree in search of honey, Hazda-style, by hammering in wooden pegs. These tree-ladders are remade each time because the pegs rot rather quickly.

Making arrows with Moschi (left) and another Hadza at our first camp. Five Hadza men can make about 30 arrows in a two-hour sitting. Some arrows have sharpened wood points to use on small game and birds, while other arrows have a variety of shaped metal tips for larger game. Some arrowheads are covered with a poison made from a tree, which are used to hunt big game, such as Eland, and Giraffe.

Pictures!

Hiking in the Yaeda valley with the Hazabe, looking for honey and tubers. Even though the valley is particulalry dry this year, and many of the neighboring pastoralist and agricultural peoples are now relying on external aid, the Hadzabe have not had any troubles in maintaing their food security. Becuase of a naturally low population density, and a knowleged of the local environment's food resources, the Hadzabe are able to keep themselves sufficently nourished in a sustainable manner that does not deplete the valley's natural resources. In fact, unlike all other people in the surrounding area, the Hadzabe have never experienced famine.


Harry, Bob, and Mike resting with a Hadza man who is preparing his morning cigarette. The Hadzabe smoked a lot of tobacco, which our guides brought as a gift to each community we visited.



Sunrise over the Yaeda valley. In an effort to experience the Hadzabe lifestyle as fully as possible our group spent the night sleeping on top of a large, elevated expanse of rock.

En route to the Yaeda valley from Mbulu. While the roads were incredibly rough, the Dorobo drivers had no trouble maneuvering the comany's World War II-Era Mercedes Unimogs around the Tanzanian steppe.

Dan, here is your Defender pic...note the Zebra's in the background.

Harry and Bob standing at the rim of the Mt. Longonot Crater.

Mutana! (Greetings from Hadzabe)

It has been a while since the last post, and so much has happened! I'll give a brief overview here because I think the pictures give a pretty good job of showing how incredible the last few weeks have been.

After one week of class at the United Kenya Club, we spent a weekend climbing Mt. Longonot, a 9,700 ft. volcano, and listening to live music at the Rift Valley Music Festival, which took place at Fisherman's Camp, Lake Naivasha. The hike was pretty amazing; we saw steam rising out of the still-active crater, and on the way down from the mountain, we saw giraffe, cape buffalo, and impala stampeding away from us. After lunch, we drove about an hour and a half to Lake Naivasha to see the Rift Valley Music Festival sessions; a preview of a three-day music festival which will take place over Easter weekend. The show we saw was a little underwhelming, with only four small bands, and a small crowd of about 200 people. It was still nice to see live music, and the few people that we met at the festival were excited to meet and talk with us. The following morning, we went on a short guided boat ride to view a few members of Lake Naivasha's infamous hippo population. The hippos were napping and staying cool when we saw them, but still looked much bigger and more intimidating than i was expecting.

After our second week of classes, we embarked on an eight hour bus ride to the Yaeda valley in Tanzania to visit and learn from a hunter-gatherer people, the Hadzabe. The Hadzabe have lived in the area in and surrounding the Yaeda valley for at least 24,000 years. Archaeologists have found evidence of a hunter-gatherer group living in the same area dating back 130,000 years, though no evidence links this older group of people directly to the Hadzabe. While they still practice a subsistence based economy, the Hadzabe are by no means "stuck in the past" or "primitive." In fact, I found myself in awe of how progressive, open, and free the Hadzabe lifestyle was. People are free to leave and return to the group at will, marry whenever and whomever they please, and have access to essentially any material goods and amenities such as standardized, government funded schools and healthcare clinics. The Hadzabe, however, have chosen to continue their semi-nomadic way of life rather than follow the Tanzanian government's wishes to "develop," modernize, and pursue a sedentary, agriculturally based lifetstyle. One of the main purposes of this trip was to learn about the pressure that the Hadzabe are feeling from the government, tourism, and other groups of people such as the Tatoga and Iraqw pastoralists. The Hadzabe are losing their land relatively quickly because of these pressures, but because of the egalitarian, non-confrontational nature of Hadza culture, they have not been able to stand up for themselves very well. Several NGO's are currently working with the Hadzabe in an effort to stop the loss of land, and educate them in dealing with the Tanzanian government. This trip may turn out to be the highlight of this semester.

We will being our three-week long urban homestay tomorrow, and I will have more regular access to the internet (hopefully(, so look for another post soon. The rains seem to have begun (lots of thunder and heavy rain last night), which is very exciting. Hope all is well with everyone!

Classes, Hiking Mt. Longonot

We are now in our second week of elective classes at the United Kenya Club in Nairobi. Each student gets to choose two classes from a total of four offered to complete their schedule, along with Swahili and the core course which every student has to take. I am taking Biodiversity and Conservation in East Africa, and Health Healing and Sickness in Kenya. So far both classes have been a little slow, but we have only been reading introductory and general information about each subject.

This weekend, our group drove about two hours west to Mt. Longonot, an active volcano which last erupted in the 1600's. The hike was very beautiful, with views in the crater floor, which apparently has a healthy leopard population, and views out to the surrounding arid lands. We could just make out the Western rim of the Rift Valley in the distance, along with the shoreline of Lake Nakuru. The most exciting part of the hike turned out to be the walk down. We saw a herd of Cape Buffalo stampede away from a herd of stampeding giraffes, who were scared into flight by a group of off-trail tourists (you guessed it: Americans...but not from our group). It was a pretty cool sight, and our first glimpse of Kenyan megafauna. We also saw a couple gazelles, but they were very far away from us and hard to make out.

Currently, our group is preparing to travel to Tanzania to visit and learn about the Hadza, one of the last remaing hunter-gatherer groups in the region. We will be there for a week, camping and travelling around the area.

More pictures to come soon!