Mobile Clinic and Hunting with the Hadza

(Here is the link to the National Geographic article featuring  The Hadza, enjoy!)
7/29/11

                  Last Monday we left the Clinic in Karatu and drove four and a half hours over dirt roads to Gidamilanga, a small government dispensary that is virtually abandoned except for the one week each month that the staff and volunteers of FAME call it home.  When we arrived we noticed that there was a big to-do in a small Detoga encampment down the road. Grant and I decided to go down the road and check it out. In Karatu, two white men walking down the street stand out, here the contrast was even more extreme. As we approached we began to draw stares from the group surrounding the barricades set up to keep lions out. We decided that we would just continue to walk past and act normal. Grant thought that maybe someone would invite us in, I though this unlikely, but as we had just about passed, a man came walking briskly out from the interior of the encampment gesturing to us. I was a little worried, but the stranger came up and after greeting us in Detoga continued the conversation in pretty good english. He invited us in and said that it was fine to look around but, eyeing my DSLR, advised that it was better if I did not take pictures. We assured him we wouldn’t and proceeded to follow him past the guards. The “party” was the end of a 10 day celebration of the coming of age(13) of the young men and women of the tribe. The celebration was culminated by singing, dancing, drinking and circumcision of the young men and women. Observing the armed men surrounding us I figured that this may not be the best time to take a stand against female circumcision so I held my tongue. Our “guide” told us that he had family matters to attend but that we should feel at home and stop looking so tense. I tried to get some video of the women dancing and singing but I am not sure if it really turned out, after all I was shooting it while the camera was lung over my shoulder. After a while of standing there “acting natural” we decided it was our time to go and we headed back up to our room.

                  The rooms were hot, and the mosquito nets had holes in them, and I often awoke in the middle of the night covered both in bites and sweat. Since I have stopped taking my malaria medication, I am hoping that none of the mosquitos were carrying the parasite.

                  For the next two days we drove 45 minutes each morning, out to Endesh, where we set up in a small school building once ran by missionaries in a dry lakebed . When we arrived there were already about eighty people there and over the course of the two days in Endesh we treated about two hundred patients. I worked mostly in the lab, analyzing just about anything that comes out of the body that smells funky, and found, partly to my dismay, that I was kinda good at it.

On Thursday we set up in Gidamilanga and saw another hundred or so patients. It was a very rewarding experience and the people were so grateful!!

Grant and I traded Knives, and steel nails for sets of bows and arrows from the Hadza. We aquirred quite an arsenal haha. Later that evening one of the Hadza took us out into the bush to hunt. I am not sure if we were hunting for anything in particular b/c he seemed content to stalk and shoot at just about any living thing in the vicinity. He made an amazing shot and hit a very small bird with a wooden arrow. We stuck close to our new friend trusting his chances against a lion or hyena attack better than ours alone, though I might add that we have been practicing and are getting much better with our wooden bows. It was an experience hunting with one of the few remaining hunter gather tribes left in West Africa. His shirt was falling apart so grant gave him his shirt and sweatshirt. While he looked a little odd clad in a button-down Patagonia shirt and a hoody he was very grateful, and I hope that they serve him well.

We are back in Karatu and I have less than a week left at FAME to finish up my projects before I head up to Oldeani for the last three weeks of my stay in Africa.

I miss home, but am very grateful for the experiences that I am having here and the relationships that I have built with the amazing people who work tirelessly in the healthcare field in Tanzania.  

Best wishes,

Dave