Visit to a Datoga village

After a bit of relax this afternoon we leave from our lodge, that is near Lake Eyasi, in Tanzania, and, with a local guide, Charles, we go to visit a Datoga village, a population that lives according to ancient and traditional customs.

We leave the main road early and take a secondary dirt road, leaving behind the main village of the area, where red onions are grown and where more people live, including the Masai, the Datoga, the Iraqi or Mbulu.

We continue along a slightly bumpy road and, shortly after, we arrive at the village; we park our car not far from the prickly fence, made with the acacia bushes, that protects the village.

We get in from the entrance and our guide teaches us the essential words to greet them, the Datoga in fact speak their language, only some of them understand Swahili, but nobody speaks English.

The women smile at us happy and our guide explains that they are happy when someone comes to visit the village, because they believe that it brings good luck; we like this thing, because sometimes, when we visit the villages of the local populations, we always have the feeling of being intrusive, while knowing that they are happy for our presence we are pleased.

We take some pictures of the women, two of them have traditional tattoos, they are actually scarifications, that they make with a knife point, all around the eyes, as if it was a mask; today it is less and less practiced, even for health and hygiene reasons, so it is increasingly rare to find people who have it.

They are amused by the fact that we take photographs of them and are pleased with our curiosity about their traditions.

They let us enter a rectangular house, built with wooden poles and mud, on the roof, that is made of straw, there is a row of aloe vera plants.

Inside there is a large room, that is where the members of the family sleep, but sometimes the boys sleep outside; while the village chief sleeps in the other room, smaller, where there is a bed and the kitchen.

The village consists of only one family, the village chief usually has more than one wife and every wife has her hut where she lives with her children.

The Datoga are skilled smiths, so we go to the part of the village where iron and other metals are worked; the men show us how to melt the recovery ferrous materials to obtain the raw material and then work it.

They place the objects to be melted under the embers and with the bellows keep the fire alive, when the embers change color the metal has melted; at that point they make it pour into a form inside which it solidifies, from there then, using a less hot fire, obtained by burning the cow dung, they shape the metal to make the desired objects.

They make bracelets for women and other items, including arrows lances that they sell to the Hadzabe in exchange for honey or money.

The arrows are also made with a cold process, one of them takes a very long nail, about 15 cm, and starts to beat it, using an anvil as base; it takes about 20 minutes but he does a precision job, the arrow looks like a very sharp miniature spear with a series of hooks to make sure that the animal, especially the baboons, once hit by the arrow, cannot extract it.

We take several photos and they are amused, they are one of the most hospitable people we have ever visited.

It was really very interesting and enjoyable as a visit; obviously we bought the arrowhead they made for us as well as an aluminum bracelet made with recycled and fused beverage cans.