Tanzania Cultural Safaris | Cultural Safaris in Tanzania Travel Advice – Deks Safaris

At Deks Safaris we believe that the cultural diversity of Tanzania is one of its greatest strengths. By meeting and understanding people whose beliefs and values ​​are very different from your own, you gain new insights and perspectives that transform how you feel about them, yourself, and the world at large. This new depth of insight and wisdom opens up new horizons, possibilities, and flexibility in your future life choices. You can travel to Africa to learn more about its wildlife, but through its people, you will learn more about yourself. This can be a very valuable and sustainable aspect of your Tanzania cultural safaris tour to the tribal peoples of Tanzania. There are more than 120 different ethnic groups in Tanzania that have immigrated over many centuries: Nilotic herders from Sudan, nomads, Kushite herders from Ethiopia, Khoisan hunter-gatherers from the Kalahari, Bantu metalworkers from West Africa and Arabs, Indians, and Anglo-Saxon immigrants. All of these groups were displaced, conquered, or assimilated with each other over thousands of years to form the Tanzanian population of today. Each of these groups had differentiated traditional religions, social practices, rituals, customs, arts, music, and dance.

Best Selling Tanzania Cultural Safaris – Maasai People Cultural Encounters

The tribal communities of Tanzania want to preserve and protect their identities and pass on to their children the values ​​they have held for generations. Many levels of experience are available in many different communities on a cultural safaris tour of Tanzania, from visiting carefully restored historic sites and settlements, to staying in places designed to live out tribal and colonial fantasies, to engaging in real-time projects where skills are required are and ethnic handicrafts are recycled in the context of our common everyday world.

Spiritual and life-affirming encounters benefit visitors on an awakening tour of East Africa and local communities in a mutually uplifting time together. Deks Safaris can help you plan the best possible outcome of meeting different worlds at your desired level of culturally aware interaction and authenticity, in collaboration with diverse local tribes for a sensitive, respectful, and rewarding ethnic Tanzanian cultural holiday experience. Visit home with Deks
Safaris to experience the big world beyond your comfort zone.

Learn about the different tribes on Tanzania Cultural Safaris – Deks Safaris

Maasai tribe

According to oral tradition, the Maasai are a fusion of the North Africans and the Nilotic tribe who originated in the northern part of Lake Turkana in Kenya, which they abandoned in the XV century, then migrated south and into present-day Tanzania more than 200 years ago as they drove out other tribes to claim rich pastures for their livestock. A race in which warriors were the highest class and their religion, by God’s gift, claimed all cattle as their property, they annexed any cows they found. A proud, charming, friendly, and intelligent community, today one million Maasai live in their homelands of Tanzania and Kenya. Much of their tribal lands have been taken over by national parks in exchange for promises of cultural security and public welfare on the surrounding reservations that have not always been fulfilled.

To adapt to the inevitable, some have embraced the Tanzanian tourism industry, becoming guides, wardens, staff, and managers of many of the new ecotourism centers and helping to conserve the wildlife that attracts their clientele. Some own land, camps, and shelters, while others start self-help projects to provide food, furniture, curios, and crafts in exchange for education, health, and community development support. They also present their cultural heritage as a valuable asset for safaris in Tanzania.

This can take place ostensibly as ethnic entertainment presenting a popular touristic performance of Maasai warriors dressed in red, jumping and drumming, singing and dancing, as a traveling concert party, or as a heartfelt community project in which past, present and future will be linked confronted with real people on an authentic stage. Deks Safaris strives for that ultimate experience at all times.

Tribe of Hadzabe – Cultural Safaris in Tanzania Adventures

The Hadzabe are the original Bushmen of Tanzania with a Khoisan click language. These primitive hunter-gatherers lived in harmony with nature in the caves of Lake Eyasi Valley for more than 10,000 years. Now there are just under 1000 of them. The advent of the neighboring Datoga tribe and the development of the national government along with climate change, tourism, and commercial hunting have led to the gradual destruction of their environment and way of life, but their isolation has protected them from many modern diseases.

They usually get malaria and yellow fever from mosquitoes or sleeping sickness from tsetse flies. They are a pride but also a shame for a modern nation because they have not managed to gradually save the dying community from extinction, but out of respect for their chosen way of life they are now the only people on earth who have been allowed to hunt with bow and arrow.

Lake Eyasi area.

They live without a safety net and collect the food they need every day. They have no concept of religion or life after death, nor time beyond the phases of the moon. They live in collaborative groups with no social rules. The men hunt for bushmeat while the women forage for fruits, tubers, and other wild foods. You’ll sleep in an organic mini-dome dwelling made from our natural branches, while others prefer dens or curled up head-to-toe around a campfire. Life is fleeting. You don’t have to hunt a half-naked baboon or dik-dik with a bow and arrow to appreciate the Hadza way of life, but you can if you wish. Time for “living in the now” on a cultural safari in Lake Eyasi that instills calm, focus, and courage.

Datoga Tribe – Cultural Safaris in Tanzania Adventures

Like the Maasai, the Datoga were nomadic pastoralists but are now small farmers who grow beans, corn, and millet to support the raising of sheep, goats, cattle, and chickens. Consequently, they are dependent on permanent water sources and are negatively affected by increasing drought. A Nilotic people, like the Maasai, their patched leather robes blend into the landscape.

They wear pearl and brass necklaces and bracelets and circles are tattooed around their eyes. They are polygamous, governed by a council of elders, and are aggressive, negatively affecting neighboring Hadzabe and Iraqis, and sometimes refusing full cooperation with the government. His attitude deters sympathy for his plight. They live in mud huts in marked cattle enclosures.

All parts of their animals are used, and they breed and kill only what they need and are reluctant to trade. Paradoxically, like the Maasai, despite their bitter reputation as warriors, they are friendly, welcoming, and happy to share their cultural traditions with guests on an East African safari. They despise the Hadzabe and often prevent Hadza women from drinking water at the waterholes until the Datoga cattle have finished drinking.

Like the Hadzabe, they claim to be the oldest people in Tanzania, with a culture dating back 10,000 years, but they came from Ethiopia about 3,000 years ago to settle at Lake Manyara and Eyasi. They oppose development and education, have high infant mortality rates, and are viewed by other tribes as primitive, frowned upon, and disenfranchised. Less than 7% speak the local language, Kiswahili.

Sukuma tribe – Cultural Safaris in Tanzania Adventures

The northern Sukuma are pastoralists and farmers. A Bantu people originally from what is now Uganda, reaching north-western Tanzania across the Congo to Burundi and Rwanda, more than 8 million Sukuma now form the largest ethnic group in Tanzania, accounting for one-sixth of the total population. Most have assimilated into the towns and cities, adopting western clothing and culture rather than the traditional furs or brightly colored kanga fabrics and kitenge dresses that they have adopted in more rural areas.

They all speak different Bantu and Kiswahili dialects. Some have converted to Christian and Islamic faiths, while the rest share many different traditional beliefs, often worshiping and making sacrifices for their ancestors to ensure the family’s health and prosperity. Although there is a folk museum (Bujora Cultural Center) in Mwanza, much of its traditional culture is in decline, except for the dance competitions held in the villages from May to September.

Elders still believe in the power to speak to ancestors and predict the future, held in the hands of clan chiefs and other sages, distinguished by ritual scars on their arms. Both men and women today work in cities and industry as doctors, lawyers, engineers, businessmen, and miners, but women still retain their family role as housewives. Villages were once efficiently run by chiefs and elders at the communal level, with most families participating in decision-making.

Now they face increasing problems as their young people move to the cities. They fight to preserve their cultural heritage and to ensure proper education and health care for their children. Rural women still fetch water, tend gardens, and cook for their families, while rural men are farmers vital to the nation’s economic well-being. Traditional dishes are still prepared with ugali made from cornmeal served with spices from green vegetables ranging from spinach and peas to cabbage or pumpkin leaves, which is an inexpensive meal that can be supplemented with fish, beef, or goat meat on special occasions is added. To drink there is yogurt or fermented milk or beer, which is indispensable on social occasions.

Tribe of the Irak – Cultural Safaris in Tanzania Adventures

The Irakw migrated from Mesopotamia via Palestine and Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya to Tanzania. Adapting to many different circumstances as they moved, they were eventually displaced by the Datoga of northern Tanzania but still harassed by the Maasai, leading them to resort to an underground life with their remaining herds. Iraqis are statuesque, immobile, private, and traditional people, but they have also largely lost their songs and ceremonies. Cultural identity depends on reclaiming their music, dance, and arts and rebuilding their self-esteem as valued contributors to a multi-ethnic, multinational, cosmopolitan society in Tanzania.

Social change is rapid and extreme, with friction in family groups caused by differences in religious and cultural practices, often seen at weddings when a group of elderly women in Iraq sings ritual blessings while a Christian in the church choir attempts to sing them to be drowned out with hymns in Swahili. One group of diners sits on the patio, sipping home-brewed beer and eating corn and beans, while another group dines in style indoors with processed meats and bottled alcohol.

Deks Safaris adheres to the ethnic presentation model as a self-funded tourism service that also serves the goals of a local community and is particularly appropriate in such circumstances. Older Iraqis are criticized as rigid traditionalists who cling to generational taboos, while modern youth espouse cosmopolitan values. However, through their preoccupation with Maendeleo, or Progress and Progress, they all become increasingly involved in contemporary issues.

Swahili Tribe

For more than 2000 years, the east coast of Africa has been the center of trade and exchange of ideas, and intermarriage between Africa and Arabia, resulting in the formation of Swahili culture, rich in art, products, and architecture around to produce the flamboyant and musical Shirazi, who claims to be of Persian origin. Before the Arabs introduced Islam in the 7th century, there was a vibrant urban civilization inspired by China, Persia, Greece, and Rome.

The Kiswahili language was the main trade language. Today it is one of the top 10 international languages ​​and was adopted as the national language of Tanzania to unite the diverse ethnic groups who shared more than 120 different languages ​​and dialects. Arab merchants married Bantu women, cementing a bridge between different races, cultures, and religions.

The dominant religion is Islam, often combined with remnants of older cultural practices and superstitions. Historically, the Kiswahili language and culture show ties to the Sumerians 8,000 years ago and the Assyrians 3,000 years later, who developed such an advanced culture in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley that they are credited with the earliest use of writing.

The Kushite people occupying the east coast of Africa mingled with the Bantu and later arrivals, not only Arabs but also Indian, Portuguese and other Asian traders to produce a people who combined the wisdom of Islam with the business acumen of merchants and merchants. the joie de vivre of indigenous Africans. For the Swahili people, an orthodox form of Islam governs their daily life in a good and peaceful way. Eidal Fitr at the end of the Ramadan fast is celebrated across the country and also

Eid al Adha is when many Swahili make a pilgrimage to Mecca. They wear traditional garments such as the man’s long cotton robe (Khanzu) and the woman’s modest hijab (Bui Bui), which covers the entire body except for the face and hands. Islam teachers can practice divination and homeopathic medicine through readings from the Qur’an and Hadith, which also appear on protective necklaces for children.

Belief in jinn, supernatural creatures from an invisible parallel world who can interact with humans and angels for better or for worse, is also an important feature in the spiritual life of Swahili. Today, Swahili is found throughout the mainland and along the coasts of Kenya and Tanzania, as well as on Zanzibar, Lamu, Mombasa, Mafia, Pemba, and other Indian Ocean islands.