Learn about the Culture
Safaris With A Heart has already incorporated the first three cultural immersion experiences into your National Park safari experience…Maasai Boma, Maasai Warrior Walking Tour Tribal Traditional Dancing and The datoga tribe.
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Maasai Boma
As we head out toward the National Parks we enjoy a stop at a Maasai Boma (small rural Maasai community). The Maasai people are a semi-nomadic ethnic group inhabiting northern Tanzania. They are best-known for their distinctive customs, lifestyle, dress and dance. They are considered one of the tallest people in the world with perhaps an average height of 6 feet, 3 inches. Our groups are treated to a tour of their communities and tiny family living dwellings (made of sticks and cow dung) as well as a traditional jumping dance. In exchange for their hospitality, Safaris With A Heart/Outreach Africa donates to the tribal chief much welcomed water filtration systems, solar lighting, reading glasses and soccer balls. This tour is provided compliments of Safaris With A Heart. Our gifts to the chief are in lieu of tipping.
Maasai Warrior Walking Safari
As a perfect complement to a National Park safari lodge experience, we are happy to arrange an early morning walk along the shores of Lake Manyara guided by a Maasai warrior holding his spear. You are bound to see zebras, antelopes, wildebeest, and warthogs rush by you as well as tens of thousands of pink flamingos lining the far shoreline. We believe this is an excellent way to begin your day. This walking safari is provided compliments of Safaris With A Heart. Tipping is at your discretion.
Tribal traditional dancing
All we can say is WOW! This is both mesmerizing and thrilling! Super-fast-paced dancing combined with incredible acrobatic feats and fire pageantry. This is a special treat provided compliments of Safaris With A Heart. Tipping is at your discretion.
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The Datoga tribe
also known as the Mang’ati in Swahili, is a semi-nomadic, agro-pastoral, and Nilotic-speaking ethnic group that lives in the northern part of Tanzania. They consider themselves the oldest tribe in Tanzania and are renowned for their skilled blacksmiths, warrior spirit, and unique cultural practices. The Datoga people have a rich history and language, with their origins tracing back to the Ethiopian and South Sudanese highlands. They are a fascinating cultural treasure, living near Lake Eyasi, not far from popular safari routes.
Should you wish to expand upon the above and add a day or two to your itinerary, you may wish to consider a visit to the Hadzabe tribe, The Datoga tribe or Olduvai Gorge.
Hadzabe Tribe (Hadza) – Optional tour.
Primitive indigenous ethnic group who live around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. There are between 1,200 and 1,300 Hadzabe people living in Tanzania. As descendants of Tanzania’s aboriginal hunter-gatherer population, they have probably occupied their current territory for thousands of years, with relatively little modification to their basic way of life.
The Datoga Tribe – Optional Tour
Immerse yourself in the captivating world of the Datoga tribe, an indigenous ethnic group residing around Lake Eyasi in Tanzania’s central Rift Valley and the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. With a population of approximately 120,000, the Datoga are considered descendants of the region’s aboriginal hunter-gatherer population, maintaining their traditional way of life for thousands of years.
The Datoga people are known for their unique cultural practices, skilled craftsmanship, and rich history. As semi-nomadic agro-pastoralists, they rely on livestock rearing and agriculture, cultivating crops such as millet, maize, and beans. The Datoga are also renowned for their exceptional blacksmithing skills, creating intricate tools and weapons that showcase their technical prowess and artistic creativity.
Experience the Datoga’s distinctive culture firsthand by visiting their villages and interacting with the local communities. Witness their traditional dress, featuring colorful cloths and ornate beadwork, and learn about their customs and body modification practices, including scarification and ear piercing.
Join Safari with a Heart and Exceptional Safaris on an immersive cultural tour, supporting the Datoga people while creating lasting memories for travelers. These tours promote responsible tourism, fostering cross-cultural understanding and preserving the unique heritage of Tanzania’s indigenous communities.
Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli. Optional Tour.
Referred to as the “Cradle of Mankind” or as we like to say the “Dawn of Humankind”. Olduvai Gorge is a site in Tanzania that holds the earliest evidence of the existence of human ancestors. Paleoanthropologists have found hundreds of fossilized bones and stone tools in the area dating back millions of years, leading them to conclude that humans evolved in Africa.
Olduvai is a misspelling of Oldupai, a Maasai word for a wild sisal plant that grows in the area. The gorge is in the Great Rift Valley, between the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. It is 30 miles from Laetoli, another fossil-rich area. Olduvai Gorge was formed about 30,000 years ago, the result of aggressive geological activity and streams.
The steep ravine is about 30 miles long and 295 feet deep, not quite large enough to be classified as a canyon. A river cuts through several layers to form four individual beds, with the oldest estimated at about 2 million years old.
At Laetoli, west of Ngorongoro Crater, hominid footprints are preserved in volcanic rock 3.6 million years old and represent some of the earliest signs of mankind in the world. Three separate tracks of a small-brained upright walking early hominid. Australopithecus afarensis, a creature about 1.2 to 1.4 meters high, were found. Imprints of these are displayed in the Oldupai museum.
More advanced descendants of Laetoli’s hominids were found further north, buried in the layers of the 100 meters deep Oldupai Gorge. Excavations, mainly by the archaeologist Louis and Mary Leakey, yielded four different kinds of hominid, showing gradual increases in brain size and in the complexity of their stone tools. The first skull of Zinjanthropus, commonly known as ‘Nutcracker Man’ who lived about 1.75 million years ago, was found here.
For a very special cultural immersion experience…
We’d love to help you create your own charity project which will profoundly resonate with your group. Or join us in rural villages on the shores of Lake Victoria where we perform life transforming cleft palette/lip surgeries, provide health insurance to an infant orphanage and carry out our water filtration and solar light projects. This is the ultimate in travelling-with-a-purpose in which you leave the country better because you were there.