Hadza and Yaeda Chini

Seeing as it’s the end of the year and school work is dwindling down, we pulled the kids out of school on Friday and took them camping with the Hadza. Matt’s been gone a lot (a whole lot!) lately, so we basically were just tagging along on his work trip, but that’s ok. This is close to the area where we camped with them a few years ago.

Without stops it’s about a 6 hour drive…of course we had stops.  The waterfall to play, a village stop to buy a goat (the next day’s dinner), lunch, and yet another stop for fuel and ‘tobacco’ for the Hadza. 

I’m sure the goat was thrilled with the 3 hour drive to camp.  We were not so thrilled with our pee soaked lunch table, but we still got the better end of that deal. 

And it really is a gorgeous drive up some very windy, steep roads.

We got to camp just in time for a walk to sundowners

The climb up a tree to the rock seemed like a good idea when there was still sunlight.  The kids were fine…I might have had a harder time watching them come down (it’s basically a trust fall into the tree – yikes!).

The next day we went digging for tubers, searching for honey, and went for nice hike to a Hadza camp to hang out.  Matt was here to bring a journalist and a photographer for an article the TNC magazine wants done on their Hadza project. We went with the photographer to hang out with the Hadza for the afternoon while Matt went into village meetings with the journalist. 

Ash got right in there to help dig for tubers and help start the fire to cook them

Wild honey from ‘stingless bees’ (type of ant)

Then later it was on to the ‘village’ where Anderson got some new arrows made.

The kids were very curious about what Ash was doing. It didn’t take long for them to come right up. The girls taught them how to open a marker and color on the page. Then Anderson turned their drawings into paper airplanes and showed them how to have distance contests.  They all had so much fun.  I’m sure that they would all quickly be turned into rolling papers the next day.

We had some downtime at camp - jump rope with a Hadza woman and our guide, Maggie. 

The day ended with the Hadza singing and dancing for us around the campfire.  Pretty special. 

Last climb of a baobab before the long drive home.

I love these little adventurers!

On the way home Matt got pulled over for speeding. After he presented his US license, the ticket was written out to Mr. Colorado (despite Matt repeating his name over and over).  Too funny.  Matt was not nearly as amused as the kids and I were. I think it was worth the $15 fine.