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Meet the Datoga — pastoralist blacksmiths near Lake Eyasi who forge arrowheads and brass jewellery by hand at bellows-driven fires.
The Datoga are a proud pastoralist people of the Lake Eyasi region, neighbours and traditional trading partners of the Hadzabe. They are renowned metalworkers: at simple homestead forges, fanned by hand-pumped goatskin bellows, Datoga smiths turn scrap metal into the arrowheads the Hadzabe hunt with and the distinctive brass and copper jewellery the women wear.
A visit takes you into a Datoga homestead to watch the forge at work, see daily pastoralist life, and meet a community that keeps an ancient craft alive. It pairs naturally with a Hadzabe dawn walk for a fuller picture of how these two very different peoples live side by side.
Welcomed into a pastoralist family compound.
See scrap metal worked into arrowheads and jewellery.
Cattle, dress, and customs explained by your hosts.
See — and buy — the distinctive brass and copper pieces.
Short but fascinating, the Datoga forge visit is the perfect complement to the Hadzabe walk — together they show how a hunter-gatherer people and a metalworking pastoralist people sustain each other. Best combined into a single Lake Eyasi morning rather than visited alone. Fees support the community directly.
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