T A B L E_T A L K Do dogs and airplanes mix? Discuss the ins and outs of traveling with pets in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y "Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse" By Lesley Hazleton Searching for the site where James Dean died (09/25/98) Letter from Pusan: The party's over By Rolf Potts The heady rise and fall of expat decadence in South Korea (09/24/98) Swimsuits -- and more! By Beverly Gage Past and present collide at Atlantic City's annual Miss America extravaganza (09/23/98) The cheapest air ticket around By Dawn MacKeen Couriers fly halfway around the world at half (or less) the normal price (09/22/98) Paris' cafe renaissance By David Downie There's a lively new scene in the City of Caffeine (09/21/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		RUNNING WITH THE HADZA | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - I was running blindly through the hills of the Great Rift Valley because of the good graces of Patrick Texier, the man with the Marlboros. Texier, a French expatriate who has lived in Africa for the last 30 years, had just joined a Tanzanian partner to start a safari company. He needed test subjects for a dry run. We volunteered. Texier is straight out of central casting, with his Gallic accent and unflappability. He flew bush planes in West Africa just out of the French army. He conspired in secret wars during the 1960s. He was a poacher. He was an anti-poacher. On one of his few extended trips away from Africa, he hiked across the Amazon Basin. He has done a lot of other things that he refuses to talk about. Before this venture in Tanzania, he had run a safari business in Sierra Leone until a brutal coup drove him out of that country. Armed renegades invaded his company headquarters, and Texier fled into the surrounding bush just as they stormed in. He watched from the trees as the men slaughtered his entire staff. He escaped, returned to Paris to regain his bearings, and then moved to Tanzania, where my friend Sara had met him during previous travels. Texier brought us from his home in Arusha near the Kenyan border by Land Rover to a village near Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania, south of the Ngorongoro Crater. There we set up camp and met Memoya Muhido, a Datoga man who spoke a little of the Hadza language and offered to take us to visit a group with which he had recently made contact. The Hadza move a lot, he explained, so there were no guarantees. We drove by the massive salt flat of Lake Eyasi, through a small town and past children walking down the dirt main road in their blue and white uniforms on their way to the Lutheran Missionary School. We swung out of the town, away from a line of volcanoes that ring the lake, and into the arid interior. The squat thorn bushes began to grow farther apart. The earth turned from moist brown to a dry red dust. We left the main road and followed a path that narrowed so that the truck was being violently scratched by unyielding thorn branches. Muhido rode in the front passenger seat and pointed the way with a series of soft hand gestures. Occasionally he would ask to stop the car and would sit quietly for a few seconds, drawing on some elaborate map that he had in his mind. Eventually, the path stopped, and so did the Land Rover. We got out and followed a set of footprints in the red dust. A man walked toward us. He might have been in his late 40s. He had very few teeth. His Western-style dress shirt was open and his small torso was muscular. He was wearing faded shorts and sandals with car-tire soles. He and Muhido spoke for two or three minutes. Much of the time was taken by long pauses in which each man looked at the ground or past the other toward the trees. It was the most indirect conversation I have ever seen. After an especially long pause the man pointed toward a giant acacia tree. Muhido motioned for us to follow. There are no general rules of etiquette, at least that I am aware of, when you walk into a camp of nomadic hunting people who are living a few steps removed from the Stone Age. The best option, I discovered, was to silently sit on the ground with a warm smile. That's what our hosts were doing. As I looked around the camp, I saw that the packing-light reputation of the Hadza is earned. The group of two dozen people had very few possessions and no shelters. Kudu and zebra skins were placed on the ground and tucked into recesses in the bushes that served as apartments. The only non-traditional touches were Western shirts and shorts on a few of the men and plastic grocery bags carefully hung from branches that looked to contain everything the various families owned. Most people were sitting around a fire, as three or four women melted bits of scrap plastic into beads, which the Hadza women wear in colorful loops that cascade across their chests. A bone pipe packed with marijuana was being slowly passed among the adults. Muhido's few words of Hadza came in handy as Numbile, Asamiakoi, Bubute and Shokoji walked into camp. They were empty-handed, and had stopped at the camp before heading out again in search of lunch. That's when we invited ourselves to go along. Whether the invitation was accepted I couldn't tell, but something of a deal was struck when Texier pulled out the first cigarette. The smiles on the hunters' faces made it clear that they preferred the imported leaf over the local variety. Shokoji pulls the francolin from the tree and hands it to Numbile, who snaps its neck and tucks the guinea fowl-resembling bird under the leather cord around his waist. Dramatic smoking ensues. Then the men are off. At first they walk quickly, then break into a jog, then kick into an Olympic-medal mid-distance pace. I struggle to keep up with them, which is made easier when the men stop at a water hole to drink. They lower their heads at the edge of the water in a perfectly held half-pushup. They blow gently on the surface to clear debris and with puckered lips just touching the water drink deeply, still holding the half-pushup as rigid as a gymnast. I take a foul-tasting swig from my plastic bottle. The heat has cooked my water to a tea-steeping temperature. The Hadza's choice looks much more refreshing. The men stand up, say a few rapid-fire words with tongues clicking, and with a cue that I miss, take off in a sprint. I lose them again. A pattern is developing. The Hadza bound off. My fellow travelers and I follow. I try to stay with the hunters. I get dropped. The Hadza stop. I find the Hadza. The tourists find each other. This happens a lot, because when you are an arrow-shooting nomad, you have to sprint after a lot of meals before getting one. On this current dash, I am alone again. I follow footprints in the dust, and then I lose them. I am sure that my companions are as lost as I am, until I walk into a clearing to see the four hunters and my pals, spread around a 25-foot-tall tree, craning their heads to the top branches. Three of the hunters have their bows drawn over their heads with their arrows aimed skyward. They hold their spare arrows between their knees. Numbile walks among the three, pointing into the tree, talking excitedly, using hand gestures to suggest various angles of trajectory. At the top of the tree is a terrified looking monkey called a bushbaby. Several volleys are launched at the house cat-sized primate that ricochet off branches or miss entirely. I keep alert for incoming lethal-tipped arrows. Then Bubute draws his bow, relaxes his shoulders and releases. Bull's-eye. Straight through the chest. A week before driving to Lake Eyasi, I had stood at the base of the Olduvai Gorge. The griddlelike heat created sheets of rising air that made the canyon walls shimmer in the refraction. It was here that Mary Leakey, working with her husband, Louis, discovered a 1.8 million-year-old skull of Australopithecus boisei in 1959, the 1.75 million-year-old remains of Homo habilis in 1972 and, at a nearby area called Laetoli, the 3.6 million-year-old footprints of a strolling Australopithecus afarensis trio in 1978. These finds are extraordinary, not only because they were discovered by one team within such a small stretch of real estate, but also because they provide such critical pieces of the human evolutionary puzzle: Hominids have been in the area for a long time, they had been walking on two legs for much of that time and more than one line of hominid species thrived at the same time. I know the bit about A. boisei because I read the plaque that marks the spot of Leakey's discovery as I diked the sweat pouring off my forehead with a handkerchief. Other details of the Leakeys' forays are explained in a small, disheveled museum that is perched at the rim of the gorge. Before her death in 1996, Mary Leakey had written off the place, having said, "I avoid Olduvai if I can because it is a ruin. It is most depressing." Despite Leakey's characteristically brusque comment, I was drawn to the gorge. This is hallowed ground for my species -- an Eden of scientific discovery, if there can be such a paradoxical place. My mind raced with images of my kind's formative years as I scanned the stratified walls of the gorge, each eon stacked above the previous. The layers form a time line of human history in relief, created by regular dustings of volcanic ash and sedimentation from small lakes that covered the landscape. While the gorge holds a record that dates to the morning of human existence, the topography of the surrounding Great Rift Valley is relatively young in geologic time, born of recent and rapid changes. The vast semi-arid savanna featured two critical conditions: trees scattered just far enough to allow sight across large areas but close enough to form a network of refuge from predators, and water plentiful enough to drink in most years but scarce enough to force game to gather in concentrations where they could be hunted or scavenged efficiently. These conditions favored species that adapted well to environmental change, walked on two legs with free hands, had eyes perched well off the ground and were blessed with ever-expanding brains. Homo sapiens happened to fit the bill, and ultimately, won the highest honor of speciation: survival. Something for which I and mine can be eternally grateful. Skewered by the arrow, the treed bushbaby struggles to escape across the top of the canopy. Asamiakoi cuts a long branch while Shokoji fashions a bark noose at its end. The animal is snared by a leg and pulled toward the ground. Its strong front paws are ripped off a branch, sending a cascade of leaves spinning below it. Asamiakoi grabs the arrow that has the animal impaled and holds it against a bush. Shokoji takes aim and shoots the monkey again through the chest. In that fatal moment the bushbaby grabs the arrow shaft with his delicate humanlike front paws. Numbile pulls out the two arrows, and to ensure that the animal is dead, puts the back of its skull in his teeth and bites down with a crack of crushed bone. He then snaps all four legs at the base of the body so that they hang loose and tucks the head under the cord at his waist opposite the francolin. We walk back to the dry riverbed that we had crossed earlier. The hunters gather leaves and sticks for a fire. Bubute spins with his hands a blunt-ended arrow shaft into a softer piece of wood on the ground. He places the glowing ember at the base of the wood with the flat edge of his knife. The fire starts quickly. The unplucked bird and the unskinned monkey are set on the flames. The bushbaby is placed belly up, arms spread, head thrown back. Its wide eyes stare at me. Fur and feathers send up thick white smoke. The monkey, only minutes ago hopping across the brittle canopy of leaves, becomes lunch with our eyes locked. The Hadza pull apart the animals with their hands and eat the cooked parts, draping the rest on the fire until medium-rare. They consume everything -- feet, tail, skin, heads, innards. They offer a choice piece of monkey to me. I choke down the meat, trying to hide my queasiness. I also try to ignore the creeping realization that the course is a mere chromosome or two removed from my own flesh. After eating we sit in silence, broken by the coughing of the hunters, who have reduced two cigarettes to the filter. After producing the second cigarette, Texier holds out the pack and elaborately crushes it for all to see. Though crestfallen by this universal gesture, the men take the news as well as anybody could in their situation. The hunters move close to one another. Then they begin to sing. One lays down a remarkable baritone, another leads with lilting complex phrases, the last two join in strange and powerful harmony. The moment surpasses language, and I understand that the men sing of both remorse and hope from a place deep in history and human emotion. They finish. We stand to walk back to the camp. Something crashes in the bush so close even I see it. The brown-red flash of an impala grazes our periphery. The hunters spring up the riverbank, and I lunge to chase them. Then I stop. My delusions have run long enough. I had lost the will to stay with them generations ago. I stand with my companions at the top of the bank. We look over the parched, rolling hills of the Great Rift Valley where perhaps some of the most important lessons about being human have been learned. Each of us reels under the weight of our private thoughts. I try to keep mine clear of the contents of my stomach. Five minutes later the hunters are back. The impala got away. We walk back to the camp. The group has grown to about 30 since we left in the morning. Another party of hunters has killed a baboon. This has been a good day. A woman is stewing the primate. Red chunks of meat are piled into a small metal pot. She occasionally cuts off a piece, which she eats or hands to one of the little children who sit with her. Several men squat in a circle nearby. One pounds a piece of scrap metal on a rock with a hammer. He is making an arrow tip. The cold metal will take a long time to fashion into the delicate shape that he needs. The afternoon sun is softening. There will be enough to eat tonight. Texier has driven the Land Rover to the edge of camp. The big white truck resting under the shade of the tree is a rough contrast with the Hadza quietly sitting in tight circles, passing their bone pipe. I try to ignore the truck, but the effort of doing so only introduces another rough contrast to the moment: my judgment. I want to tell the woman preparing the baboon that she should cook the pieces a little longer before she hands it to the kids. I want to suggest to the guy pounding the arrow tip that he could save a lot of time if he softens the metal in the fire. But then he probably wants to tell me that I should get in shape and lose the dead-weight notebook that I have been uselessly shifting from one hand to the other since I arrived. I look at the guy patiently whacking away at the piece of scrap metal as I walk toward the truck. My kind will probably survive for some time, I tell myself. His has about the same chance as a treed bushbaby staring down a speeding arrow. And in this moment I realize my arrogance. What it means to survive is far more complex. The hard lesson taught in the Olduvai Gorge is that success is bred of eons, not decades. Selection favors only those who meet the terms, but the terms remain a mystery, beyond the possibility of our imaginings. The arrow-tip maker and I will have lived in the identical instant of greater time. My bones and his bones are destined for the same era of sediment. Whose remains will be dug up by intruding hands and what story will be told about them are questions that will not be answered for a long time to come. SALON | Sept. 27, 1998 Eric Seyfarth is currently on the road.