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Voices Fousani Hamidou Voices Fousani Hamidou

A Response to Forced Assimilation in the Hadzabe Tribe

My name is Fousani Hamidou, and I am a senior at St Lawrence University (Canton, NY, USA), majoring in Global Studies with a minor in African Studies. Last semester, I studied abroad in Kenya and had the opportunity to travel to Arusha, Tanzania, as a part of my program. We lived for a week alongside the Hadzabe tribe, one of the last surviving hunter-gathering tribes in the country. Throughout the week, we hunted hyraxes and made arrows with the Hadzabe men, and we gathered tubas (a tree root) and made beads with the Hadza women. On the last night, we all gathered with members of the tribe on a large rock by the camp to discuss their lifestyle, the Tanzanian government, education, and forced assimilation.

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