Amani Lusekelo

Hadzabe culture of hunter-gatherer in Tanzania, is endangered by pressure from agriculturalists, agro-pastoralists and pastoralists, western modernisation and government schemes. The focus of this project is to document indigenous knowledge system of the Hadzabe as obtained in their homeland. It deals with names and naming strategies, one of the cultural practises cherished in African communities. It is the goal of this project to ducument the Hadzabe naming practices in order to contribute to the large African naming culture. Second, since Hadzabe is a nomadic community, their movements might be controlled by the use of different mechanisms, e.g. the sky, forestlands, water sources etc., as the systems of cardinal directions are unavailable in Africa (Lusekelo 2012). We need to have a better understanding of the way the Hadzabe communicate with regard to directions. Lastly, we know very little about the sociolinguistic situation in Hadzabe speaking community: which other languages they speak, their language attitudes, their competence in the various languages etc. In order to do a proper documentation, we had a groundwork on Hadzabe villages.