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Tribes in Tanzania
Tanzania is home to many peoples. The Maasai are the best known, but there are many more, each with its own history and often its own language. There is no official count. What connects them is Swahili.
The peoples you meet along the way
People | Where | What you see |
Maasai | the plains of the north, around the parks | herders, recognisable by their red and blue cloths, often carrying a staff and a phone |
Chagga | the slopes of Kilimanjaro, around Moshi | farmers, coffee and bananas on the same plot |
Iraqw | the highlands around Karatu | fields and wheat on the hills below Ngorongoro |
Hadzabe | around Lake Eyasi | one of the last hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa |
Datoga | around Lake Eyasi | herders and blacksmiths |
Sukuma | around Lake Victoria | the largest ethnic group in the country |
Chagga, not Maasai
A misunderstanding we often put right: there are no Maasai around Moshi. The slopes of Kilimanjaro are Chagga country, with coffee, maize and bananas and a language of their own. The Maasai live further west and south, out on the plains.
If you arrive in Moshi expecting a Maasai village, you end up on a coffee farm instead. That is no disappointment. A morning picking and roasting coffee with a Chagga family teaches you more about how people live here than an afternoon on a guided tour.
The Maasai
The Maasai live from their cattle. A family lives in a boma, a homestead with a kraal for the animals in the middle and the round huts around it. At night the cattle are brought inside.
You see them on the way to the parks, along the road and with their herds out on the plains. You also see that life is changing: the phone beside the staff, children in school uniform.
How we approach a meeting
We do not sell village visits. A village where a vehicle full of tourists stops every day to take photographs has become a performance, and you learn little from it.
What we do is work with places to stay that the community has set up itself, such as Amini Maasai Lodge and Osiligilai. There you pay for a stay, and the money goes to the people who live there. You sleep there, you eat there, and the conversation follows by itself.
If you want to photograph someone, always ask first. It is simple courtesy.
Staying with the community
A night in a lodge run by the Maasai themselves fits into most trips in the north. How it falls into a route, you can see in our itineraries.