Travel Tips

Another interesting tribe are the Datoga (also called the Barabaig or Mang'ati). Initially, they were exercising a lot of rivalry over grazing land with the Masai., but at the moment it is a thing of the past. An aspect of elegance is to be seen in the way they go about their daily chores and their traditional performances.The Datoga tribe is pastoralist people who migrated into this area in search of good grazing land. So far they have resisted neighboring tribal cultural infiltration. Women still wear fat-treated goatskin gowns and carve their faces and bodies to enhance their natural beauty.The Datoga are tall, handsome people, whose dressing reminds one of their ancestral enemies, the Maasai. They are easily recognized by their "uniform", a black cloak worn by the young men between the ages of 18-30. These are the warriors, herders and explorers that they depend on to protect their people and livestock. The women dress in goatskins and carve their faces around the eyes with ritual scars and tattoos.
Like the Maasai, the Datoga migrated down the Nile with their cattle, but they arrived in Tanzania centuries before the Maasai. Although once reputed as the fiercest warriors (possibly related to the Danakil of southern Ethiopia), the Datoga today devote their lives to raising cattle in a region that extends from the Rift Valley, southwest of the Crater Highlands, Lake Eyasi basin and further south to Mount Hanang and Lake Balangida.