there are so many things i could share with you right now. i could tell of my awe-inspiring farmers tan or the battered condition my legs and ankles have found themselves in. or I could tell you about my five hadza arrows (three that i traded my watch for and two that i gave $8 for) that i have safely strapped to one of the roof supports in our safari truck. but, perhaps best of all, i could tell you the story that connects all of these, and it begins at 5:30 in the morning, because the best hunting is before dawn. today i stalked animals in the desert with a hunter from the hadza tribe, thought to be one of the original people, and the last full time hunter gatherer tribe in africa. i huddled fifty feet away while i watched him shoot a giraffe with his bow and arrow. we had been sitting on a cliff, him smoking tobacco in our notebook paper and the four of us (rachel, jazz, elly, and myself) snacking on peanuts and dried pineapple, when he told us he had spotted giraffe. we had already encountered a small herd of them earlier, though they quickly were alerted by nearby birds and our scent, as we had been upwind. we had also stalked a warthog, a bird of prey, and dik dik (small ungulate). after spotting the second giraffe, we quickly headed down from the rocks, me making sounds of nervousness and galumping awkwardly the whole way. to us, in our untrained minds, we were walking without aim or purpose, and i did not connect his announcement on the cliff with our current wanderings. sure enough, after ten minutes of us tripping through bushes and ripping through thorny (2 inch long thorns) acacia branches, he motioned for us to get low. we complied, and he did the same, taking off his red shirt and sandals silently and then crawling in a way only comparable to a lion for fifty feet or so, finally crouching behind a large bush and waiting. we must have waited for ten minutes, muscles tightening and minds wandering. i didn't even see the giraffe until it started galloping away, at which point he jumped out and shot his arrow into the giraffe's behind. it was a poisonous arrow, and i write this while we rest back at camp before trekking out again to collect it it. it is "kubwa"-- big-- and a mother. we followed the injured beast's trail for twenty minutes or so, by its trail of staggered tracks and occasional small pools of blood.
--later---
in the end, we did not catch the giraffe. we left the camp after lunch, perhaps twenty students, the teachers, and ten or so hadza hunters. we walked quickly and sometimes ran, following what eventually became a fresh trail left by the giraffe. after an hour, they declared that the giraffe was unbelievably still alive and "drunk" off the poison from the arrow, staggering and weaving, even once running into a tree. at one point, two of the hadza spotted the giraffe, which led to a frenzy of running to try and follow it. we ran for a long time through acacia and shrubs. twice i had to quickly stop and pull long thorns from my feet, before running to catch up. the group got separated and we continued trying to follow its trail. after two hours, the sun was getting ready to set and our professor told us we had to go back to camp, lest we get lost in the dark. i was so utterly disappointed. the hadza man i had been with told me he would try to find it tomorrow, but i could see the disappointment in him as well. even for these guys who hunt every day, a giraffe is a big deal. two other groups had caught hyrax, but nothing like this. the walk back was excrutiating, physically and mentally. after hunting all day and then running/jogging/tripping for the past two hours, i was unbelievably sore and had blisters, cuts, bruises, and the like all over. plus, it was a two hour hike back, after having lost a giraffe. when we got back, i skipped dinner and just went to sleep, waking up the next day in a significantly better mood.
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