JULY 1,2006
Smoke Signals 7
Never Seen A
So Alive.'
Photos by David Harrelson
Up Close Tribal member David Harrelson took these
photos of the Pembe Abwe sunrise, a coastal fishing village
in Tanzania (I) and this leopard in the Tarangire National
Park in Africa. Harrelson was participating in Lewis & Clark
College's East Africa Overseas Program.
I Tribal member David Harrelson talks about his adventures during four months of study in Africa.
led him to participate in the college's
East Africa program. He returned
from Kenya and Tanzania with a
broadened perspective on tribalism,
natural resources, poverty, and hu
man conditions. He also returned
with a set of classmates who were
Tarangire National Park, the Ngoro
goro Crater and the Serenghetti Na
tional Park, all in Tanzania.
He worked on a mammal atlas
and counted wildebeest; he studied
grasslands ecology. And saw, he
said, "every single African animal
By Ron Karten
From August to December last
year, Tribal member David Harrel
son filled his requirements for four
courses at Lewis and Clark College
in Portland, Oregon in part by living
with the Hadzabe and the Massai
peoples in Tanzania in East
Africa.
Some of those he met, like
the Massai, live hand-to- '&m.i
mouth existences. "We con- ,U.a
sider them barely eking out a 'tfjk
living," said Harrelson. 'They fti
would consider themselves M$gi
living bountiful, mpanincfiil
"The village that I was in, Effi&SaBg
a rites of passage was go- Wild Tribal member David Harrelson took this photo of two lions returning after a failed hunt while on
Safari in Kenya, Africa. Harrelson travled throughout Africa during four months of study.
ing on for a young warrior,"
said Harrelson. "This is the
tribe you always see on the
Discovery channel, where if they
flinch (during the ceremony), they
are outcast as cowards."
Living with the Massai, he said, was
"amazingly comfortable. I slept better
there than anywhere else in Africa."
While there, he saw the sacrifices
of a sacred cow and a sacred goat. "I
watched the slaughter of the cow and
ate that cow two hours later. I ate a
raw goat kidney; it was still warm. It
didn't taste so great but I couldn't flinch
because all the warriors were looking at
me. I had to just politely swallow it.
I drank honey beer, their own
home brew made out of honey and
various plants around. It tasted like
a mix between bad champagne and
Welches white grape juice ferment
ing. I actually liked it quite a bit."
He was able to make this four
month trip, through the college's East
Africa Overseas Program, that he
then extended through various cities
in Europe, thanks in part to college
grants and help from the Confeder
ated Tribes of the Grand Ronde.
He traveled in a group of six men
and 18 women who participated in a
range of educational opportunities,
not all the same as Harrelson's.
"David is eager," said Lewis & Clark
College History Professor Stephen
Dow Beckham. "I often encounter
him at 8 a.m; By the time he gets
to class, David has already been to a
work-out at the gym or put in a couple
of hours (often in the dark and rain) on
the Willamette River. He is an avid
member of Lewis & Clark crew team
(see Smoke Signals, 5104 issue).
"David is curious. His curiosity
bonded in friendship cemented by
David's warm personality and posi
tive outlook on life.
Harrelson toured Mombasa, Kenya
for a weekend, "and got a feel for
coastal Muslim culture," he said.
He spent a week in Arusha, Tan
zania studying birds. "We captured
birds for banding and recording and
we took part in nationwide survey
called the Tanzanian Bird Atlas."
He visited Pembwe Abwe in Tan-
! ) . V , J
S
Sf I
Rare Tribal member David Harrelson samples a raw
goat kidney. "It was still warm, but I couldn't flinch
because all the warriors were looking at me."
zania, a coastal fishing village at the
shore near two coral reefs. Snorkel
ing underwater, Harrelson collected
data for a government project.
He was on safari for a month in the
you can imagine.
Harrelson lived with the Hadzabe,
a hunter-gatherer people, one of the
few left in Africa, for a week. He
found it to be an "egalitarian society
where the people had no possessions
except bows and arrows. They don't
have houses; they sleep out in the ele
ments. We went hunting with them;
chasing all wild game, from giraffes,
warthogs (gamey pig) to impalas.
These are "some of the most ancient
people in Africa," said
Harrelson. Some he met
spoke with clicks. The
clicks, he said, come from
the back of the throat,
and are part of words,
like letters, not whole
words themselves.
In Nairobi, Kenya, he
worked for the Institu
tion for Education and
Democracy, a Kenyan
non-profit. The group
was holding an election
for a new constitution.
"It was very conflicted,"
he said. "Police stations
burned. There were con
stant clashes. Harrelson
wrote a paper about the
constitutional process
within Kenya.
As a History major and
an Indian, the experi-
ence "had some really
exceptional meanings," he said. "The
people there are constantly struggling
with resource management. Their
biggest problem is land. So many
people and not enough land."
In Nairobi, "we lived two kilometers
from the second largest slum in the
world with 800,000 people. We lived in
a walled compound. There was a con
stant fear of being robbed, for women
of being raped. A lot of women worked
in slum schools, whereas I worked
with a non-profit. One of my
classmates got robbed twice in
one day.
"Whites are called wazungu.
We'd walk places and people
would point and say wazungu
wazungu. Among the Mas
sai, a small child that saw me
started crying and was terri
fied. She never saw a white
person in her life."
"Water is a limiting re
source for these people, he
said. "It's a reminder of the
massive infrastructure that
exists in the U.S. It just doesn't hap
pen there. There are no taxes. No
money to tax. You have to walk three
miles for water with plastic jugs on
their heads. A bath is a sponge bath.
They have to compete with wildlife
for water resources.
"And there is just so much wildlife.
You see thousands of animals. I've
never seen a land so alive. It makes
our land look barren."
"I ate giraffe, ostrich meat and
egg alligator, warthog."
And now that he's home, Harrelson
is looking forward to getting back
on the fire lines with the Tribe this
summer. He's aiming to be a hot-shot
fire fighter, and he's open to new ad
ventures, new opportunities.
He was a very sociable child, even
as a baby, recalled his mother, Kim
Campbell. She is a Tribal member
and Medical Receptionist at the
Health Clinic.
"When he was four months old,
we drug him everywhere with us,"
she said. "He was exposed to a lot of
adults, not so many kids."
"I always knew he would have high
expectations for himself," she said. "His
dad's family are all high achievers."
But he has never ignored his inter
est in adventure. When he graduated
from high school, his present was a
trip to Peru where he climbed Ma
chupicchu. In 2001, he went into the
woods with a group for 21 days. For
three of those, he went off on his own
(see Smoke Signals, 12101 issue).
And what has he learned? Maybe
that adventure is his road to the
future.