Experience Zimbabwe’s culture

Despite its troubled recent history, Zimbabwe is a vibrant and beautiful country, with some excellent Africa cultural experiences to be had. Not only are there opportunities to engage with traditional cultures through visiting local villages, there is also Zimbabwe’s fascinating history to discover.

Throughout Zimbabwe you’ll find opportunities to engage with local people, and learn a little about their way of life. This may be simply chatting with your guides whilst on safari, or a barman at a hotel, or a more in depth experience with a member of the local community if you choose to visit a village; they are usually happy to share some stories with a visitor!

In terms of culture, we’d single out Bulawayo as a fascinating city to spend some time exploring. There are a variety of museums and galleries, some excellent shopping opportunities and some first grade eating and drinking! From here, we can organise a really fantastic guide, Paul Hubbard, who knows both the ancient and more modern history of Bulaweyo and leads walking tours of the city. These are very flexible and suited to your interests – highlights are the guided pub crawls, and visiting the Khami Ruins just outside of Bulaweyo.

Nearby Matobo Hills National Park probably the country’s most interesting park from a cultural perspective. It’s not only very scenic; it also has a rich human history. Once inhabited by Bushmen, there is a superb collection of well-preserved rock art dating back at least 13,000 years, as well as the grave of Cecil Rhodes nearby, both of which make for an excellent guided visit.

A little further south, ask us about trips to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Great Zimbabwe. It’s the ruins of an ancient city dating back to between the 11th and 15th centuries, are made entirely of stone and span over 1,800 acres. Ask us about arranging a visit here!

Experience the culture in Zambia

Zambia’s safari camps are notable for their small scale and often excellent community ties, leading many visitors to treasure the interactions that they find here. For more, visit the communities linked to your camp; head out on a village visit; or enjoy the living history of a fascinating old manor house.

With a relatively low population density in comparison to some of its neighbours, Zambia has retained a lot of its original cultures in more rural areas – whilst in the urban centres of Lusaka and Livingstone there is an evident European influence amongst the diverse populations living together here.

Visitors to Zambia should certainly seek out Kawaza Village, beside South Luangwa National Park, for a very genuine glimpse into traditional Kunda life. This is a super experience; it really is a slice of real African village life!

Similarly, a few days at Shiwa Ngandu, in north-eastern Zambia, will give you the chance not only to peer into the country’s colonial history, but also to meet Zambians of today, and see how they live, and the challenges that they face. It’s a very ‘real’ experience – as far from contrived as you could imagine – and hence we’d recommend this for someone interested in Zambia’s cultural heritage!

Cultural experiences in Tanzania

Tanzania offers many contrasting African cultural experiences. With a population of around 50 million, the majority of whom are living in rural areas; it’s possible to interact with a wide variety of people. Tanzania offers real insights into many different cultures, backgrounds and religions.

Across Tanzania the cultural groups and traditional practices differ greatly. A few examples of these contrasting groups are the iconic Maasai people who live mostly in northern Tanzania, the largely Muslim population of Zanzibar (see our comments on cultural experiences in Zanzibar), and the waMeru people who settled at the base of Mount Meru hundreds of years ago, to name but a few.

Best places to experience the culture in Namibia

Namibia is one of our favourite places for cultural experiences in Africa. Despite having one of the world’s lowest population densities, we’ve found some of our best experiences here, and have really enjoyed the opportunity of getting to know people of a radically different cultural background.

All of the lodges we feature employ largely local people, so depending on the different areas in which you stay; you’ll meet people from different tribes and cultural backgrounds. These are never set us as “cultural experiences”, but Namibia constantly allows you the opportunity to talk with local people, hearing about their background and way of life, and probably a few of their interesting stories!

To actively engage with one of Namibia’s more traditional cultures, a highlight for many is a visit to a Himba settlement. These are usually guided day trips and offer sensitive insights into the interesting lifestyles of these semi-nomadic, desert-dwelling people. The visits are not only a great opportunity to witness a new and highly contrasting culture to your own, they also are beneficial for the communities you are visiting.

For us, one of Africa’s very best cultural experiences has always been a longer and more involved stay in a traditional Bushman village, where you can take part in a wide range of activities with the Bushmen and learn in detail about their hunter-gatherer culture.

Twyfelfontein, Namibia’s only Cultural UNESCO World Heritage Site has one of Africa’s largest concentrations of ancient rock art and is well worth a visit. Easily accessed from most camps in the Southern Damaraland area, the many engraved rock faces are a fascinating insight into some of the practices of the hunter-gatherer communities that lived off this land.

Incredible cultural experiences in Mozambique

Mozambique can offer really unique African cultural experiences – which have their roots in its Bantu and Swahili history, overlaid with Portuguese colonial rule and more recently its struggles for independence. All this has left a lively arts culture including exotic cuisine, and music and dancing with a vibrant Latin edge.

For those interested in history, we’d single out the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ilha de Mozambique as a fascinating destination – worthy of a visit even if you don’t choose to stay here. This fortified city was once a Portuguese strong hold, and the stone town boasts amazing architecture, including churches, a museum and several colonial buildings.

Many lodges in Mozambique place emphasis on sustainable tourism and community involvement. This, in turn, offers the chance to visit communities and villages where you’ll experience a warm welcome, learn about the culture and lifestyle, and be able to meet and interact with local people.

How to best experience the culture in Botswana

Botswana has diverse ethnic groups living side by side in what has historically been a very peaceful country. However, for the visitor this sparse population can imply few opportunities for cultural interaction – so it may seem to be an unpromising place to search for any of Africa’s best cultural experiences.

Look hard and there are some fascinating cultural experiences in Botswana.

One of the most interesting groups for outsiders to visit are the scattered groups of hunter-gatherer people that we would refer to as Bushmen, or the San.

The San lead a semi-nomadic lifestyle, with a culture that’s very different from most other African tribal groups. Several camps offer fantastic Bushmen

walks, with authentic San trackers, happy to share their wealth of knowledge about the bush with you. It’s a great opportunity to get a real insight into the zoology, geology and anthropology of the places they call home.

If you want more, then ask us about a luxury mobile safari that enables you to spend much more time with bushmen and experience their culture and traditions, living near to them in their village.

Botswana’s only World Heritage Site is well worth a visit. The Tsodilo Hills have one of the highest densities of Bushmen rock art in the world, dating back at least 100,000 years. This rocky outcrop, rising 1400m from the rolling plains of the Kalahari, is little visited, but is definitely worth the effort, once described as “The Louvre of the Desert”.

Cultural experiences in Malawi

Almost any travelling in Malawi can offer insights into the country’s culture and traditions – as most of Malawi’s people are notably friendly, courteous and hospitable. African cultural experiences are everywhere in Malawi; it’s so densely populated that travellers can’t help but interact with lots of Malawians during a holiday here.

All of Malawi’s people share a common Bantu origin. The population is made up of eleven different ethnic groups, each with their own set of cultural norms

and practices. The largest ethnic group is the Chewa tribe, and their mother tongue, Chichewa, is the official spoken language of Malawi.

Pass through villages, browse at local markets, or visit an old Christian Mission to experience some of the vibrant culture of Malawi. Our recommendations below don’t focus on specific aspects of Malawian culture, they are just pointers for where we feel you’ll get the best cultural experiences in Malawi.

Best cultural experiences in Kenya

Kenya offers a rich variety of cultural experiences with plenty of involvement with local villages. Travellers often get the opportunity to learn about Maasai, Samburu, Turkana, Swahili and other communities and take part in activities. It’s often possible to visit schools, do a village visit on market day or walk with the herds when going out to pasture in the morning.

Occasionally it’s even possible to take part in traditional ceremonies. While nomadic lifestyles are circumscribed these days by the conventions of modern life, these communities are still rooted in traditions very different from those most visitors are used to.

There are more than forty different language groups or tribes in Kenya, of which three communities, the Maasai, Samburu and Turkana, have held onto traditional clothing and lifestyles in much of their range.

• The Maasai are traditionally semi-nomadic and entirely dependent on their livestock. These days they tend to be fairly sedentary, occupying small settlements of 8-15 houses protected by thorn bushes or fencing.
• Livestock, including goats and sheep but especially cattle, are the primary source of income for the Maasai – when they can be persuaded to sell that is.
• The Samburu are closely related to the Maasai. Both arrived in Kenya from the upper Nile region in present-day South Sudan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they speak a common language – Maa. The traditional Samburu diet consists of milk and blood extracted from their cows. Meat is only served on special occasions. Dancing plays a significant role in Samburu culture and is similar to that of the Maasai people with men dancing in a circle and jumping high from a standing position.
• The Turkana are an important pastoral community in northern Kenya. Like other herders, they traditionally lived a nomadic life, always moving from one place to another depending on the availability of pasture and water for their animals. Although trading and employment are increasingly important (many Turkana men work in the security services or as guards and night watchmen), the old cattle culture is still vitally important. Fishing is also a major source of food for those living close to Lake Turkana.

Experience the extraordinary culture in Rwanda

Rwanda has a rich and well documented cultural history. Far from being clearly distinct tribes, the Hutu and the Tutsi who comprise the majority of the population, speak the same language (Kinyarwanda) and have always intermarried and lived and worked together on the same fertile hillsides.

They traditionally paid tribute to the same king and followed the same traditional belief system before Europeans arrived.

Their socio-economic differences were reinforced in the colonial era (the Belgian rulers assigned Tutsi identity to people owning ten or more cows and Hutu identity to everyone else) and provoked into violence in the horrific 1994 genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by neighbourhood death squads under military control. Since this dark phase in Rwanda’s history the country has undergone a long period of healing and many citizens no longer refer to themselves as Hutu or Tutsi, but simply as Rwandans.

A visit to Rwanda inevitably brings you face to face with this turbulent past and gives you an appreciation for just how far the country has come over the past few decades. Your guides are likely to be open and informative about

their often traumatic life stories. Driving through Rwanda today you will pass dozens of genocide memorials, drive through bustling villages, lush farms and plantations of tea and coffee. Children smile and wave at your car as you pass, and locals are happy to stop for a chat. Despite its recent history Rwanda has retained a strong sense of tradition which is reflected in music, arts and dance.

Expert Africa’s itineraries in Rwanda are all conducted with a private guide and vehicle, giving you the flexibility to stop in the villages, visit genocide memorials, or explore roadside villages and landscapes as you wish. Many people visiting the country will spend time at the sobering genocide memorial in Kigali, which provides insight and context for the rest of your time in Rwanda. The King’s Palace museum, on the way from Kigali to Nyungwe Forest, gives you a feel for the traditional way of life in Rwanda as well as the history of the old kings. A number of lodges can also arrange specific cultural experiences, such as guided village walks accompanied by locals and dance performances laid on for guests. It’s best to put aside any doubts about authenticity when witnessing such cultural displays, and to treat them as visually spectacular re-enactments or theatrical performances.