‘We Don’t Need No Education’. A Case Study About Pastoral Datoga Girls in Tanzania

The topic of this paper reflects the reasons why formal education is not in accord with Datoga pastoral life in Tanzania and why this marginalized Nilotic tribe hesitates to send children to schools. In an attempt to grasp different reasons of avoiding education, the paper is focused especially on education of girls, which is less preferred than that of boys. The discussion reveals the impact of formal/informal education on traditional life of mobile Datoga and how norms, habits are slowly weakened. The suggestion is offered that unless the communication between pastoral Datoga and the government regarding school attendance and better conditions takes the cultural context, Datoga will remain outside the schooling process and their marginal position in the society will not change and neither their image of savage people.