Vadoma

The vaDoma speak the Dema language, closely related to the dominant Shona language of Zimbabwe and highly comprehensible to Korekore and Tande Shona dialects.[2] Living alongside Shona and Kunda people in Kanyemba, they also speak Korekore Shona and Kunda.

According to vaDoma mythology, their ancestors emerged from a baobab tree. Upon descending from it, they walked upright to hunt and gather the fruits of the land.[3] The name vaDoma is also used in the Zambezi region for a semi-mythical people characterized as magical, capricious, hard to find, and living among the trees. This may refer to Khoisan hunter-gatherers who preceded the migration of the Bantu Shona into the Zambezi Valley, and the vaDoma are possibly related to this earlier population.[4] Rumors also persist among nearby peoples that the vaDoma are capable of disappearing in the forest and performing magic.

Historically, the vaDoma chiefly dwelt in the mountains, living a largely nomadic lifestyle of hunting, fishing, trapping, honey hunting, and gathering wild fruits and roots.[5] Prior to the European colonization of Africa, the vaDoma also resisted incorporation into the Korekore Shona kingdom of Mutapa,[2] which resulted in little access to fertile land.[6] Land reform after Zimbabwe's independence did not change this, despite pressure from the Mugabe government, and the vaDoma's continuing dispossession has made them Zimbabwe's only non-agricultural society, leading to stereotypes as "Stone Age cave-dwellers".[7]

The mountain homeland of the vaDoma has now become the Chewore Safari Area.[8] In recent years, vaDoma have been threatened by game rangers due to a crackdown on poaching. Many abandoned their hunter-gatherer lifestyle and moved to the lowlands. Today, though they have little contact with the majority populace, many vaDoma families live settled lives as semi-foragers, building houses on wooden platforms to avoid predators. During rainfall, they cover the shelters with thatching. vaDoma are also reluctant to wear textile fabrics.[6][9] Recently, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church built Mariga Primary School to educate vaDoma children.[3]

Vadoma people with ectrodactyly

A substantial minority of vaDoma has a condition known as ectrodactyly in which the middle three toes are absent and the two outer ones are turned in, resulting in the tribe being known as the "two-toed" or "ostrich-footed" tribe. This is an autosomal dominant condition resulting from a single mutation on chromosome number 7.[10] It is reported that those with the condition are not handicapped and are well integrated into the tribe. While possibly an aid in tree climbing, the condition prevails because of a small genetic pool among the vaDoma and is propagated by the tribal law that forbids members to marry outside the group.[10]

Due to the vaDoma tribe's isolation, they have developed and maintained ectrodactyly, and their comparatively small gene pool has resulted in the condition being much more frequent than elsewhere.[10] The Eastern Shona Kalanga of the Kalahari Desert also have a number of members with ectrodactyly and may be related.[10]