I felt like a headless chicken. All along the course of this story—while photographing the Tsimane, the Inuit, the Bajau—my editor Pamela Chen and I had been constantly researching the next stop, changing course as needed. Africa, however, was proving to be especially challenging. It seemed this part of this story could be told both everywhere and nowhere. The continent was so vast, so many tribes!

I “just” needed to photograph a community whose diet was completely free of food from outside sources. Self-sufficiency was a must: everything they ate must either be foraged, hunted, grown or herded. No influence of foreign aid.

I contacted university professors, fellow National Geographic photographers, writers, NGO workers, and local guides for their advice: There were