 Those who settled on the plains surrounding Mount Hanang became known as Barabaig – Beaters of Sticks (bar = to beat, baig = sticks) because of the importance they place on sticks as a weapon and percussion instrument at dances.Numbering between 35,000 and 50,000 people (although it is impossible to be sure of population as the Tanzania census does not record ethnicity) they live to this day on the Hanang Plains in Hanang District of Manyara Region of north central Tanzania.Many Barabaig were forcibly evicted from the Basotu Plains in the 1990s to make room for a large-scale wheat-growing project of the Canadian and Tanzanian governments.