Category: Coffee

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART IV (THE MBULU PLATEAU)

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART IV (THE MBULU PLATEAU)

September, 1964: Leaving the Lake Manyara Hotel, Henry Fosbrooke and I continued west on the murram (a type of gravel) road to Ngorongoro. We were now on the Mbulu Plateau, 1,500 ft (455m) above the Maasai Steppe.

The plateau is named for the Mbulu (Iraqw) people, who, in contrast to the pastoral Maasai, are mixed farmers with large numbers of cattle, and a variety of crops, including wheat. They are noted for their system of intensive cultivation (possibly including at Ngaruka, a 500-year-old [at least] abandoned settlement at the base of the escarpment north of Lake Manyara, where there are remnants of a sophisticated irrigation system and terraced stone houses). They speak a Cushitic language so ancient it no longer exists in its ancestral home, southern Ethiopia (their nearest Cushitic-speaking neighbors are 400 miles [approx. 645 km] away). Their ancestors introduced livestock (and, perhaps also agriculture) into East Africa at least 2,000 years ago. They’ve assimilated so many foreign groups that only three of an estimated 150-200 Mbulu clans are thought to be of Mbulu descent. In 1959, five years before my arrival, they comprised about 100,000 people.

Figure 1. The Mbulu Plateau extends from the Crater Highlands (upper left) seventy miles south to the Mbulu Highlands (purple area at lower left).

My impression of the plateau was of a wooded savanna rumpled here and there by small hills and shallow valleys. The trees were a mix of thorny acacias and broadleaved species (they had been small and thorny on the Maasai Steppe). The grass was dry and tawny. Scattered fields of golden wheat punctuated the savanna, as did occasional buildings roofed with thatch or shiny corrugated metal (mbati). There was one exception: Low, dark, and rectangular, plastered with a mix of mud and cow dung, and with a flat roof supported by wooden posts, it crouched defensively against a low ridge. “That’s a tembe,” Henry informed me. “It’s the traditional Mbulu dwelling. There aren’t many around anymore.”

Figure 2. A traditional Mbulu dwelling (tembe). In this case, it also served as a small store (duka).

Henry went on to say that this part of the plateau had once been held by the Maasai who called it Ngotiek. The German colonial government removed them in the late 1890’s, possibly to allow the development of German-owned farms near Karatu and Oldeani.

Figure 3. This farm near Karatu, originally developed during the German colonial period, now focuses on tourism. (Photo by David Bygott, co-author with Jeannette Hanby, of Spirited Oasis.)

The Maasai, decimated by losses of livestock to the cattle disease, rinderpest, and to the effects of a serious drought, were too weak to resist. They did, however, return to the Ngotiek in the early days of the British administration following the First World War, only to be forced out again. This time it was by another cattle disease, probably nagana, a trypanosomiasis carried by tsetse flies which meanwhile had invaded the area. The 15-20 year absence of Maasai from the Ngotiek where they routinely set grass fires to kill ticks and remove dead grass, had likely resulted in fewer fires, allowing trees to become dense, creating habitat for the tsetse flies.

Figure 4. An Mbulu man escorting donkeys carrying sacks of flour. It’s difficult to see here but he has a flat-top hair style that was then common among the Mbulu.

In 1929, the British territorial government allocated the Ngotiek area to the Mbulu people. Noted for their intensive cultivation--vistas of alternating fields, neat strips of green pasture, homesteads, and well-tended plots of woodland–they were at the time concentrated in highlands far to the south where their rapidly expanding population had outgrown the carrying capacity of the land, causing it to degrade.

Figure 5. Bus taking on passengers at Karatu, an Mbulu settlement on the road to Ngorongoro. Bulky items went on the roof, accessed by a ladder at the rear of the bus. They would be well-covered by dust at journey’s end.

Initially assisted by a colonial development project, the Mbulu, over the next thirty-five years, cleared tsetse-infested bush, reduced the numbers of their livestock, instituted soil conservation measures, took up the use of tractors, and, in doing so, spread throughout the rest of the plateau, including the Ngotiek. So successful was the project that jump-started it all that the head of the department of agriculture, sounding pleasantly surprised, reported that, the native authority (i.e., the local native-run administration) will now inherit not an embarrassing burden but a scheme with a momentum of its own.) For his part, Henry was impressed by how the Mbulus had adapted to tractors. “They’re now one of the best examples of mechanical farming by Africans,” he enthused.

Figure 6. Karatu’s bus station: packed earth, eucalyptus trees, blue and white matatu or passenger van, corrugated metal roofs, on-lookers, and, in the distance, wooded savanna.

Nonetheless, despite the presence of wheat fields and buildings (including the settlement of Karatu), the area through which we passed that day was still largely savanna. The occupation of the Mbulu Plateau by its namesake people was still underway.

However, that is no longer the case. Leap ahead now to the present, over fifty years later. The area once named Ngotiek is wall-to-wall cultivation (Figure 7). Karatu, only a village in 1964, is a large town. The Mbulu (Iraqw) population is in the region of a million people. Times have changed.

Figure 7. Mbulu cultivation between the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve and the Great Rift escarpment near Lake Manyara National Park. (Photo by David Bygott.)

—Next post: Ngorongoro—

ARUSHA, TANGANYIKA

ARUSHA, TANGANYIKA

During the internecine wars of the Maasai which disturbed southern Kenya and northern and central Tanzania in the early 1800’s, a group of Arusha Maasai, cattle herders who also practiced agriculture, left the plains and settled the southwestern slopes of Mt. Meru, where they prospered. By the late 1890’s they were powerful enough to dominate both the mountain and surrounding plains, sending raiding parties as far as eastern Kilimanjaro fifty miles away. It is no surprise, therefore, that they have a city named for them.

Arusha dates to 1900-1905 when the government of German East Africa built a fort or boma to protect German settlers attracted by Mt. Meru’s fertile volcanic soils and cool temperate climate (Arusha is 4,593 ft in elevation). By 1964, when I arrived, Tanganyika had been under British control for forty-five years and Arusha was a bustling little town of about 10,000 people (878 of whom were whites / Europeans).

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Downtown Arusha (1964), with its iconic clock tower centered in a traffic roundabout. Other structures include Barclays Bank (right), provincial government headquarters (building with blue front) AGIP petrol station (yellow and black sign), and Naranjan Singh’s greengrocery (building on far left).

Arusha’s economy was based on agricultural products including Arabica coffee, pyrethrum, sisal, and papain. (I’ve dealt with coffee and sisal in my posts, Going Upcountry and Mt. Kilimanjaro, but pyrethrum and papain need some explanation.) Pyrethrum is a pesticide made from the flowers of a species of chrysanthemum. Effective against insects (I used aerosol cans of it to kill tsetse flies) it has a more soporific effect on larger animals, as in the case of a rhino which, encountering a field of pyrethrum (this was in the 50’s when rhinos were still abundant), ate some and promptly slumped over and went to sleep. Papain is an enzyme extracted from Papaya fruits for use in meat tenderizers.

Tourism also contributed. Tanganyika National Parks and the Ngorongoro Conservation Unit were headquartered in Arusha, and the town’s New Arusha and Safari hotels catered to tourists headed for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Ngurdoto Crater, Lake Manyara, and Serengeti national parks. (These will come up in future posts.)

 

map
National parks (dark green) and game reserves (light green). Map reflects the present situation: some present-day national parks were game reserves in 1964.

Arusha appealed to me, partly because I’ve always been drawn to small towns, but also for its interesting mix of cultures–European, Indian (south Asian), African–and, on clear days, its views of nearby Mt. Meru.

 

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Mt. Meru is named for a Bantu farming people who colonized its southeastern slopes over two hundred years ago. Photo taken at the edge of a plantation of fast-growing Mexican pines (right). The Hagenia trees on the left are indigenous. 

Arusha had leafy suburbs where Europeans, and better-off Indians and Africans, lived in large houses with lush, well-kept yards, often behind high walls or dense hedges. They were nice, often lovely, places, but not especially interesting. Here are some snapshots taken elsewhere in town.

 

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Corrugated tin roofs,  vehicle skeleton and mosque: a common sight in Tanganyika

 

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An Ismaili mosque (at far end of street).

Ismailis are a branch of Shia Islam noted for the their enlightened views on the rights of women and the values of secular education, modern medicine, and Western culture in general. Their leader, the Aga Khan, periodically gains notice when Ismaili  communities donate funds for charity equal to the value of his weight in gold, diamonds and platinum. A single weighing event of the previous Aga Khan, who weighed 243 pounds, brought in $1,400,000.

 

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Fruit stalls at Arusha market. I remember mangoes, papayas (pawpaws) and at least four different kinds of bananas, including three that were new to me: cooking bananas (plantains), small, intensely sweet bananas, and thick bananas with red skins. Note the woven baskets, which were used instead of sacks or boxes. 

I have fond memories of Arusha as it was in 1964. However, its population has since burgeoned to over 400,000 people. It’s a big city now with attributes one expects of such a place. Some are positive, as, for instance, numerous quality hotels (tourists visiting northern Tanzania’s national parks have become the city’s major revenue-earner http://www.tanzaniaparks.go.tz), a shopping mall, international conference center, and two sports teams; others, including an increased crime rate and award-winning traffic jams, not so much.

 

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Arusha traffic jam. (This photo, by Sydney Combs, won first place in the University of Chicago Study Abroad photo contest.)

Times have changed.

But, the market’s still there. If you ever visit Arusha, check it out. Maybe it still sells those small, sweet bananas.

 

 

 

 

MT. KILIMANJARO

MT. KILIMANJARO

September 1964, northern Tanganyika

It was after dark when the bus we were taking upcountry from Dar es Salaam to the Tengeru Agricultural School (see previous post) passed just south of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Therefore, we missed seeing it. Subsequently, however, whenever it wasn’t obscured by clouds, I saw the great mountain a number of times, first from near Tengeru and then, its snowy summit gleaming on the eastern horizon 120 miles away, from various hill tops and mountain slopes in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Prior to joining the Peace Corps, my most vivid images of Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania) were of dense herds of ungulates on the Serengeti Plains, the yawning expanse of Ngorongoro Crater, and of Mt. Kilimanjaro rising majestically above herds of exotic looking wildlife, its snow-capped peak sometimes taking on an ethereal quality, floating in the sky.  Therefore, whenever possible at Ngorongoro I looked for it and sometimes, weather permitting, there it was: Tanganyika’s shining mountain (the meaning of Kilimanjaro in Swahili). And it never failed to impress.

Kikimanjaro
Mt. Kilimanjaro backdropping a herd of wildebeests in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. The main peak is Kibo, the smaller one Mawenzi. Kibo, “spotted one” in the language of the Chagga people, refers to a large rock projecting from the otherwise snowy summit. Mawenzi is the Swahili word for “companion.”

Kilimanjaro is a mountain of superlatives. At 19,340 ft, it’s the highest in Africa, higher than anything in Europe and, except for Denali in Alaska and Logan in Canada, any peak in North America. Fifty-five miles long by thirty-five wide and with two widely separated peaks, Kibo and Mawenzi, it’s almost a small mountain range in itself. Kilimanjaro’s visual presence is further emphasized by its rising, not from a jumble of other mountains but from an extensive plain. It’s the highest free-standing mountain in the world.

Thus, it’s unsurprising that Mt. Kilimanjaro had a place  on Tanganyika’s (and now Tanzania’s) official coat of arms.

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Tanganyika’s coat of arms displayed on a government building in Arusha. Mt. Kilimanjaro is shown supporting a heraldic shield and two wananchi, people of the land, each holding an elephant tusk. The slogan Uhuru na Umoja means freedom and unity.

However, there is more to Kilimanjaro than rugged good looks. In addition to its great height and sheer mass, it lies within a favorable climatological region with two rainy seasons a year (compared to only one season in the south of the country), and is composed of volcanic rocks rich in minerals (compared to, say, the sedimentary and metamorphic materials of the Usambara and Pare mountains to its east). These four factors have combined to make the mountain economically extremely important. Indeed, some (Gunther. Inside Africa. Harper & Brothers. 1955) have suggested it might be the most useful mountain in the world.

Breasting moisture-laden monsoon winds blowing in from the Indian Ocean, Kilimanjaro forces them to rise, cool and condense into rain which, falling throughout the year on the mountain’s highly fertile volcanic soils, supports dense forest, intensive, highly productive, agriculture and one of the densest human populations in the country.

Consequently, the Chagga people who live on Kilimanjaro’s slopes have become the country’s third largest ethnic group. They also are one of the most influential. Early to convert to Christianity and become educated and westernized, they were, by 1964, when our Peace Corps group arrived, Tanganyika’s wealthiest and most organized people. Much of their wealth came from coffee, which, following its introduction by the German colonial government before the First World War, the Chagga grew and marketed with such zeal that by 1955 they owned 12,000,000 coffee trees and belonged to probably the most successful co-operative in East Africa, the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KACU) which, by the way, is still in operation.

And that was before tourism took off.  These days Mt. Kilimanjaro also generates considerable revenue from people who want to climb or just visit the mountain. The climb (which I admit to never having done) requires no technical expertise but rather is a long, hard slog, three days up and two back, its primary risk being the chance of succumbing to altitude sickness. Still, so many people visit the mountain, the upper half of which is now a national park, that Kilimanjaro is now Tanzania National Park’s second highest revenue earner (after the Serengeti of course).

I meant to end this post with an amusing explanation for the positioning of the international boundary in relation to Mt. Kilimanjaro (see map below). In the late 1800’s when the colonial powers were carving up Africa, with Britain and Germany respectively claiming Kenya and Tanzania, Kaiser Wilhelm II complained to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, that she had (in Kenya) two snow-clad mountains (Kenya and Kilimanjaro), while he had none in Tanganyika. So, she gave him Mt. Kilimanjaro as a birthday present. And that, the story goes, explains why the international boundary which supposedly once ran in a straight line northwest from the coast to Lake Victoria,  passing south of Kilimanjaro along the way, now passes around its eastern and northern flanks.

Map of East Africa

Now, I’ve treasured this story of family relationships in a geopolitical setting for over half a century; just imagining the expressions on the faces of Queen Victoria’s councilors’ upon hearing  she’d given away a sizable chunk of her Kenya dominion always induced a grin., Unfortunately (for me at least), I’ve since learned the story is mere myth. Apparently, Kilimanjaro had always been recognized as being within Germany’s sphere of interest, as was the coast of Tanganyika. The eastern part of the international boundary actually reflects the southernmost extent of Great Britain’s control of the Kenya coast.

It’s sad, actually.  I really liked that story.

 

GOING UPCOUNTRY

September 1964: Tanganyika, East Africa

Trailed by a swirling cloud of dust, our bus, a snub-nosed blue and white Leyland with a ladder welded to its side, rumbled northward through the dry countryside. At high speeds–the driver’s preference, even for corners and bumpy detours–the bus sounded like a cross between a cement mixer and a World War II German Stuka dive bomber. Almost new, it sounded old. 

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika. 

After a few days in Dar es Salaam, those of our Peace Corps volunteer group with forestry, agriculture and wildlife jobs transferred by bus to an agricultural school near Arusha, four hundred miles northwest. Unfortunately, Cathy, the pretty nurse from Philadelphia, was headed to Mbeya, near the Zambia border, about as far from my posting at Ngorongoro as it was possible to get. (To locate Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Mbeya, check the map in my previous post.)

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A similar bus awaiting passengers in Arusha. Kikuyu Street (note the yellow sign) was named for the Kikuyu people who occupy the highlands north of Nairobi, Kenya.  Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, was Kikuyu. 

For much of the way we passed through wooded, gently undulating country crossed by small muddy rivers. Many trees were leafless. Recent fires had left charred stubble and patches of exposed reddish soil; ashy silhouettes of fallen trees lay where the flames had consumed them. Occasionally, mud-and-wattle huts with thatch roofs appeared by the roadside, as did women walking with children in tow, balancing interesting loads on their heads–a bunch of bananas, a teapot, a bar of soap. Men sat in the shade or sedately pedaled bicycles, some carrying hefty loads, such as a gunny sack of charcoal. I saw an old man using a foot-powered sewing machine 

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika

We arrived at Tengeru Agricultural School after dark. Awakening the next morning, we were pleasantly surprised to see this:

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At 14,977 ft in elevation, volcanic Mt. Meru is comparable in height to Mt. Rainer in Washington State. It last erupted in 1910. The pretty shrub in the foreground is Bougainvillea. 

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Tengeru’s living facilities were full, so we slept in tents on the lawn. 

Tengeru Agricultural School was situated at four thousand feet elevation in a lush landscape of small farms and large coffee plantations. We and some British volunteers were there for purposes of acculturation, which involved Swahili lessons, lectures on appropriate subjects, and field trips. I liked the field trips best. 

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika

Many of the coffee estates, one of which abutted the school (the narrow road leading to the school passed through coffee plantations) had been established by German colonial settlers when Tanganyika was German East Africa. The coffee plants grown here were the highland type (Coffea arabica), in contrast to Coffea robusta plants, grown at lower elevations in Uganda, which produce lower quality coffee. It was at Tengeru that I discovered “real” coffee . It took only a single cup brewed from beans grown on the adjacent estate to reveal how bland the (pre-Starbucks) coffee I had grown up with had been.

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Coffee bushes shaded by large trees planted over half a century earlier

Coffee beans
Coffee beans being laid out to dry (banana plants grow in the background).

Plantations of sisal (Agave sisalana) grew at lower, drier elevations than coffee. A native to Mexico, sisal has large fleshy leaves with many long fibers that are used for making cordage, twine, rope and other products.

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Harvested sisal leaves ready for processing

 

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Sisal fibers being air-dried

The visit to the Arusha Chini sugar cane estate was especially interesting because of the voluminously baggy khaki shorts worn by our expatriate guide. Standard field issue for the British colonial male, they were very practical for hot, tropical climates. To expedite the flow of cool air around the upper parts of one’s legs, they were approximately as wide at the bottom as they were long. Therefore, when in polite company, it was important to wear underpants and watch how you sat down. Our guide wasn’t doing either.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika