Category: Mt. Kilimanjaro

NGORONGORO SCENERY

NGORONGORO SCENERY

Tanganyika, East Africa. 1964.

Man, it was cold! Dense fog had formed during the night to wrap my little house on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater in a silent, gauzy blindfold. Peering through the window, I shivered, something I hadn’t expected to do so close to the equator. But then I also hadn’t expected to be living at 7,000 ft elevation ( 2,134 m). On the other hand, a fire in the fireplace was beginning to making its presence felt. Pulling up a chair to huddle near its warmth, I reviewed what I had learned from my first staff meeting as the Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s new assistant conservator (forests).

Ngorongoro’s forests and crater rim are often cold and foggy during the wet and early dry seasons. Photo by David Bygott.

Wearing a sweater to ward off the cool morning air, Henry Fosbrooke, conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, addressed the assembled officers from behind his sturdy African olive-wood desk. He confirmed that I was to oversee a large forest reserve, ten forest guards, a tree nursery, and a small fuelwood plantation of eucalyptus trees. He emphasized the need to stop livestock trespassing in the forest reserve, but he also wanted me to locate game-viewing tracks for tourists in and around Ngorongoro Crater. Then, he said something I hadn’t expected. Pausing to wipe his glasses, Henry admitted that neither activity would be possible until he obtained more vehicle fuel and a bulldozer. In the meantime I was to take over the conservation area’s rain gauge system and set up a meteorological station near the office. Also, I was informed, Richard Leakey had ordered a lorry load of bamboo for the archeological site at Oldupai Gorge; buffaloes had broken the fence around the tree plantation again; and I needed to familiarize myself with the files in my office. After the meeting, John Goddard, a Canadian wildlife biologist, and my neighbor, invited me to accompany him into the crater while he studied rhinos. Checking the fog again through the window, I decided I was in little danger of being bored. I also decided to borrow a heavy sweater from John.

In fact, I was never to be bored for long at Ngorongoro, especially when my official duties expanded to take me throughout the entire Ngorongoro Conservation Area. And, what a place it was, too!

A relief map of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Yellow (grassland), gray (bushland and woodland), green (forest), and brown (agriculture). Courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby (more about them later).

Bracketed by three rift valley lakes, Manyara, Eyasi, and Natron, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, at 3,200 sq. miles (8,300 sq. k), is nearly as large as Yellowstone National Park, which it rivals in scenic appeal and biological diversity (both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites). And how could it not what with the high peaks, plateau, and volcanic calderas of the Crater Highlands in the east, the vast sweep of the world-famous Serengeti Plains in the west, and, in the southwest, Lake Eyasi and the rugged Eyasi Escarpment (not to mention extensive areas of thorn tree bushland and woodland).

For instance:

Zebra and wildebeest on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. At 2,000 ft (609 m) deep and 100 sq. miles (260 sq. km) in area, the crater, home to 25,000 large animals, and one of Africa’s densest populations of lions, is considered one of the seven natural wonders of Africa.
(Don’t know them? Check out https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-seven-natural-wonders-of-africa-unique-and-mesmerizing-travel-destinations.html.)
Empakaai Crater dramatically backdropped by Oldoinyo Lengai, an active volcano rising from the rift valley floor. At 10,700 ft (3,200 m) elevation and 980 ft (300 m) deep, Empakaai is highly scenic. Views from the crater rim often include Mt. Kilimanjaro 90 miles (145 km) to the east.
The Melinda grasslands, a high plateau (including the Embulbul Depression) in the rain shadow of >11,000 ft (3353 m) Loolmalison and Olosirwa mtns. The trails reflect many millennia of use by wildlife and, for at the least the last 2,000 years, livestock of a succession of pastoral peoples. The area is now grazed by Maasai livestock. The distant peak is Oldeani Mountain.
Composed of numerous species, including bamboo on Oldeani Mtn., montane evergreen forest is sustained by high rainfall, primarily on the southern and eastern flanks of the Crater Highlands. It is a major habitat for rhino, buffalo, and elephant. The pictured tree is a species of Dracaena.
Thorn tree woodland on the drier, west slope of the Crater Highlands. The dominant tree here is a species of Commiphora. This is giraffe and impala country. The eastern Serengeti Plains are visible in the distance.
Migratory wildebeest on the eastern Serengeti Plains. During my time at Ngorongoro (1964-67), approximately 400,000 wildebeest moved onto the eastern plains every wet season to graze and calve, only returning to the Serengeti National Park when the grass and water dried up. (In 1980 they numbered around 1,400,000.)
The Eyasi Escarpment rising 1300 ft (400 m) above Lake Eyasi (barely visible at far left). Shallow Lake Eyasi fluctuates widely in area both seasonally and annually. Flamingoes and waterbirds visit the lake. Agriculturalists, Hadza hunter-gatherers, and Datoga pastoralists use the adjacent semi-arid thorn bush flats.

Pretty cool, eh?

(The authors/artists Jeannette Hanby and David Bygott lived for nineteen years in Mangola Village near Lake Eyasi’s eastern shore just a few miles east of the area pictured above. Their books, Spirited Oasis: Tales from a Tanzanian Village, and Beyond the Oasis: Safaris of Song and Stone, relate their experiences during this time. Check them out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU1L-sZJs8Q; David and Jeannette tell a good story.)

(For more information on the present-day Ngorongoro Conservation Area see https://www.ncaa.go.tz/

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART II

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART II

“What a view!” I yelped before snapping another photo. “Mmm, yes,” murmured Henry who had seen it many times before. While driving from Arusha to Ngorongoro we had topped the escarpment overlooking Lake Manyara (Fig. 1) and been confronted by an eye-grabbing view—steep, two to three thousand ft slopes fronting Lake Manyara and the Maasai Steppe like the ramparts of an immense fortress (Fig. 2). Wow!

Figure 1. Map of the Crater Highlands area. The Great Rift Escarpment passes west of Lake Manyara, east of the Crater Highlands (Loolmalassin Mts., Olmoti Crater etc.) and west of Lake Natron.
Figure 2. View south over Lake Manyara and along the Great Rift Escarpment. The Lake Manyara Hotel swimming pool is in the foreground.

However, I would have been even more impressed had I known this was only a small part of one of the geologic wonders of the world, a system of separate but related rift basins, composed of escarpments, and troughs some 30-40 miles wide, stretching 3,700 miles all the way from Turkey to Mozambique (Fig. 3).

Figure 3. The Great Rift Valley includes the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. In Africa, it cuts through the highlands of Ethiopia before dividing into the Albertine Rift and the Eastern or Gregory Rift. Lake Manyara is in the latter. (Author: Redogeographica. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)

And, it’s all caused by the earth’s crust pulling apart. In Eastern Africa, the Somali Tectonic Plate, which lies east of the Eastern or Gregory Rift (Fig. 3) is splitting away from the larger African or Nubian Plate causing huge chunks of land to sink between parallel faults (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. Parts of the rift system are not distinct valleys (Graben) but, as at lake Manyara, a single escarpment (Footwall) rising above a shallow depression (Half-Graben). (Author: Aymaith 2. Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unoported License)

Geologists postulate that elevated heat flow from the earth’s mantle is causing “thermal bulges,” creating the highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia. As they form, these “bulges” stretch and fracture into a series of faults forming rift valleys. Huge chunks of land sinking between parallel fault lines force up molten rock in volcanic eruptions. Consequently, the East African Rift System (EARS), especially the Eastern or Gregory Rift, tends to be geologically active with numerous volcanoes, hot springs, geysers and earthquakes (Figs. 5 & 6).

Figure 5. Geyser at Lake Bogoria, Kenya.

The geological processes driving the formation of the East African Rift System have greatly benefited the region. For instance, rift basins with steep 2000-3,000 ft (600-900 m) escarpments, solitary volcanoes, including Kilimanjaro and Meru, and 7,000-12,000 ft (2,134-3,658 m) volcanic highlands, provide a scenic and biological diversity that otherwise would not exist (Figs. 6&7). A rough measure of this diversity is the number of Kenyan and Tanzanian national parks (16) found in areas affected by rifting and volcanism.

Figure 6. Empakaai Crater (Embargi Crater in Fig. 1), an extinct, 10,569 ft. volcano in the Crater Highlands. Beyond, Kerimasi, another inactive volcano, rises from the arid rift floor where dry season dust devils swirl among leafless thorn trees. In contrast, temperatures at Empakaai Crater are lower, rainfall higher, and morning fogs drench evergreen forests and perennial grasslands.
Figure 7. Shallow lakes typical of the Eastern Rift are well known for their flamingoes. Lake Makat, Ngorongoro Crater.

In addition, highly fertile volcanic soils support dense populations of agriculturists, as on the well-watered slopes of Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro (see Mt. Kilimanjaro post). Livestock productivity of rangelands occurring on volcanic soils is up to twice (or sometime more) of that on soils derived from other geological materials.

Yet another benefit is that steam from hot springs and geysers can be harnessed to create geothermal energy. In 2015, geothermal energy generated nearly half of Kenya’s electricity (Fig. 8). And, it’s green energy, too!

Figure 8. Geothermal power station at Olkaria, near Lake Naivasha, Kenya.

Then, there’s this: The East African Rift System may even have influenced human evolution. Discovery of so many remains of early hominids within the rift (Fig. 9) has led to the idea that the processes of formation of the East African Rift System (uplifts of land thousands of feet in elevation, volcanoes spewing ash into the atmosphere, extensive lava flows . . . ) may have caused frequent alternations between wet and dry periods, thereby influencing the evolution of the human species by forcing our ancestors to adapt by becoming smarter and bipedal.

And, here I’d thought it was all about the scenery.

Figure 9. Oldupai Gorge, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. The concrete block marks the site where the remains of an early hominid species, Zinjanthropus boisei (since renamed Paranthropus boisei) were discovered in 1959.

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART I

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO: PART I

Sept. 1964. After completing a few weeks training with a number of other Peace Corps volunteers at Tengeru Agricultural School, I presented myself at the Ngorongoro Conservation Unit’s office in Arusha. My new boss, Henry Fosbrooke, a middle-aged, somewhat portly Englishman with glasses and well-worn sweater vest, greeted me with a business-like smile. “We go to Ngorongoro tomorrow morning,” he said. “Be at the office at seven sharp.” I was there at 6:30 AM. We left at 3:00 in the afternoon. Some unexpected matters had arisen, which Henry needed to attend to before leaving for Ngorongoro a hundred miles to the west. 

                                                    Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika

The road from Arusha to Ngorongoro as shown on the 1994 CMC Route Map of Kenya. Hard surface roads are colored red. Tarangire and Mt. Kilimanjaro were not national parks in 1964, but a game and forest reserve respectively. Ngorongoro Crater is at the far left of the map.

But leave we eventually did, and here are some sights we saw along the way.

This stop, not far from downtown Arusha, had something to do with the young man in red sweater, an employee of the Ngorongoro Conservation Unit. The elderly gentleman wearing a Muslim kofia or cap was possibly a relative. I like the contrast between the modern bright red tractor (and even brighter sweater) and weathered, dilapidated buildings.

Where buses go to die (several others were gently rusting away behind the building). Outskirts of Arusha at the edge of the dry Maasai Steppe.

Arusha Maasai farms on Kisongo Maasai land ten miles west of Arusha. The woman, a Maasai, is carrying a bundle of maize stalks.

By the 1960’s the numbers of Arusha people on Mt. Meru had grown to where all cultivable land was fully occupied. This forced them to mobilize relations with their pastoral cousins, the Kisongo Maasai, in order to access their land. One way was through marriage because pastoral Maasai did not farm but frequently married women from cultivating tribes who did. However, according to John Galaty, in the book, Being Maasai, this has not always been to the pastoralists’ advantage, especially the Kisongo, who often complain that the Arusha women they marry invite all their brothers to cultivate near them, and then evict the Kisongo husbands when their herds disturb the crops.

Our way smoothed by a two-lane asphalted stretch of colonial Britain’s Great North Road, we passed through open, often rocky grassland with scattered bushes and small thorn trees. We passed herds of livestock tended by small boys, Maasai women following loaded donkeys, and a single rangy warrior, walking with long, loping strides, carrying a spear. Grass fires were turning the air hazy with smoke.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika

This was the land of the Kisongo Maasai, one of twenty or so Maa-speaking groups, or sections, of pastoralists who once dominated a region equal in size to Wyoming or, to take an example across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom.

Area occupied by Maa-speaking peoples in the mid-1880’s prior to European colonization (heavily shaded borders)., Arusha (A); Nairobi (N).

The Maa-speaking peoples are the most recent of a succession of Cushitic and Nilotic pastoralists who, over some three to five thousand years, have entered East Africa from Sudan and Ethiopia. For their part, the Kisongo Maasai have been in southern Maasailand only since the early 1800’s when they evicted or absorbed other Maasai sections, as well as Tatog pastoralists who, preceding the Maasai, had lived around Lake Manyara and in the Crater Highlands for at least a millennium.

Distinguished by a specialized form of cattle pastoralism, and by an age-set social organization that motivated cattle raiding and warfare, the Maasai were widely feared. However, they also raided and fought among themselves, their aggressiveness and ferocity climaxing during the mid to late 1880’s when they attacked one another so savagely that entire regions were depopulated. The winners, including the Kisongo, were checked only by the effects of rinderpest and smallpox epidemics in the 1890’s and by the onset of colonial rule. (The depopulation of highland grasslands in Kenya greatly enabled their subsequent occupation by white settlers who found no one there to contest the issue.)

Henry, who had previously been an anthropologist, enjoyed talking about the Maasai.

. . . who moved about the countryside looking for grass and water for their cattle. Unlike farmers, they did not want to settle down and send their children to school. Furthermore, although they owned large numbers of livestock, they were not interested in participating in the nation’s economy by selling them. “Yes, they are an obstinate lot,” Henry sighed. At least those were his words; actually, I think he was secretly pleased that the Maasai were keeping to their old ways.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika

A Maasai warrior or murrani
(photo by Herman Dirschl)

Leaving the Great North Road at Makutani Junction, we drove for twenty miles on a murram (a type of gravel) road to the village of Mto wa Mbu: Stream of the Mosquitoes. (It’s a name that would make an American real estate agent cringe; as a young boy I remember a petition being circulated to change the name of a nearby stream–from Mosquito to Harmony Creek–in order to increase property values.) Nestled below the Great Rift Escarpment at the entrance to Manyara National Park, the village served a small but densely settled area of farms watered by springs and a small stream that flowed down the escarpment.

The village of Mto wa Mbu (Stream of the Mosquitoes).

A few dukas (small general stores) lined the road, shaded by wide-spreading flamboyant trees (Delonix regia). In season, the trees produced masses of scarlet flowers that competed for the eye with the colorful kitenge cloth worn by the village women. Small groups of Maasai murran or warriors leaned lightly on their long-bladed spears, affecting little interest as a convoy of tourist vehicles slowed to enter the park. (A fence of strong cables blocked large animals in the park from entering the village.) Nearby, a small, open-air market displayed eight-feet lengths of sugar cane, bunches of yellow bananas and, on rough-wooden tables, piles of mangoes and pawpaws or papayas. Gunny sacks of charcoal stood or lay by the road.

Pawpaw (Carica papaya) trees in the yard of the Public Works Dept. (PWD) station at Mto wa Mbu.

I’ve mentioned pawpaw trees in previous posts. I think they look weird, like something one might see in a Dr. Seuss book.

Papaya fruits on a tree in India.
(photo by Vackachan. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike International License.)

I had never seen a papaya (or mango for that matter) before coming to Tanganyika in 1964. Therefore, they seemed very exotic. Nowadays, of course, they can be found in most major grocery stores.

—TO BE CONTINUED—

Here’s a suggestion: consider giving my book, Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika, as a Christmas present.

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.