Category: Ngorongoro

MAASAI PASTORALISTS OF NGORONGORO: AS THEY ARE NOW

MAASAI PASTORALISTS OF NGORONGORO: AS THEY ARE NOW

In the mid-1960’s, the pastoral Maasai of Ngorongoro, proud of their reputation for being fierce warriors, and possessing an abundance of cattle, were content with their way of life. Thus, they were conservative and resistant to change, an attitude that frustrated government officials, both pre-and post-independence, and gave the Maasai a reputation for being backward. (Adapted from the previous blogpost, The Maasai of Ngorongoro: 1960’s.)

Over half a century later their situation has changed–drastically.

For instance, due to better health care, and the immigration into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) of other pastoralists (especially during droughts), the human population is now twelve-fold greater.

In contrast, several factors have constrained growth of the livestock population: (a) Valuable grazing lands have been lost to other uses, primarily wildlife conservation and tourism, (b) Livestock carrying capacity has declined due to overgrazing, a ban on setting grass fires, and recurring droughts, (c) Livestock deaths have increased due to diseases and droughts.

DETAILS

Valuable grazing land was lost when the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), concerned that the Maasai and their livestock were hindering wildlife conservation, removed them from Ngorongoro, Olmoti, and Empakaai craters in the 1970’s. (Ngorongoro Crater was an especially hard loss.)

Ngorongoro Crater is the largest in the Crater Highlands. Empakaai Crater contains a small, but lovely lake. Graphic by David Bygott and Jeanette Hanby.

Ngorongoro Crater, 97 sq. miles (252 sq. km) of productive rangeland. (View from my house on the crater rim in 1964.)

Also, expanding numbers of wildebeests calving in the wet season on the eastern Serengeti Plains, and the associated risk of cattle catching malignant catarrh fever (MCF), forced herders to keep their livestock in the highlands for extended periods. The reduced ability of the Maasai to use this wet season grazing area caused an estimated 35% reduction in cattle numbers.

Wildebeest calves on the eastern Serengeti Plains, which lie entirely within the NCA. From 1961 to 1977, the Serengeti wildebeest population grew from 250,000 to its present level of approximately 1,277,000. This caused the area used for calving to significantly expand. Photo by Dirk Kreulen.

Afterbirth of a wildebeest calf. If cattle graze grass that has been touched by it they are apt to contract (and die from) malignant catarrh fever (MCF). Photo by Dirk Kreulen.

Forage quality and production dropped (at least for cattle) in parts of the Serengeti Plains because of declining grass and increasing shrub cover associated with a ban on setting grass fires imposed by the NCAA. (Pastoralists typically burn grasslands to kill ticks, remove dry grass, suppress woody plants, and induce greening of the vegetation.) Increasing abundance of unpalatable grass species in the highlands probably reflects overgrazing.

Grass fire on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. A decrease in fires following removal of Maasai and their livestock from the crater in the 1970’s resulted in taller grasses and lower grassland species diversity. (Also, as I can personally attest from having to pick them off my pants in 2004, more ticks.)

Livestock deaths, especially of cattle, increased when herders, unable to use wet season pastures on the eastern Serengeti Plains, were forced to keep their animals for extended periods on traditional dry season pastures in the highlands. This increased the exposure of cattle to ticks, vectors for East Coast fever (ECF). Major die-offs occurred. A good example is provided by Andrew Clark, who in 1967, described the results of a virulent outbreak of ECF in Loliondo, north of the NCA: “Hundreds of cattle died in a few weeks. The whole area stunk of rotting carcasses. Hyenas, bellies pendulous from gorging, could barely walk. Vultures were so stuffed they could hardly get off the ground.”

Ticks, carriers of East Coast fever (ECF). They become abundant on rangelands which are seldom burned and/or are used for extended periods by livestock. Photo by Dr. Alexey Yakovlev. CC Attribution-SA 2.0 G.L.

Veterinary staff with bones of Maasai cattle killed by East Coast fever in Loliondo, Photo by Andrew Clark.

As a result, Maasai pastoralists were forced to reduce the proportion of cattle in their herds and increase that of goats. This is because goats are less susceptible to disease than cattle.

A mixed herd of goats and sheep. Goats also reproduce more quickly, produce milk throughout the year, utilize a variety of habitats (Cattle are restricted to grasslands), are drought-resistant, and easy to sell and slaughter. Thus, they are the fallback livestock for impoverished pastoralists.

Finally, droughts are becoming more frequent, and lengthy. Consequently, the grasses that provide forage for cattle are less able to recover their vigor between droughts, making them less productive. Thus, they support fewer animals, which tend to be weaker, in poorer condition, and more apt to die during the next drought. The drought ending in 2009, one of the most serious in recent memory, killed 35-40% of all cattle in Ngorongoro District, which includes the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) and, to the north, Loliondo.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHANGE

The result of all this is that, even though animal numbers have increased, the livestock population, especially of cattle, has not grown in accordance with the human population. Livestock biomass per pastoralist, well above subsistence level in 1966, is now below subsistence level.

This has caused the Ngorongoro Maasai, with too few livestock to support themselves, to become so impoverished that they must find other ways to supplement their livestock-based subsistence economy. Presently, they cultivate. Unfortunately, most are still too poorly educated to be employed in the region’s burgeoning wildlife-viewing tourist industry (six tourist lodges in the NCA alone). Those migrating to cities generally only find work as low-paid security guards.

This 2004 scene of Maasai bomas shows two examples of change since the 1960s: (a) cultivation , and (b) huts unprotected by fences (Predators may no longer be a problem, or the Maasai now know how unhealthy it is to live at close quarters with livestock inside the stockades).

Maasai security guards in Zanzibar. Photo by Jack Meyers.

Nonetheless, despite there being too few livestock to adequately support resident pastoralists, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) is still concerned that there are too many for the land to support. It is especially worried about the ecological impact of overgrazing (as well as that of settlements and cultivation) on wildlife-based tourism, a major source of foreign currency (in 2017, 650,000 tourists visited the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, generating about 65 million $ U.S.) https://africasacountry.com/2022/04/people-live-here).

And the government is worried, too: The National assembly recently debated whether the Maasai even have a right, guaranteed in laws as far back as 1959, to live in the NCA. Also, recent reports in the media (denied by the government), state that it is considering relocating 80,000 Ngorongoro Maasai–much, if not most of the total population–outside the NCA. Whether or not this eventually happens, the NCAA/Tanzania government are “encouraging” impoverished herders to go elsewhere. Furthermore, a few hundred Maasai recently have, moving 210 miles (340 km) to Handeni in eastern Tanzania https://www.kbc.co.ke/hundreds-of-masai-ready-to-leave-conservation-area/.

Is this the future of Ngorongoro’s Maasai?

To best secure their future, the Maasai of Ngorongoro must become better educated. Photo by Christopher Michel. CC Attribution 2.0 GL.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Amiyo, T.A. 2006. Ngorongoro Crater rangelands: condition, management, and monitoring. MS thesis, School of Biological and Conservation Sciences, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

Borges, J. et al. 2022. Landsat time series reveal forest loss and woody encroachment in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. Open Access https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.277.

Galvin.. et al. 2015. Transitions in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area: The story of land use, human well-being, and conservation. Pages 483-512 in Serengeti IV: Sustaining biodiversity in a coupled human-natural ecosystem. The University of Chicago Press.

Homewood, K.M. & W.A. Rodgers. 1991. Maasailand ecology: Pastoralist development and wildlife conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Cambridge University Press.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. 1966. General Management Plan. Tanzania Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.

THE MAASAI OF NGORONGORO: 1960’S

THE MAASAI OF NGORONGORO: 1960’S

(This, the first of two posts on the Ngorongoro Maasai, describes them as they were in the 1960’s. The second, coming in a few months, will describe their present situation, over half a century later.)

Kapenjiru, 1965. That night we ate goat meat roasted over a campfire while Solomon ole Saibull regaled us with stories, including how the agro-pastoral Arusha, who had originated from elements of the Kisongo, the principle sub-tribe, or section, of the Maasai, had, a few hundred years ago, pushed the agricultural Meru people from some of their land on Mt. Meru. Even more interesting, however, because we were near the place concerned, was his story about how the Kisongo defeated another sub-tribe of the Maasai, the Lumbwa, for possession of the Crater Highlands. The decisive battle took place on the rim of Empakaai Crater.

“What happened to the defeated warriors?”

Solomon shrugged, “What do you think? They were thrown over a cliff.”

Maasai murrani or warrior. Photo by Herman Dirschl.

Given the propensity in the nineteenth century for the various elements of the Maasai to slaughter one another, the Kisongo and Lumbwa might just as easily have fought over possession of barren rock. The Ngorongoro Crater Highlands, however, were a prize worth fighting for because they contained prime dry season grazing. Furthermore, in times of drought, they were a refuge for herders living in he surrounding, drier rangelands (or at least those on good terms with the Crater Highland’s occupants).

Grasslands (yellow) of the Serengeti Plains comprise the largest area of rangelands in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. However, the grasslands of the Crater Highlands can support 2-5 times as many livestock and people. Map courtesy of David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.

Thus, it isn’t surprising that the rangelands of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area have been inhabited by livestock-keeping peoples for a very long time. The Iraqw or Mbulu people first introduced livestock, and possibly also agriculture, to the area some 2,000-2,500 years ago. Around 1,000-1,500 BC, they were replaced by the Datog (or Barabaig, Tatua) who were in turn driven out by the Maasai sometime around 1850.

A deeply worn livestock trail on Makarut Mtn, indicative of thousands of years of use by herds of livestock. Pictured: Herman Dirschl, Canadian Wildlife Service.

A century and a half later, Maasai pastoralists still occupy the Crater Highlands and adjacent eastern Serengeti Plains. Most are Kisongo Maasai. The smaller Serenget and Salei sections occupy the eastern Serengeti Plains and Oldoinyo Gol Mtns. Many of these Maasai pastoralists were moved there from the western Serengeti Plains in what is now the Serengeti National Park.

When I was at Ngorongoro in the mid-1960’s, the Maasai still largely subsisted on milk, meat, and skins from their livestock. However, whenever milk was scarce, as in the late dry season and during droughts, they also ate grains obtained from dukas (shops) or neighboring agro-pastoralists, such as the Arusha Maasai, who also farmed. They raised goats, sheep, and donkeys (the latter for hauling things), but strongly emphasized cattle, which were the principal producers of milk. In the wet season when milk was most abundant, the Maasai lived only on it. Cattle, primarily bulls, were slaughtered for meat only on special occasions, such as ox-feasts helped by the warriors. Instead, the Maasai ate goats or sheep when they wanted meat.

Donkeys being used as pack animals in the Crater Highlands. The 6-7,000 ft (2,000-2,135 m) high grasslands pictured here were used for dry season grazing. In the background is 11,811 ft (3,600 m) Lolmalasin Mtn.

Having large herds was important. The more animals, the greater chance some would survive to rebuild the herd after a drought, outbreak of disease, or major stock theft. Also, the more milk a pastoralist’s herd produced, the more people he could support. (Human carrying capacity is maximized by emphasizing milk, rather than meat in diets: Milk has a higher caloric value.) Having many cattle also conferred prestige–he with many animals was an important man.

As were their predecessors, the Datog, and probably also the Iraqw/Mbulu before them, the Maasai were transhumant pastoralists, who moved between dry season and wet season pastures (the latter in the eastern Serengeti Plains and floor of the Rift Valley). Thus, when water sources dried up and forage was depleted by grazing on the lower, drier rangelands, livestock were returned to dry season pastures in the highlands where water and forage, the latter often still green and nutritious, were still abundant.

Cattle on wet season pasture in the Olbalbal, a large, shallow depression watered by outflow from Oldupai Gorge.

A Maasai’s home, or boma, consisted of huts encircled by a stockade of cut thorn bushes or upright logs (depending on the local vegetation), which also served as a corral for livestock. Constructed of frames of poles plastered with fresh cow dung mixed with mud and cow urine, the huts were dark and smoky inside. Nonetheless, they were remarkably free of flies and mosquitoes, and fluctuated little in temperature day and night.

A view of the Olbalbal Depression and Crater Highlands from a Maasai (Serenget or Salei) boma in the eastern Serengeti Plains.

Bomas were abandoned when cow dung and parasites reached unacceptable levels. Long after fences and huts disappeared, old boma sites were marked by dense stands of dark green nettles and other plants growing on their nutrient-rich deposits of dung.

Building and maintaining a boma’s huts were the responsibility of the women, who also did the milking, gathered water and wood, cooked, cared for the children, attended calving, and dealt with night-time disturbances within the herd of corralled livestock.

Maasai ladies on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. Note the brand new (and therefore almost pristine white) Amerikani cloth, a cheap, bleached calico named for American traders who exported it to East Africa in the mid 19th century.

Young boys and girls did the herding, assisted by warriors and elders whenever herding and watering became difficult. After circumcision, the boys became warriors or murran, who carried out difficult, long-distance herd movements, defended their locality, recaptured stolen cattle, and (at least in the past) raided other tribes, including the neighboring Mbulu and Sukuma, for livestock. Exempt from regular herding, murran hunted lions, feasted on ox-meat, consorted with young, unmarried girls, and formed strong, lasting bonds with their age-mates. Boys looked forward to becoming murran, and elders fondly remembered their time as warriors. However, like it or not, by their mid-40’s, all murran became married elders responsible for managing their herds, and taking part in political and religious affairs.

Maasai murran watching an airplane being refueled on the floor of Ngorongoro Crater.

Despite what a European visitor to a Maasai boma, swatting away flies that bred in the accumulated dung on the stockade floor, might think, the Maasai felt they were living the ‘Good Life.’ Proud of their reputation for being fierce warriors and possessing an abundance of that which, in their eyes, any sane person would want, i.e., cattle, they had everything they desired.

Thus, the Maasai have tended to be conservative and resistant to change, such as in educating children and selling cattle at livestock markets. This attitude has frustrated government officials, both pre-and post-independence, and given the Maasai a reputation for being backward.

Even so, despite contributing little to the regional economy, subsistence pastoralism, prior to the advent of tourism, was the major land use throughout most of what is now the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

PRINCIPAL REFERENCE.

Homewood & Rodgers. 1991. Maasailand Ecology: Pastoralist Development and Wildlife Conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Cambridge University Press.)

THE FORESTS OF NGORONGORO

THE FORESTS OF NGORONGORO

1965: Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, Tanzania

Suddenly, ahead, a soft clunk sounded. Cowbell! The chief forest guard, an older man whose stiff curly hair was sprinkled with white, whispered that we should be especially quiet now. He and I were leading a group of forest guards and game scouts on a patrol for livestock trespassing in the forest reserve. Easing our way slowly around stumps, we carefully pushed branches aside to look ahead, studying each clearing before entering it, tense with anticipation.

“Wewe! Simama!” You! Stop!

“Kamata yeye!” Catch him!

Guards and scouts alike charged into the bushes . . .

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.

Now that I’ve grabbed your attention, and you’re wondering what happens next, I’m taking the opportunity to introduce some important background information before resuming the story. In my previous post, I promoted the scenery and wildlife of Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) to the extent that some readers probably wondered why, if it was so great, it wasn’t a national park. The answer is that it once was. From 1951-1959 it comprised the western part of the Serengeti National Park.

However, difficulties encountered from having people, in this case Maasai pastoralists and non-Maasai cultivators, living in an area strictly devoted to the conservation of wildlife forced the then territorial government to remove the eastern Serengeti Plains and Crater Highlands from the park and place them within a separate entity, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This allowed the Maasai to continue their pastoral existence while the government controlled the use of certain key areas, including Ngorongoro and Empakaai craters, the eastern Serengeti Plains, and the archeological site at Oldupai Gorge. Thus, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area became a multiple-use management area, the only one in Tanzania to protect wildlife while allowing human habitation.

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

The NCA’s montane forests provide an example of multiple use. Ranging in elevation from 5,000-10,000 ft (1,600-3,000 m), most forest cover occurs within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, a 50 mile (80 km) band of green on the southern and eastern slopes of the Crater Highlands. Here, monsoonal air masses off the Indian Ocean 200 miles (320 km) away are forced to rise, cool, and condense into mist, clouds, and rainfall. This, together with cool high-elevation temperatures, is conducive to a moist environment. Thus, unlike elsewhere in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where green foliage is a seasonal phenomenon, montane forest remains green throughout the year.

Lichens and other epiphytes trailing from branches are associated with abundant mist.

The first thing that struck me upon entering an undisturbed (by cutting, fire, etc.) stand of montane forest was the dim light filtering through the dense canopy 50 to 60 feet overhead. Only here and there did a beam of sunlight slant down to brighten a patch of he forest floor. The next was how a dense understory of shrubs and small trees often hampered my movements, while at other times it was so scattered (or absent) that I could walk freely across the forest floor, the latter made soft and springy by several inches of decomposing organic matter. This made it easier to appreciate the trees, which I differentiated by their many types of bark, which ranged from silver to black, and from smooth to rough, including fissured, corrugated, scaly, flaking, and peeling.

Montane forest within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve.

Ngorongoro’s forests comprised many tree and shrub species. Some were worthy of note, if only for their descriptive names, including pillar wood (Cassipourea malosana), cheese wood (Pittosporum viridiflorum), brittle wood (Nuxia congesta), and black ironwood (Olea capensis). The latter, also called Elgon olive (for Mt. Elgon on the Kenya-Uganda border), stands out because it is so dense and heavy that it will not float. (Check out the world’s ten heaviest woods at https://www.wood-database.com/top-ten-heaviest-woods/).

Cape chestnut.

Cape chestnut (Calodendron capense) has beautiful flowers. East African pencil cedar (Juniperus procera) is the largest species of Juniper in the world. Mountain bamboo (Arundinaria alpina) is a very large woody grass. The fresh leaves and shoots of Khat or Miraa (Catha edulis) were chewed as a stimulant throughout much of eastern Africa, especially the Horn of Africa. Podo (Podocarpus milanjianus), African mahogany (Entandrophragma angolense), and East African pencil cedar woods were highly prized for construction and other uses. However, these species were not abundant enough in Ngorongoro’s forests to attract commercial operations.

East African pencil cedar forms pure stands in high-elevation ravines within the NCA. The wood of this species was once extensively used to make pencils.
Photo by Sema Tu. Creative Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Dense stands of mountain bamboo on Oldeani Mountain (Oldeani is the Maasai word for bamboo). Mountain bamboo has the strange habit of gregariously dying out over large areas every 15 to 40 years or so.

In the case of the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve, a lack of commercially exploitable tree species didn’t matter because its principal purpose, ever since its establishment in 1927, was the protection of forest catchments for water production. Thus, although the forest fulfilled local domestic wood product needs, such as building poles, and firewood, it was far more important for the water (twenty-four small streams and seven springs) it provided beyond its boundaries to coffee and wheat estates, tourist facilities, Mbulu farmers, and Maasai pastoralists. Water infiltrating into the forest’s soils also sustained important groundwater forest habitat over ten miles (sixteen km) away in Lake Manyara National Park (see earlier post, On the Road to Ngorongoro: Part III)

Farms abutting the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. Most are new since 1965. Photo by David Bygott.

However, the main reason for including the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve in the Serengeti National Park (1n 1951) and then the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (1959), was its value as wildlife habitat, especially for buffaloes, elephants, and rhinos. At the time it was thought that the large animals living in the forest seldom left it, although tourists would often see them along the road. However, subsequent studies revealed that rhinos often traveled back and forth between the forest and the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. Furthermore, before their access routes were blocked by new farms, elephants once moved between the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve and the Rift Valley floor near Lake Manyara .

Picture encountering this while pushing your way through dense undergrowth.
Photo by David Bygott.

Finally, the montane forests of Ngorongoro supported yet another use, a great deal of it illegal. Much of the forest within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve was discontinuous, separated by secondary scrub and grassy glades. Possible causes included cultivation carried out many years ago, fire, and grazing/browsing by livestock. Maasai herders were sometimes allowed, under permit, to pasture their livestock in forest glades during droughts. Fires, set in the glades to remove dry grass often escaped into the forest, damaging trees. Browsing by livestock destroyed tree seedlings. Trampling hooves compacted soils, reducing their ability to absorb rainfall. These impacts had the potential to seriously reduce the forest’s water catchment value.

It was for this reason that Henry Fosbrooke, the conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, wanted me, the NCA’s assistant conservator (forests), to stop forest trespass by Maasai livestock. “The forest guards aren’t doing their job properly. You must shape them up.” This explains why, in the first paragraph of this post, I and a group of forest guards and game scouts are portrayed sneaking through the trees trying apprehend trespassing herders and their animals. We now return to that story.

Cattle illegally grazing a glade within the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. The tall grass, manyatta grass (Eleusine jaegeri), is unpalatable to livestock. The other grasses have been grazed and trampled so heavily that in places only bare soil remains, Fires set in the glade have, in the past, burned away parts of the adjacent forest, giving it an irregular, often open appearance.

The person caught by the scouts and guards was a Maasai herd boy. Soon afterward, they caught another herder, and then another. We nabbed six herders and roughly a thousand cattle that day. Together with those apprehended a few days earlier in another part of the forest, this made ten people and two-thousand cattle. No wonder the forest reserve was degraded. Three days later, the herders and I appeared in a magistrate’s court in the town of Karatu where the African magistrate levied such a small fine that a relative of the herders paid it on the spot.

“They treat these fines as grazing fees” whispered a senior staff member of the NCA, Solomon ole Saibull, into my ear. “They would willingly pay even greater amounts.” Keeping his voice low, he told me that in his experience, African magistrates seldom imposed heavy fines for forest trespass because they didn’t think it was a very important offense. Most Africans, educated or not, considered forest reserves to be relicts of colonialism, set aside by the ‘wazungu’ for their own purposes, not the African’s. “He [the magistrate] probably thinks the reserve should be converted to farms,”Solomon hissed.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.

Here was another factor contributing to degradation within the forest reserve. Now I understood why the forest guards weren’t interested in braving elephants and buffaloes to catch trespassing livestock. Why bother if it did no good? Consequently, despite our efforts, I and the forest guards were to have little impact on the numbers of trespassing livestock during my time at Ngorongoro.

Maasai herders caught trespassing with their livestock in the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. They were so engrossed in chewing honeycombs that they didn’t hear us approach.

We now jump ahead thirty years. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) general management plan, published in 1996, emphasized, among other things, the continuing need to better control both fire and forest grazing. Apparently, the NCA foresters who came after me also had trouble controlling forest trespass.

Furthermore, the management plan also stated that Ngorongoro’s forests were under considerable pressure from illegal harvesting of trees for local domestic use. This to the extent that Mafu (Fagaropsis angolensis) and Khat or Miraa (Catha edulis) were listed as ‘threatened’ tree species in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area due to extensive logging of the former for building materials, and heavy harvesting of the latter for its drug properties.

This undoubtedly reflects rapid population growth, both within and outside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Tanzania’s population approximately tripled from 1960 to 1996), which has created a higher demand for forest products. (For information on population growth in Tanzania, go to https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/tanzania-population.)

I wonder what the situation is now, twenty-six years later.

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 V, KARATU-NGORONGORO

ON THE ROAD TO NGORONGORO:PART V, KARATU-NGORONGORO

Summary of the past four posts: It’s September, 1964. I’m traveling with Henry Fosbrooke, the conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, to Ngorongoro a hundred miles west of Arusha, Tanganyika to take up my duties as a forester. A newly arrived Peace Corps volunteer, I soak up impressions like a dry sponge: the Great North Road (Cape Town to Cairo); the Maasai Steppe with its spear-wielding cattle herders and air smokey from grass fires; buying bananas at a village named after mosquitoes; sweeping views from the Great Rift Escarpment; and, finally, crossing a once empty plateau now being settled by Mbulu farmers.

Several miles past the village of Karatu we came to Lodoare Gate, the entrance to Henry’s domain, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Beyond the gate’s wooden barrier, the road disappeared into the dense forest of the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve. In Arusha, Henry had complained about how the forest needed protection from illegal grazing by Maasai cattle but wasn’t getting it because the guards supervised by an African forester weren’t doing their job properly. As we waited for the gate guards to raise the pole and let us through, he abruptly switched from tour guide to boss mode and returned to the subject. Fixing me with a tight smile, he nodded toward the forest and declared, ” As the new assistant conservator (forests) this is your responsibility now. You must shape these chaps up!”

Lodoare Gate, entrance to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It has since been replaced by a larger, more modern structure. (Photo by David Bygott, co-author with Jeanette Hanby, of Spirited Oasis, and Beyond the Oasis.)

I needed no reminder. Cloaking the southern and western slopes of the Crater Highlands, the forest had been a brooding presence, a few miles to the north, for the last twenty miles, its dark green foliage sharply contrasting with the dried-up savanna of the plateau. Yes, I certainly intended to do something about those forest guards.

The road began to climb, passing through thickets of broad-leaved shrubs, vines, and creepers that reduced visibility away from the road to a few feet. Only where it crossed high on the slope were we able to look out and see trees with smooth silvery bark rising from a dense cover of shrubs.

Pillar wood trees (Cassipourea malosana) in the Northern Highlands Forest Reserve rising above a dense cover of shrubs dominated by Vernonia auriculifera

“Any wildlife here?” I asked. “Yes indeed,” Henry enthusiastically replied, back in tour guide mode again, “elephants, buffaloes, rhinos . . . We might encounter some at any time.” Then with a grimace, “I’m driving a government Land Rover today because I don’t want my private ghari damaged should we meet a stroppy rhino.” Well, that gave pause for thought; the shrubs lining the road sometimes were so dense that rhinos, or possibly even elephants, would be nearly invisible until they stepped onto the road. If we arrived just as this happened, we could easily hit one, or find ourselves dangerously close. I decided to keep alert, especially when we rounded blind curves.

An example of what we might have met while rounding a corner. Look at those horns! (Photo by George and Lory Frame)

Jack Meyers would have understood. A livestock marketing advisor traveling from Arusha to Mwanza, he passed along this same stretch of road in 1976. However, he did so in different circumstances. Rain was bucketing down, the road was muddy and slippery, and his driver, the manager of the project he was advising, was proving worryingly erratic. At one point where the road cut across a steep slope, the vehicle wavered so near the edge that Jack almost grabbed the steering wheel. But then something happened that made his partner slam on the brakes. Crack! Pop! Crash! Shrubs violently shook and swayed, and where an instant before had been only muddy road, there was now an elephant. Flat on its butt.

What had happened was that the big animal, finding the wet soil on the steep slope too slippery to safely navigate on foot, had simply sat down and tobogganed, crashing through bushes and ricocheting off trees, downhill to the road.* Peering through a rain and mud-streaked windshield, the two men watched, wide-eyed, as the tembo, leaves adhering to its wet skin and a broken branch balanced precariously on its head, heaved itself to its feet and shook off the accumulated vegetation. Then it ambled across the road, carefully sat down again, and disappeared, sliding farther down the hill. Jack and his partner did not linger. Seeing another elephant materialize from the bushes close behind them, they quickly moved on.

(*Elephants have more than one way to negotiate steep slopes. For instance, some friends of mine, Andrew and Barbara Clark, rode an elephant in Thailand a few years ago which drug its hind legs like a sea anchor while walking and steering with its forefeet. In another example, a pachyderm in a recent televised nature program [name forgotten] tucked in all its feet and slid down a hill on its belly. And, of course, many of the big animals just carefully walk, especially when the ground is dry or rocky. )

In our case, no large animals impeded our progress up the mountain. However, we did occasionally see their spoor on the road, and, funnily enough, it conjured up memories. Cape buffalo droppings resembled cattle pats I had stepped around in fenced pastures in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Piles of elephant dung looked to my untrained eye like those of horses, except that the fibrous brown boluses were the size of grapefruit. At one point I caught the scent of horses wafting in through an open Land Rover window. “Elephants,” Henry corrected me. “Somewhere close by.”

Dung beetles on a pile of elephant dung.
(Author: NJR ZA. GNU Free Documentation License.)

Eventually, we arrived at the top where the road branched both ways along a narrow ridge. Henry stopped and suggested I look over the other side.

It took several minutes to absorb the details of that startling view. Expecting a forested valley, I was unprepared to see, far below, tawny grassland stretching away across the floor of an immense crater, Ngorongoro Crater! All through the forest, we had been driving up the Crater’s southern flank.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika

Ngorongoro Crater as seen from its southeastern rim. The dry lake bed in the distance reflects drier conditions than when I arrived in 1964. (Photo by David Bygott.)

Wow!

We were near our destination now. Late afternoon shadows darkened the western walls of the crater and accentuated small hills on the crater floor. The road kept to the crater rim, passing through grassy glades, and dipping into forested gullies. Occasionally, wonderful views presented themselves northward over the darkening crater to the highlands beyond. Then we began to see animals–my first ever free-ranging African wildlife; two gray elephants daydreaming in an open glade, a reddish bushbuck standing startled at the forest edge, the massive rear end of a buffalo disappearing into dense green bush. And finally, the best: two lions walking down the middle of the road, so certain of their right of way that, as far as they were concerned, we weren’t even there. I started mentally composing my first letter home.

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika.

Elephants in a glade on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater.

Then we were there. Passing a tourist lodge, we turned onto a smaller road leading past office buildings with red corrugated metal roofs to a large cul-de-sac serving four residences. Parking beside the smallest, Henry turned to me and said, “This one is yours”

My house on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater.

Double wow!

Did I mention the view?

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—

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.