Compared to much of sub-Saharan Africa, Tanzania had very early and extensive contact with non-African cultures, and this is evident in the ethnic, religious, and cultural differences between the upper mainland and Zanzibar and the coast.
The Tanzanian coast, and Zanzibar in particular, were an important part of sea trading routes that touched all parts of the Indian Ocean, and connected (coastal)East Africa to most of the ancient world (who were quite fond of African gold, ivory, and other goods). Ancient Sumerians are known to have visited as long as 4000 years ago, followed around 1000BC by the Phoenicians and Assyrians. Archaeologists have found artifacts like coins, daggers, and jewelry from the Romans, Egyptians, and some Middle Eastern civilizations as well. I read that even later, Tanzania's coast was part of trading networks that went as far as China and Indonesia, which probably introduced coconuts, bananas, and outrigger canoes.
Because of way the monsoon systems travel up and down the coast, traders were forced to stay a while here (or Mozambique, or Kenya, etc) before the the winds changed direction and brought them home. Of course, this means they built towns all up and down the coast, importing their cultures and languages.
The Persians in particular established many permanent settlements along the coast from Somalia to Mozambique. This was the beginning of Swahili civilization, which was a combination of African, Persian, and Arab cultures. (The Kiswahili language is an amalgamation of Bantu, Persian, and Arabic, with thousands more loan words from Portuguese, Hindi, English, and German. It spread inland from the coast along trade routes).
The next powerhouse in the region were the Portuguese, notified of its strategic and economic value by Vasco da Gama, who stopped by on his way to discovering an ocean route to India. They took over the Swahili coast quite quickly in the 1500s, but this disrupted the traditional trading networks and the entire coast apparently began to decline. Portuguese interest waned, and they kept up settlements mainly as staging posts until they were ousted in the region by the Omanis—whose reign is a much more exciting period to learn about, frankly.
The Omanis pretty much controlled the western Indian Ocean (including this part of East Africa) from the 1600s to the 1800s. The now-Tanzanian coast and Zanzibar played a huge role in their dominance. The sultan even moved the Omani capital to Zanzibar in 1841.
The disgusting source of Zanzibar's immense wealth was the slave trade: slaves were transported from all over East Africa to be traded on the island. The markets at Stone Town sold thousands of slaves per year. Money also rolled in from ivory, gold, timber, and spices. Zanzibar once produced four-fifths of all the world's cloves, and it's said that you could smell them from far out to sea. (Though I read a hilarious story of uber-colonialist David Livingstone, whose house was near a swamp, calling the island "Stink-ibar," which really makes me giggle for some reason).
I hope to visit Zanzibar near the end of my trip. I want to take a spice tour and visit Omani and European colonial buildings. The pens under one of the old slave markets have been preserved, and I'd very much like to see that too. From what I've read, the entire island seems so full of history and colour, and very different from the Tanzania where I live.
...More colonial history to come, followed by communism and capitalism. And maybe even some posts about fun things!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Safari!
Hi guys,
Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, but hopefully this huge one will make up for it.
Tanzania has among the highest proportion of national park land and conservation areas of any country in the world, and Alex and I were certainly not going to miss out on a chance to visit some of them while we're here.
On Friday, we embarked on a five-day, four-night camping safari to Lake Manyara national reserve, Serengeti national park, and Ngorongoro conservation area. (The reason we took our little holiday so early into our trip was to avoid the long rains, which usually start in mid-March but are expected to come early this season).
To say the whole experience was spectacular would be gross understatement.
Alex and I shared our Land Cruiser with Kareem, a backpacker from Sweden who is making his way through East Africa. In addition to the three of us, there was another truck from the same safari company doing the same itinerary as us, and we ended up hanging out with them during our trip as well; Gwen and Chris, a couple of Edmontonian engineers now living in Red Deer, and Kelly (Australian) and Na (Finnish), who work as nurses at King Faisel hospital in Saudi Arabia.
On our drive to Manyara, I was surprised by how quickly the landscape changed from the lush foothills to rolling plains and farmland, punctuated by lone hills and a few longer ridges.
Lake Manyara NR is one of the smallest parks in Tanzania, and about half of the protected area is over the lake itself, leaving only about 100km2 to visit, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in concentration of animals. The park is right up against the wall of the Great African Rift, and is unusual in that it is mostly groundwater forest—which is great for its wildlife population, who are mostly permanent residents.
As soon as we entered the park, we came upon a troop of olive baboons (the first of many sightings) at the side of the road. Only moments later, our breath was taken away by a herd of elephants feeding in the trees, including a baby elephant. Lake Manyara has one of the highest densities of elephants in the entire Northern safari circuit, and I'm pretty sure we saw all of them. We saw several families (and more young ones!). We also saw a bunch of enormous, solitary bull elephants—some right next to our truck. One in particular was grazing so close to us that we could smell the plants he was crushing under his feet. I could have counted his eyelashes. They were so beautiful: massive, dusty, and totally relaxed.
The baboons who welcomed us were only the tip of the monkey iceberg. Baboons are well adapted for almost all habitats here, and were everywhere, in the trees and on the ground, at Manyara and all the parks we visited. We saw a couple of blue monkeys at Manyara, but the true monkey highlight for me was the small and energetic vervet monkeys. They're fluffy grey with black faces and the males have bright blue balls. The babies and adolescents were really fun to watch, chasing each other around the trees.
We had our first views at Manyara of a lot of the grazers we'd get to know really well at the later parks: zebras, Thompson's and Grant's gazelles, warthogs, impalas, buffalo, wildebeest. We were also treated to giraffe sightings, which I know words will fail to do justice. We first saw them from a distance on the floodplains next to the lake, silhouetted against the hazy brown and blue and looking tall and thin and otherworldly. How could anything be that big? And when the move (both legs of one side moving together, giving them a swaying, teetering walk), they're so graceful and beautiful.
We even visited a our first hippo pool at Manyara. It was full of huge grey mounds that occasionally raised their faces, and we were even lucky enough to see a few teeth.
Despite our great luck at seeing everything, Lake Manyara is probably best-known as a birder's paradise, and it didn't disappoint here either. The algae in the lake attracts flamingoes en masse, and we saw thousands—it looked like someone had taken a pink crayon and drawn over the lake. We also saw Egyptian geese, black-headed plovers, several kinds of stork, pelicans, superb starlings (my new favourite bird along with lilac-breasted rollers—so colourful!), and probably a zillion others.
Part of Saturday, all Sunday, and part of Monday were spent at probably the most famous park in the world. Serengeti national park is right next to Ngorongoro conservation area, and animals move freely between the two, though people do not. Serengeti has no human residents, just campsites and lodges for tourists and scientists, while the Maasai are permitted to live their traditional lifestyles (they don't hunt or engage in agriculture) in Ngorongoro.
Both parks are part of the area covered by the famous Great Migration, one of the largest remaining animal migrations on earth—and we got to see it in action! The migration (more than 3 million wildebeest, buffalo, zebras, and gazelles participate every year) moves with the rains in a rough oval through Ngorongoro, Serengeti, and up to the Maasai Mera in Kenya. At this time of year, the migration is at Ngorongoro, and we got a great view of all the animals from the road—herds of animals all the way to the horizon in all directions. This is what North America must have looked like before the bison populations were decimated (though with fewer zebras).
As we passed into Serengeti proper in the afternoon, the density of animals thinned out and the land got flatter, becoming that archetypical East African grassland, dotted with acacias and kopjes. Kopjes are big outcroppings of igneous rock that seeped through cracks in the sedimentary rock millions of years ago, and were exposed by erosion. They're very important little ecosystems, as they hold water in the hollows in the rock, becoming oases in the dry season. Good-quality soil has also collected in the crevices, and the kopjes always have plenty of trees and plant life not on the flatland. Put together, this means that they're very popular for wildlife.
Our campsite was right in the middle of the Serengeti—if we left our shoes outside our tents, they'd be stolen by hyenas.
Our Sunday morning game drive was quite different than what we'd experienced in the other parks. Instead of being constantly surrounded by hordes of animals, at Serengeti we went longer between sightings...but what sightings they were!!! SO MANY LIONS!
The first encounter was four lionesses walking right down the road, beside our vehicles! One of them was almost too close to take a good picture—about a foot from truck. They were large and muscled, with huge heads and paws and golden eyes. The second encounter was two lionesses who'd climbed a tree to escape the wet ground, but the third one was the best. It was another female in a tree, this time very close to the side of the road. But reclining at the base of the tree was an enormous male lion! At first we could only see his dark mane, then he turned to give us his face, then he stood up and started to stretch and sharpen his claws against the trunk. Just perfect!
On that drive, we also saw more giraffes, visited another wonderful hippo pool (where a few were rolling around and showed us their neat-looking feet, well-adapted for both walking and swimming). We also saw rock hyraxes at the kopjes (they look sort of like marmots, but their closest relative is actually the elephant), lizards, a dikdik, bat-eared foxes, impalas, warthogs, topis, hartebeest, a big herd of buffalo, and many more birds.
Sunday's evening game drive was as spectacular or more. We saw a lot more of the same animals from the morning, but it was the big cats who owned the afternoon. We saw 3 females at the base of a tree right next to the road with their three cubs, chowing down on the remains of a warthog. The little ones were fighting over the skull, while the mothers rested and occasionally cleaned their young's faces with their tongues. Incredibly cute (though the warthog might disagree). We also saw several more lionesses in trees, a lion and lioness sleeping just feet from the side of the road...and a leopard!
I really had no expectations that we would ever see a leopard, as they're solitary, even more nocturnal than lions, and less common. But there one was, sleeping in a tree, near the water, in front of the most beautiful Serengeti landscape.
We went for one final drive in the Serengeti very early Monday morning, which was mostly notable for the excellent giraffe, hippo, and bird sightings. After brunch, we packed up and drove back through Ngorongoro.
The migration was even better on the way back; there seemed to be twice as many animals, and they were crossing back and forth across the road. We also had our best hyena sightings to date, including one whose face was still red with blood from lunch.
Our campsite that night was the best yet—right on the edge of Ngorongoro crater, with hot showers. We drove through the "crater" on Tuesday morning. Of course, Ngorongoro isn't a crater at all; it's actually an enormous caldera, the remains of an exploded volcano that formed along the Rift Valley fault. The crater hosts many ecosystems. It's mostly flat grass- and scrub-land (well-grazed), but there's also one large lake and several small ones, some forested areas, and several wetlands.
It has probably the highest density of predators of anywhere on Earth. What struck me most was how /full/ it seemed. You can see all the walls from any vantage point in the crater. It's about 120km in diameter, which doesn't seem big enough for everything that we saw, and they were all living side by side. We saw a lioness relaxing near the side of the road, not 50m from some (attentive but calm) Thompson's gazelles. There was also a small pack of hyenas roaming around and checking out herd of buffalo, who tolerated them until one crossed some invisible line. Then a couple of bulls stomped and threatened a bit, and the hyena loped off, unbothered.
I had made sure that I had low expectations going into the crater drive. I knew that there are a few animals here that it's either impossible or very difficult to see anywhere else, but I didn't want to get my hopes up just to be disappointed. This was an unnecessary precaution. In addition to hyenas, a lion, elephants, hippos, jackals, the usual grazers, hundreds of wonderful birds, etc, we were fortunate enough to see both a cheetah (relaxing in the long grass) AND either six or eight critically endangered black rhinos (two may have been repeats). To put that in perspective, there are only about 13 left in the crater. Once common in all of east and southern Africa, their populations were decimated by poaching in the 20th century: their horns were once worth more than gold, valued in Asia as an aphrodisiac and on the Arabian peninsula as material for a kind of special dagger. There are fewer than 500 in all of Kenya, and under a hundred in Tanzania. We all felt unbelievable fortunate to get a glimpse of the huge (and hugely dangerous) animals. They were far away, but with the binoculars we could see them quite well.
I wish you all could have been there to see it.
Upendo,
Robin
Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, but hopefully this huge one will make up for it.
Tanzania has among the highest proportion of national park land and conservation areas of any country in the world, and Alex and I were certainly not going to miss out on a chance to visit some of them while we're here.
On Friday, we embarked on a five-day, four-night camping safari to Lake Manyara national reserve, Serengeti national park, and Ngorongoro conservation area. (The reason we took our little holiday so early into our trip was to avoid the long rains, which usually start in mid-March but are expected to come early this season).
To say the whole experience was spectacular would be gross understatement.
Alex and I shared our Land Cruiser with Kareem, a backpacker from Sweden who is making his way through East Africa. In addition to the three of us, there was another truck from the same safari company doing the same itinerary as us, and we ended up hanging out with them during our trip as well; Gwen and Chris, a couple of Edmontonian engineers now living in Red Deer, and Kelly (Australian) and Na (Finnish), who work as nurses at King Faisel hospital in Saudi Arabia.
On our drive to Manyara, I was surprised by how quickly the landscape changed from the lush foothills to rolling plains and farmland, punctuated by lone hills and a few longer ridges.
Lake Manyara NR is one of the smallest parks in Tanzania, and about half of the protected area is over the lake itself, leaving only about 100km2 to visit, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in concentration of animals. The park is right up against the wall of the Great African Rift, and is unusual in that it is mostly groundwater forest—which is great for its wildlife population, who are mostly permanent residents.
As soon as we entered the park, we came upon a troop of olive baboons (the first of many sightings) at the side of the road. Only moments later, our breath was taken away by a herd of elephants feeding in the trees, including a baby elephant. Lake Manyara has one of the highest densities of elephants in the entire Northern safari circuit, and I'm pretty sure we saw all of them. We saw several families (and more young ones!). We also saw a bunch of enormous, solitary bull elephants—some right next to our truck. One in particular was grazing so close to us that we could smell the plants he was crushing under his feet. I could have counted his eyelashes. They were so beautiful: massive, dusty, and totally relaxed.
The baboons who welcomed us were only the tip of the monkey iceberg. Baboons are well adapted for almost all habitats here, and were everywhere, in the trees and on the ground, at Manyara and all the parks we visited. We saw a couple of blue monkeys at Manyara, but the true monkey highlight for me was the small and energetic vervet monkeys. They're fluffy grey with black faces and the males have bright blue balls. The babies and adolescents were really fun to watch, chasing each other around the trees.
We had our first views at Manyara of a lot of the grazers we'd get to know really well at the later parks: zebras, Thompson's and Grant's gazelles, warthogs, impalas, buffalo, wildebeest. We were also treated to giraffe sightings, which I know words will fail to do justice. We first saw them from a distance on the floodplains next to the lake, silhouetted against the hazy brown and blue and looking tall and thin and otherworldly. How could anything be that big? And when the move (both legs of one side moving together, giving them a swaying, teetering walk), they're so graceful and beautiful.
We even visited a our first hippo pool at Manyara. It was full of huge grey mounds that occasionally raised their faces, and we were even lucky enough to see a few teeth.
Despite our great luck at seeing everything, Lake Manyara is probably best-known as a birder's paradise, and it didn't disappoint here either. The algae in the lake attracts flamingoes en masse, and we saw thousands—it looked like someone had taken a pink crayon and drawn over the lake. We also saw Egyptian geese, black-headed plovers, several kinds of stork, pelicans, superb starlings (my new favourite bird along with lilac-breasted rollers—so colourful!), and probably a zillion others.
Part of Saturday, all Sunday, and part of Monday were spent at probably the most famous park in the world. Serengeti national park is right next to Ngorongoro conservation area, and animals move freely between the two, though people do not. Serengeti has no human residents, just campsites and lodges for tourists and scientists, while the Maasai are permitted to live their traditional lifestyles (they don't hunt or engage in agriculture) in Ngorongoro.
Both parks are part of the area covered by the famous Great Migration, one of the largest remaining animal migrations on earth—and we got to see it in action! The migration (more than 3 million wildebeest, buffalo, zebras, and gazelles participate every year) moves with the rains in a rough oval through Ngorongoro, Serengeti, and up to the Maasai Mera in Kenya. At this time of year, the migration is at Ngorongoro, and we got a great view of all the animals from the road—herds of animals all the way to the horizon in all directions. This is what North America must have looked like before the bison populations were decimated (though with fewer zebras).
As we passed into Serengeti proper in the afternoon, the density of animals thinned out and the land got flatter, becoming that archetypical East African grassland, dotted with acacias and kopjes. Kopjes are big outcroppings of igneous rock that seeped through cracks in the sedimentary rock millions of years ago, and were exposed by erosion. They're very important little ecosystems, as they hold water in the hollows in the rock, becoming oases in the dry season. Good-quality soil has also collected in the crevices, and the kopjes always have plenty of trees and plant life not on the flatland. Put together, this means that they're very popular for wildlife.
Our campsite was right in the middle of the Serengeti—if we left our shoes outside our tents, they'd be stolen by hyenas.
Our Sunday morning game drive was quite different than what we'd experienced in the other parks. Instead of being constantly surrounded by hordes of animals, at Serengeti we went longer between sightings...but what sightings they were!!! SO MANY LIONS!
The first encounter was four lionesses walking right down the road, beside our vehicles! One of them was almost too close to take a good picture—about a foot from truck. They were large and muscled, with huge heads and paws and golden eyes. The second encounter was two lionesses who'd climbed a tree to escape the wet ground, but the third one was the best. It was another female in a tree, this time very close to the side of the road. But reclining at the base of the tree was an enormous male lion! At first we could only see his dark mane, then he turned to give us his face, then he stood up and started to stretch and sharpen his claws against the trunk. Just perfect!
On that drive, we also saw more giraffes, visited another wonderful hippo pool (where a few were rolling around and showed us their neat-looking feet, well-adapted for both walking and swimming). We also saw rock hyraxes at the kopjes (they look sort of like marmots, but their closest relative is actually the elephant), lizards, a dikdik, bat-eared foxes, impalas, warthogs, topis, hartebeest, a big herd of buffalo, and many more birds.
Sunday's evening game drive was as spectacular or more. We saw a lot more of the same animals from the morning, but it was the big cats who owned the afternoon. We saw 3 females at the base of a tree right next to the road with their three cubs, chowing down on the remains of a warthog. The little ones were fighting over the skull, while the mothers rested and occasionally cleaned their young's faces with their tongues. Incredibly cute (though the warthog might disagree). We also saw several more lionesses in trees, a lion and lioness sleeping just feet from the side of the road...and a leopard!
I really had no expectations that we would ever see a leopard, as they're solitary, even more nocturnal than lions, and less common. But there one was, sleeping in a tree, near the water, in front of the most beautiful Serengeti landscape.
We went for one final drive in the Serengeti very early Monday morning, which was mostly notable for the excellent giraffe, hippo, and bird sightings. After brunch, we packed up and drove back through Ngorongoro.
The migration was even better on the way back; there seemed to be twice as many animals, and they were crossing back and forth across the road. We also had our best hyena sightings to date, including one whose face was still red with blood from lunch.
Our campsite that night was the best yet—right on the edge of Ngorongoro crater, with hot showers. We drove through the "crater" on Tuesday morning. Of course, Ngorongoro isn't a crater at all; it's actually an enormous caldera, the remains of an exploded volcano that formed along the Rift Valley fault. The crater hosts many ecosystems. It's mostly flat grass- and scrub-land (well-grazed), but there's also one large lake and several small ones, some forested areas, and several wetlands.
It has probably the highest density of predators of anywhere on Earth. What struck me most was how /full/ it seemed. You can see all the walls from any vantage point in the crater. It's about 120km in diameter, which doesn't seem big enough for everything that we saw, and they were all living side by side. We saw a lioness relaxing near the side of the road, not 50m from some (attentive but calm) Thompson's gazelles. There was also a small pack of hyenas roaming around and checking out herd of buffalo, who tolerated them until one crossed some invisible line. Then a couple of bulls stomped and threatened a bit, and the hyena loped off, unbothered.
I had made sure that I had low expectations going into the crater drive. I knew that there are a few animals here that it's either impossible or very difficult to see anywhere else, but I didn't want to get my hopes up just to be disappointed. This was an unnecessary precaution. In addition to hyenas, a lion, elephants, hippos, jackals, the usual grazers, hundreds of wonderful birds, etc, we were fortunate enough to see both a cheetah (relaxing in the long grass) AND either six or eight critically endangered black rhinos (two may have been repeats). To put that in perspective, there are only about 13 left in the crater. Once common in all of east and southern Africa, their populations were decimated by poaching in the 20th century: their horns were once worth more than gold, valued in Asia as an aphrodisiac and on the Arabian peninsula as material for a kind of special dagger. There are fewer than 500 in all of Kenya, and under a hundred in Tanzania. We all felt unbelievable fortunate to get a glimpse of the huge (and hugely dangerous) animals. They were far away, but with the binoculars we could see them quite well.
I wish you all could have been there to see it.
Upendo,
Robin
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Word pictures will have to do...
You'll likely have noticed that I haven't put any photos up; for all you know, I could be hiding in a basement in Oshawa (I'm not).
I swear I'm trying to provide photographic proof of my adventures, but it's been a struggle. I've been taking oodles and oodles of photos, but it's the uploading that's the problem. I don't have access to great internet connections, you see. I have been unable to upload to any site, and I can't even email them to myself.
This is as much a nuisance for me as it is for you! I really wanted to post pictures of a hike we did on Sunday, for instance. Our neighbour Freddie, who speaks quite good English, walked with Alex and I up to a set of beautiful waterfalls. It was about a 45-minute walk (fairly steep) further up Mt Meru from Tengeru, to the edge of a ravine. Using all fours, and grabbing any solid rocks or branches, we then scrambled down a very steep, dusty little route to the bottom—to call it a path would be grossly overstating the case.
But it was immensely worth it. The lush ravine was full of flowers and greenery, and a minute's walk brought us to the waterfall. The water rushed out of a small gap at the top of the cliff into a lovely pool, while water seeped out of the cliffs on either side of the main cataract.
I'm sorry I can't show you how lovely it was, and how beautiful and interesting everything is here. I suppose I'll just have to bore you all with an old-fashioned slide show when we get home, Patty- and Selma-style.
Samahani (sorry),
Robin
I swear I'm trying to provide photographic proof of my adventures, but it's been a struggle. I've been taking oodles and oodles of photos, but it's the uploading that's the problem. I don't have access to great internet connections, you see. I have been unable to upload to any site, and I can't even email them to myself.
This is as much a nuisance for me as it is for you! I really wanted to post pictures of a hike we did on Sunday, for instance. Our neighbour Freddie, who speaks quite good English, walked with Alex and I up to a set of beautiful waterfalls. It was about a 45-minute walk (fairly steep) further up Mt Meru from Tengeru, to the edge of a ravine. Using all fours, and grabbing any solid rocks or branches, we then scrambled down a very steep, dusty little route to the bottom—to call it a path would be grossly overstating the case.
But it was immensely worth it. The lush ravine was full of flowers and greenery, and a minute's walk brought us to the waterfall. The water rushed out of a small gap at the top of the cliff into a lovely pool, while water seeped out of the cliffs on either side of the main cataract.
I'm sorry I can't show you how lovely it was, and how beautiful and interesting everything is here. I suppose I'll just have to bore you all with an old-fashioned slide show when we get home, Patty- and Selma-style.
Samahani (sorry),
Robin
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Tanzanian History 101
I keep waxing on about how wonderful and magical it is here, but I suppose I haven't actually told you much about Tanzania and its history, have I?
So google it, you lazybones.
Just kidding.
Tanzania has a rich fossil record, including the Australopethicus afarensis footprints found in the 1970s that showed that human ancestors were walking upright at least 3.75 million years ago. There are also extensive prehistoric rock paintings south of us at Kondoa Irangi. But I'll spare you the ancient history.
No wait, I won't (it's important for context!). There are about 126 government-recognized distinct tribal groups living in TZ, the most of any East African country, and second-only in Africa to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for diversity. Unlike the DRC however, all of these groups and sub-groups have coexisted very peacefully for at least the last century, despite having completely different customs, traditions, and sometimes even languages. The majority of tribes in TZ can be classified as either Bantu or Nilotic.
The Bantu people are believed to originate on the West coast of Africa, in what is now Cameroon, and are now spread throughout the tropical best of sub-Saharan Africa, where they split into now-distinct tribes. Experts think that the first wave of Bantu migration reached Tanzania over two thousand years ago. They're traditionally agricultural peoples: mixed farmers who didn't graze their cattle but instead kept their one or two animals in their homes with them to protect them from raiders. The Bantu were also known for their high-quality iron-work. Steel tools excavated near Lake Victoria show that until the Europeans perfected mass-produced steel in the 19th century, Tanzanian furnaces were producing the best steel in the world.
The Nilotic people, as the name suggests, are believed to originate from around the Nile in Northeast Africa. They include some of the most iconic peoples of East Africa: the Maasai, the bushmen, and the Barubec. We can see their migration from the names given to places they passed through; Khartoum, Nairobi, and Arusha are all Maasai names, for instance. The Nilotic languages are completely unique from all other tribal groups in Africa.
The Maasai are grazers, their livings entirely dependent on the their cattle. They migrated south to find new grazing land for their cattle. They believe it's an offense to God to break the earth, and do no farming at all, nor to they eat naturally found fruit or veg (because there isn't any on the steppes). They eat dairy, blood, and meat. That's it.
The Nilotic people reached TZ after the Bantu, and their lifestyles naturally clashed, which stopped their southern migration. Some of the other Nilotic people were hunter-gatherers only, and lived peacefully with the Bantu, but not the Maasai. They believe that all cattle (of the hump-backed African variety) are a divine gift to them alone, and began raiding Bantu cattle. Experts say that this is when Bantu started keeping their animals indoors or in stalls rather than in corrals, and reduced the number of cows they owned so that it was no longer worth the Maasai's while to rustle them.
The Maasai still live a very traditional lifestyle, though it's under serious threat. Their traditional grazing lands have been converted into national parks, restricting their livelihoods and meaning that the land they can access has been overgrazed and facing serious erosion problems. Secondly, the Tanzanian government offers generous scholarships to Maasai children to go away to school—but the catch is that Tanzanian schools are notorious for denigrating traditional ways of life. Instead of teaching that traditional customs can be improved but maintained—teaching that female genital mutilation is wrong is great, but the schools also preach that only a western-style house is healthy, and requires they remove all their Maasai clothes and jewelry.
Where we are in Arusha region, the predominant tribes are the Meru and Machame, which are a Bantu people and are believed to be "recently" separated, as they share many customs and beliefs, live in similar traditional homes, and speak the same language (though with distinct accents). The Machame settled on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, while the Meru live, of course, around Mt Meru.
We often see Maasai walking through Arusha, though they mostly live on the flatter, more arid land west of here. They're immediately identifiable by their white teeth (all that milk) their stretched ears, jewelry, and traditional clothes. But sometimes looks can be deceiving - some of these men and women are actually of the Larusa tribe (from which Arusha takes its name—it's literally "place of polluted Maasai"). They're ethnic Maasai who at some point in the past where forced to take up agriculture, either because they'd been expelled by their tribe or lost their land in one of the many skirmishes between the Maasai and the Meru.
Of course not everyone we've met has been Meru, Machame, Larusa, or Maasai, as there is free movement of people throughout the country and nothing to stop someone from say, Kigoma, from buying land here. And though those who've lived here all their lives may resent rich retirees from other parts of the country coming in and buying all the best land, it's still peaceful and neighbourly for the most part.
More to come, marafiki!
Upendo,
Robin
So google it, you lazybones.
Just kidding.
Tanzania has a rich fossil record, including the Australopethicus afarensis footprints found in the 1970s that showed that human ancestors were walking upright at least 3.75 million years ago. There are also extensive prehistoric rock paintings south of us at Kondoa Irangi. But I'll spare you the ancient history.
No wait, I won't (it's important for context!). There are about 126 government-recognized distinct tribal groups living in TZ, the most of any East African country, and second-only in Africa to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for diversity. Unlike the DRC however, all of these groups and sub-groups have coexisted very peacefully for at least the last century, despite having completely different customs, traditions, and sometimes even languages. The majority of tribes in TZ can be classified as either Bantu or Nilotic.
The Bantu people are believed to originate on the West coast of Africa, in what is now Cameroon, and are now spread throughout the tropical best of sub-Saharan Africa, where they split into now-distinct tribes. Experts think that the first wave of Bantu migration reached Tanzania over two thousand years ago. They're traditionally agricultural peoples: mixed farmers who didn't graze their cattle but instead kept their one or two animals in their homes with them to protect them from raiders. The Bantu were also known for their high-quality iron-work. Steel tools excavated near Lake Victoria show that until the Europeans perfected mass-produced steel in the 19th century, Tanzanian furnaces were producing the best steel in the world.
The Nilotic people, as the name suggests, are believed to originate from around the Nile in Northeast Africa. They include some of the most iconic peoples of East Africa: the Maasai, the bushmen, and the Barubec. We can see their migration from the names given to places they passed through; Khartoum, Nairobi, and Arusha are all Maasai names, for instance. The Nilotic languages are completely unique from all other tribal groups in Africa.
The Maasai are grazers, their livings entirely dependent on the their cattle. They migrated south to find new grazing land for their cattle. They believe it's an offense to God to break the earth, and do no farming at all, nor to they eat naturally found fruit or veg (because there isn't any on the steppes). They eat dairy, blood, and meat. That's it.
The Nilotic people reached TZ after the Bantu, and their lifestyles naturally clashed, which stopped their southern migration. Some of the other Nilotic people were hunter-gatherers only, and lived peacefully with the Bantu, but not the Maasai. They believe that all cattle (of the hump-backed African variety) are a divine gift to them alone, and began raiding Bantu cattle. Experts say that this is when Bantu started keeping their animals indoors or in stalls rather than in corrals, and reduced the number of cows they owned so that it was no longer worth the Maasai's while to rustle them.
The Maasai still live a very traditional lifestyle, though it's under serious threat. Their traditional grazing lands have been converted into national parks, restricting their livelihoods and meaning that the land they can access has been overgrazed and facing serious erosion problems. Secondly, the Tanzanian government offers generous scholarships to Maasai children to go away to school—but the catch is that Tanzanian schools are notorious for denigrating traditional ways of life. Instead of teaching that traditional customs can be improved but maintained—teaching that female genital mutilation is wrong is great, but the schools also preach that only a western-style house is healthy, and requires they remove all their Maasai clothes and jewelry.
Where we are in Arusha region, the predominant tribes are the Meru and Machame, which are a Bantu people and are believed to be "recently" separated, as they share many customs and beliefs, live in similar traditional homes, and speak the same language (though with distinct accents). The Machame settled on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, while the Meru live, of course, around Mt Meru.
We often see Maasai walking through Arusha, though they mostly live on the flatter, more arid land west of here. They're immediately identifiable by their white teeth (all that milk) their stretched ears, jewelry, and traditional clothes. But sometimes looks can be deceiving - some of these men and women are actually of the Larusa tribe (from which Arusha takes its name—it's literally "place of polluted Maasai"). They're ethnic Maasai who at some point in the past where forced to take up agriculture, either because they'd been expelled by their tribe or lost their land in one of the many skirmishes between the Maasai and the Meru.
Of course not everyone we've met has been Meru, Machame, Larusa, or Maasai, as there is free movement of people throughout the country and nothing to stop someone from say, Kigoma, from buying land here. And though those who've lived here all their lives may resent rich retirees from other parts of the country coming in and buying all the best land, it's still peaceful and neighbourly for the most part.
More to come, marafiki!
Upendo,
Robin
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Hi ho, hi ho...
Hello again from Tengeru!
Alex and I have now been introduced to our project, and are both very excited to have begun work.
The charity that we're working with is called Educare, which was founded by Mr Shija as a way to change his community for the better. Despite being hampered by too few resources, he has a number of projects on the go, from the women's empowerment stuff that Alex and I are working on to microlending and sponsoring orphans. He has almost too many ideas—we have to focus on one project at a time!
Our first undertaking will be with a cooperative who call themselves the Mama Machumbas (Mama is a generic term of respect for women, and Machumba is the name of their subvillage). They're a great group of women, so friendly and patient with us. They all have families (though there are a few widows in the group) and other responsibilities. The Mama Machumba project is a way for them to gain some much-needed income beyond the bit that they earn from selling surplus milk or produce. An estimated 65-75% of people in Amburani Moivaro village, of which Machumba is a part, subsist on less than $1 US a day.
Last summer, they worked with a volunteer who helped them get training in how to weave banana fibres into bracelets, mats, baskets, and that sort of thing. Taking it up where Erika left off, we plan to help them find distributors (here and perhaps abroad) and diversify the business.
Banana-fibre handicrafts are quite common at the markets here, but they're all imported from Kenya, where they're mass-produced supercheaply and at a pretty low quality. Additionally, the money just goes to rich Kenyan businessmen, rather than to the community. Unfortunately, they're falsely marketed to tourists as "authentically Tanzanian."
Alex and I have looked at what the Mama Machumbas are able to create, and I'm really impressed. It's definitely better than the stuff I saw for sale a few days ago at the market in Arusha, and we can work with that. Our first step will be to try to open up deals with a few of the local safari and climbing tour companies: they would buy a bunch of bracelets/coaster sets and give them out at the end of their tours as a thank-you gift. They would look generous (though of course the cost of the gift would be included in the tour price!) and also show themselves to be a supportive member of the community, rather than exploitative. They would explain as they gave their clients the item that it was an authentic piece, handcrafted by a local women's cooperative.
It would create a great market for the women, and excellent PR for the tour groups. There's one company in particular that already gives back to the community a lot, we're going to start with them because we know
they'll be at least receptive to the idea. We also informally pitched the idea to one of Lema's friends, who owns a large tour company, while he was over for lunch yesterday.
Since it's essentially cost-free for the companies themselves, with huge PR benefits for them, we're very optimistic that we will be able to convince at least a couple of tour companies to at least give us a chance. Of course, before we go to them we have to work out all the details of what we can promise and what we'll charge, in addition to creating a smooth and convincing pitch, but we hope to start meeting with tour companies by midweek next week. Wish us luck.
Outside of our project work, Alex and I are still enjoying ourselves immensely. I feel very comfortable at our home, and enjoy walking around our village and meeting Lema's friends and family, who often stop by. We're also planning where and when we'll go on safari—we hope to do it before the long rains come in earnest. My Swahili is improving pole pole (slowly slowly) as well.
Badai mrafiki,
Robin
Alex and I have now been introduced to our project, and are both very excited to have begun work.
The charity that we're working with is called Educare, which was founded by Mr Shija as a way to change his community for the better. Despite being hampered by too few resources, he has a number of projects on the go, from the women's empowerment stuff that Alex and I are working on to microlending and sponsoring orphans. He has almost too many ideas—we have to focus on one project at a time!
Our first undertaking will be with a cooperative who call themselves the Mama Machumbas (Mama is a generic term of respect for women, and Machumba is the name of their subvillage). They're a great group of women, so friendly and patient with us. They all have families (though there are a few widows in the group) and other responsibilities. The Mama Machumba project is a way for them to gain some much-needed income beyond the bit that they earn from selling surplus milk or produce. An estimated 65-75% of people in Amburani Moivaro village, of which Machumba is a part, subsist on less than $1 US a day.
Last summer, they worked with a volunteer who helped them get training in how to weave banana fibres into bracelets, mats, baskets, and that sort of thing. Taking it up where Erika left off, we plan to help them find distributors (here and perhaps abroad) and diversify the business.
Banana-fibre handicrafts are quite common at the markets here, but they're all imported from Kenya, where they're mass-produced supercheaply and at a pretty low quality. Additionally, the money just goes to rich Kenyan businessmen, rather than to the community. Unfortunately, they're falsely marketed to tourists as "authentically Tanzanian."
Alex and I have looked at what the Mama Machumbas are able to create, and I'm really impressed. It's definitely better than the stuff I saw for sale a few days ago at the market in Arusha, and we can work with that. Our first step will be to try to open up deals with a few of the local safari and climbing tour companies: they would buy a bunch of bracelets/coaster sets and give them out at the end of their tours as a thank-you gift. They would look generous (though of course the cost of the gift would be included in the tour price!) and also show themselves to be a supportive member of the community, rather than exploitative. They would explain as they gave their clients the item that it was an authentic piece, handcrafted by a local women's cooperative.
It would create a great market for the women, and excellent PR for the tour groups. There's one company in particular that already gives back to the community a lot, we're going to start with them because we know
they'll be at least receptive to the idea. We also informally pitched the idea to one of Lema's friends, who owns a large tour company, while he was over for lunch yesterday.
Since it's essentially cost-free for the companies themselves, with huge PR benefits for them, we're very optimistic that we will be able to convince at least a couple of tour companies to at least give us a chance. Of course, before we go to them we have to work out all the details of what we can promise and what we'll charge, in addition to creating a smooth and convincing pitch, but we hope to start meeting with tour companies by midweek next week. Wish us luck.
Outside of our project work, Alex and I are still enjoying ourselves immensely. I feel very comfortable at our home, and enjoy walking around our village and meeting Lema's friends and family, who often stop by. We're also planning where and when we'll go on safari—we hope to do it before the long rains come in earnest. My Swahili is improving pole pole (slowly slowly) as well.
Badai mrafiki,
Robin
Sunday, February 7, 2010
I've arrived
So, I ran away to Tanzania!
I will be here for three months, working for the a charity called Edu-Care, and the Tengeru Cultural Initiative. I'll blog more about the program once I've started working.
I am living in the village of Tengeru, which is about 10km from Arusha town proper (the capital of the Arusha region). Tengeru doesn't look like what you or I would normally consider a village, because it (like almost everywhere in Tanzania) was never planned. There aren't even actual addresses — just bendy roads with little shops and gated yards or patches of grass with goats grazing. It's incredibly lush, with trees and flowers everywhere, including banana trees (which are a major cash crop in this region, along with maize and coffee).
Our volunteer house is owned by Lema, a really nice man with infinite patience who knows all about the history, politics, and culture of Tanzania and Arusha in particular. Zai lives with us as well, and does most of the cooking and cleaning, though Lema has promised me that I'll know how to cook all the delicious Tanzanian food we're eating by the time I come home. Zai doesn't speak English, but she's trying to learn. Just this afternoon, she and I sat at the table and read the Swahili-English dictionary section of my Rough Guide to each other. It was hilarious for both of us.
The house itself is very comfortable, and it has a lovely porch and is surrounded by beautiful trees and shrubs (which hide the garden walls). There's a mango tree in the backyard, and butterflies seem to love the bushes. All day we can hear children playing, birds singing, cows mooing, and roosters making their unholy racket. I'm in love with it.
The "us" of which I keep speaking is me and Alex, the only other volunteer. He's from Waterloo, and he just graduated this fall from Laurier. We share the same birthday, and he was Arts editor then EIC of the Cord. We've been to the same conferences (and own the same tshirt), yet somehow had no facebook friends in common. We also share the same birthday, though a year apart, which we'll be celebrating here in TZ. Also, he's a huge Joel Plaskett fan. I think we'll get along juuuust fine.
More stories (and photos) to come! Love you all,
Robin
I will be here for three months, working for the a charity called Edu-Care, and the Tengeru Cultural Initiative. I'll blog more about the program once I've started working.
I am living in the village of Tengeru, which is about 10km from Arusha town proper (the capital of the Arusha region). Tengeru doesn't look like what you or I would normally consider a village, because it (like almost everywhere in Tanzania) was never planned. There aren't even actual addresses — just bendy roads with little shops and gated yards or patches of grass with goats grazing. It's incredibly lush, with trees and flowers everywhere, including banana trees (which are a major cash crop in this region, along with maize and coffee).
Our volunteer house is owned by Lema, a really nice man with infinite patience who knows all about the history, politics, and culture of Tanzania and Arusha in particular. Zai lives with us as well, and does most of the cooking and cleaning, though Lema has promised me that I'll know how to cook all the delicious Tanzanian food we're eating by the time I come home. Zai doesn't speak English, but she's trying to learn. Just this afternoon, she and I sat at the table and read the Swahili-English dictionary section of my Rough Guide to each other. It was hilarious for both of us.
The house itself is very comfortable, and it has a lovely porch and is surrounded by beautiful trees and shrubs (which hide the garden walls). There's a mango tree in the backyard, and butterflies seem to love the bushes. All day we can hear children playing, birds singing, cows mooing, and roosters making their unholy racket. I'm in love with it.
The "us" of which I keep speaking is me and Alex, the only other volunteer. He's from Waterloo, and he just graduated this fall from Laurier. We share the same birthday, and he was Arts editor then EIC of the Cord. We've been to the same conferences (and own the same tshirt), yet somehow had no facebook friends in common. We also share the same birthday, though a year apart, which we'll be celebrating here in TZ. Also, he's a huge Joel Plaskett fan. I think we'll get along juuuust fine.
More stories (and photos) to come! Love you all,
Robin
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