Life in Africa Eleven

A seam of marram, volcanic ash that has been tilted slightly by earth movement. This is at Engorora where it is mined and sold to whoever will buy it. I used it in the nursery to hold down sawdust applied over seeds sown directly into pots.

It is not easy work for the young men who scratch out a living doing this and it is dangerous work.

Loading the truck directly below the pit face. If you enlarge the picture, there is a heap to the left ready for sale. The marram is actually packed quite tightly and the bigger chunks are not saleable. The young men do not cheat with their produce, though they will try you regarding price. I knew the price and payed well so had a good relationship with the guys.

 Typical soil erosion just North of Engorora. A water pipeline crosses this gulley which carries water from Mt. Meru to the Army Base at Monduli. Of course people have tapped into the line - legally and illegally causing the army to discontinue its use.
Water, or the lack of it, continues to be a problem throughout the area.



A typical lineup for water at a tap beside Engorora (now Kisongo) school.
Water is  turned on at certain times and the water drums are filled in order of the line.
Washing is also brought to the tap in the hope there is enough water available at the time.

 Well. I'm a sucker for baobab trees and this nice one in full leaf is by on the road Kikatiti to Valeska.

I was fortunate enough to to take photos of a lot of elephants. I post this one because of the nice-shaped Acacia tree in the background.
I once took kids through Manyara National Park and we parked in the bush to watch some elephants, but a large group came along and we were sitting among them.
Upendo. Eriki and Vai sat there wide-eyed and very quiet!

 Horses in striped pajamas! There is areal beauty in the clean lines of zebras. Even though lions were close to this group, they seemed to know that they were somehow safe.
The lions were not hungry. 

Lions check us out, and even though the zebras were not too concerned about them, we were excited to see them so close.
We travelled without a guide, and they have the advantage of radio contact, so when exciting things are spotted, those in contact rush to the spot. It is good not to be involved in all that and we trust to luck.
We saw our share of good stuff!

It is easy to become relaxed about these wild animals and one time we stopped to watch a small number of lions feeding on a buffalo - not ten metres away.
I climbed out of the drivers window and stood on the roof-rack to take a good photo. But we had the children of friends with us (18 - 20 year olds)  and they appeared up there with  - from the back door. I told them to quickly get back in - which they did, but that was a risky - foolish thing to do!

 Mongoose burrows in a very large termite mound. These little animals seem to be alert all the time. We parked close by them and they performed for us.

A meeting with Maasai men at the village of Mkonoo. This was at the terminal of a water project we helped to establish.
Mount Meru in the background is the source of many of the downland water projects because groundwater is deep and often high in salt content.

Our 'Egg Girl' at Makumira. Her mother sent her to sell us eggs from their house at Nshupu. Upendo was a nice polite girl and the eggs were very good. We ended up giving her a job in the nursery where she performed very well. Later she trained as a cook - or was that chef? And she was lucky to obtain work in a hotel in Arusha. All did not end well for her.
Upendo's younger sister became our egg girl, and she too was a good kid who worked hard at school, passed the national examinations and was selected for a distant secondary school. She came to visit us when she was able to return home during holidays.

We took on a 'House Girl' who had been employed by leaving vols. We had not contemplated employing a house girl but we felt sorry that Mama John had been left in the lurch.
Rather than cleaning, it was good that she cooked for our nursery workers.
There was a cloud in her and she left quite suddenly. I saw her occasionally working in a bar closer to her house.

There is not much choice other than to use charcoal in the larger centers, but this is what causes the wood resource to diminish seven times faster than it is growing. To make one bag of charcoal, you need to use two bags of wood.
Where charcoal is produced, the land is denuded of tree cover.
And it is one the ways people can earn a living. It is not sustainable, healthy or environmentally sound. The only answer is in the logo 'Plant five trees before you cut one tree'. I say, double it!

Pit sawing is an age old system of cutting timber. It is still practiced in Africa and the guys carrying this work out make a very good job. I was dismayed to see a team arrive at Makumira with chainsaws and to use them to cut timber. This more than doubled the amount of waste ans saw the demise of a worthwhile skill.

These logs, I cut (felling the tree with a chainsaw) as the tree was leaning over our house. Mbise paid the men to cut the timber for the house we later built.