Little things we forget

This morning we woke to a small flood [ok, I heard the rain overnight and knew to expect it] and not long after I had made by first brew for the day, the electricity failed.
This left me unfazed because of my Tanzania experience, and without the radio, I could think - or remember.

As I have written previously we lived on knife-edge as far as water was concerned. Sure I had rehabilitated the the line from its source to the reservoir just above our house, and to Nkoaranga hospital.
It was never said, but my motivation was to provide water for the nursery but the wider need was for community water and the hospital - the hospital needed as near as possible, a continuous supply.
So someone - I never knew who - every day turned the water on to our reservoir at 7:00an for just one hour. This flowed into our 200 gallon tank, which was never over half full. Sometimes there there was a fault when nobody got any water.
Each day the tree nursery required two 44 gallon (2oo litre) drums of water. So there was not too much leeway for household use.
Therefore each time it rained, out would come the buckets and we would collect as much as possible - for toilet and washing floors as well as irrigation.
It occurs to me that if each household here in New Zealand collected enough water during rain to use in there toilet, it would represent a considerable saving.

When the electricity went off, it was a simple matter of lighting the candles we had ready and as well we used a storm lantern. We were fortunate to have a gas cooker.
There was no need to feel agitated or angry at the loss of the utility and it is the same here today on this rainy morning.

Our storm lantern was more rusty than this one but they are a very effective light.

Mwakeny

Nursery team among the Rodohypoxis by the Mwakeny turnoff.

Loti, Upendo/Helen, Mama veronica and Amani look over the river.

Mwakeny village is the the West of the road into Olkung'wado, on greener slopes, and closer to the bush-line of Arusha National Park.
Later during our time there an expat, or foreign company [I never met any of them] grew a large area of peas on the hillside above the school. This indicated that there was enough precipitation to sustain the crop; even at the school this would not have been possible.

The first time we visited the school, we crossed the river at the ford [now behind the new village office] and took the road that ends up at Kisimiri. There is a left hand turn and the track skirts a flat, sometimes damp/wet area of grass and then climbs the short stoney toe of a low ride. Straight up and you arrive at the school, after passing the Lutheran church.
Not actually the school - a large old homestead but fallen into disrepair. It had been converted into classrooms and used as a school until recently when a new school was built on the next ridge.

The senior classes were taught in this building, and although it was dark - dingy inside, the kids thought it a cool place be. It was generally where we carried out our seminars.
As usual the first time we went there, there were no teachers, they were all up at the new school. The kids assured us we could drive there and there was a track to follow, but there was a small irrigation ditch and onion gardens making it fairly tight for the car to fit, then down in the small sharp gulley with a turn just reinforced to me to make my own mind up where a vehicle could or could not go. Well we made it ok.

It is with huge regret that I have only a few photos of Mwakeny, and for reasons that I cannot recall. More is the pity because this school ranks high among the success and therefore my fondness.
Here is a group of the teachers with Craig and Helen. The Head Teacher, Pallangeo ducks down at the back.




The teachers were keen for an environmental programme and we were ushered into the Head teacher's office. The school was built across a hill so the foundation went from almost ground level at one end to two metres at the other.
At Mwakeny we saw a good indication of how teachers are moved around for reasons that are not altogether clear. And of course some are not happy with the change. One guy who was Head Teacher at Olkung'wado had his home closeby, but he was moved to Mwakeny, causing him to travel some distance - and travelling is not all that easy.
I did enjoy it when a young woman, an new 'pressure cooker' teacher ant Mwakeny told me that I had taught her at Ngarash school, Monduli. Nice she remembered.

Daily, it was difficult to know what was going to happen because of little unpredicted issues having to be dealt with.
One day I had loaded the truck with trees for Mwakeny but Loti was not at his pickup point but had sent some to meet me and inform me. I decided to go on to the school by myself.
I drove up to the old part of the school as there were some large trees there [planted by those who had farmed there previously, I guess] that could provide shelter for the seedlings until they were planted.
The kids ran out to meet me, an indication that there were no teachers around. I was told all the teachers were away at a 'teacher training day'.
I spoke to the kids for a short while and the longer I talked, the more kids arrived! To settle them down a bit I asked them to sing the Tunapenda song, and they carried out my request with gusto.
I asked which of the kids was the most growly and liked to have authority; they all indicated [not pointing because that is rude] to a small, senior boy.
I told him that we were going to unload the trees and he was to ensure all the trees were lined up in the shade in straight rows and by species. Then the rest lined up each took two trees from me as I passed them out of the car.
All went well other than some discussion about species, which was sorted out without my involvement. I was thinking about the security of the trees when one of the teachers arrived who had remembered that I was due to make a delivery.

The planting programmes were a success and the kids performed well in both the seminars and the practical planting.
Of course the teachers used the excuse of the trees to suggest that we needed to carry out a village water project , so I decided to call a village meeting.

But they were not going to get away quite so easily! I wanted to carry out a village environmental programme before the water project was to be looked at.
The seminar was held outside in what seemed to be a dry creek bed. The village chairman, Loti, Mags and I sat at tables that had been brought over from the school.
Recently I had noted that the farmers had been burning their land in preparation for cultivation and I espoused the need to stop burning as it was not a good environmental tool. There was a need to protect local fauna!

Just then a large brown snake came slithering down the path towards us. I saw it first as I was standing and of course the audience had their backs to it. So as not to alarm anyone, I whispered to Loti that there was a snake.
'Nyota, nyota!' he shouted, 'kill it!' Not exactly what I had intended!
Some of the men carried their fimbo - stick - and they lashed out at the snake, wounding it and it scuttled into some nearby scrubby vegetation.
Meantime Mags was standing on the table!
After some discussion, it was decided that the wounded snake presented a danger to the school kids, so it must be found and killed. So they burnt the scrub! And they killed the snake - local fauna!
There was general hilarity that the snake was dead and the irony of it all - and Mags told them all how brave they were!

I was taken up a gulley to where there had been an old water project with a small dam to create a reservoir. There would be no difficulty in rehabilitating the project and providing water to the village, the school and to the church, which was most distant.

The small dam under repair. There was a good supply of water and the village already held the water right.
I insisted that we would not take all the water so that a flow could remain in the creek.





The village people were very willing to carry out the manual work. This was the condition that I set - I would provide the materials and expertise and they out carry out the work required.





This is the area below the new school and the track below is actually the main access - it crosses a water channel that is usually dry but quite steep.






I transported all the materials on the project vehicle, which was a saving and perhaps more secure. It was always a mission to tie the load securely because the rough roads made any load constantly shift.
The village chairman took possession of the materials and signed for them.



Local village people collected water from the standpipe erected near the old school building. A small branch was taken from here to the school grounds - very good for kids after they had used the toilets. And to irrigate trees.





The water point by the Mwakeny Church was an easy point for the lower end of the village to collect water. This whole project was the one with the least hassles therefore the easiest to implement.

Some of the History of Ngarenanyuki

If you enlarge this map it gives an idea of where the area is - the top of the map.
The West and East sides are not exact as the boundary is indefinite.

I worked in the Ngarenanyuki (sometimes spelled as Ngare Nanyuki) for five years, but with a split of two making my knowledge of the area gained over nine years.
During that time I was intrigued that 'development', especially water schemes, seemed run down. At Kisimiri where we carried out an environmental program with the the women's group of the small Lutheran church, I could see that a large gully there had been dammed at one time - no doubt as a water catchment. The dam has burst long ago and it occurred to me what had become of the people below when the mass of water came down. Nobody could tell me.

I am always interested in history, and why things happened, so I asked some questions and read whatever was available about the history of Ngarenanyuki. I don't really have a history here but some of what happens needs to be readily available, so I will try.

There are similarities in this question to what happened here in New Zealand, and it is easy to roll your eyes and think 'not again', when Maori issues are raised. I am from British stock, or 'the other side' but it is not difficult to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
Particularly I think of the Maori whose 'ancestral lands' (if that's the correct term) were at Omarama. Settler-farmers felt threatened by the Maori presence and 'lobbied to have them removed. Historically fortunately, not the army, but the police escorted the Maori to the mouth of the Waitaki River, the journey taking a long time in cold weather causing a high death rate.
Then there was the 'land buyer' who forged Maori signatures and pocketed the proposed land purchase payments. So the settlers though they had legitimate rights whereas the Maori thought the land had been stolen.

The fundamental mistake colonizing nations have made through the ages is the belief that they are educated, therefore intelligent, while indigenous peoples rate merely as savages. Just because people develop differently does not equate to 'intelligence'. Of course the invaders usually bring with them technologically superior weaponry and disease.

The first part about the history of Ngarenanyuki is the climate. I was told that in earlier times the area was greener and there were dairy farms there, but now farming is difficult because the short rain invariably fail.
Anecdotal information is not always completely accurate and I suspect that the Ngarenanyuki area has always been a rain shadow area but in recent times climate change has tipped the balance just slightly so the area has become drier.
The reason dairy farming were able to survive was because the farmers managed the water better by way of irrigation schemes.

Ngarenanyuki is primarily Meru homeland with the Arusha tribe and the Maasai on some of the fringes.
What is Tanzania now, in 1884 became German East Africa and Lutheran missionaries were first at Akeri but no doubt there was German occupation wherever there was good land. viz Lushoto.
I have no idea of what the Germans did at Ngarenanyuki, but after WWI in 1919 Tanzania became the British Trust Territory of Tanganyika and it seems the Germans returned the Ngarenanyuki lands back to the Meru. In reports I have read, the word was sold, but in inverted commas - whatever that means. But there were obviously German who developed farms in the area. We lived in a German built house at Makumira - and the standard was high.

Again I have no idea about the British influence up to and during WW2 but the date 17 November is important for Meru because the British forcefully evicted 3000 Ngarenanyuki people to make room for European farmers. Like the Omarama situation, it was the police who enforced the eviction. The 3000 were moved to the King'ori region which begs the question of how the King'ori people felt about the 'invasion'. This sort of thing goes on even today, but not by colonialists this time - in Zimbabwe (1996) we saw the inhabitants of Matopos National Park being evicted and in Tanzania today tribal lands of the Hadzabe and Maasai are threatened. Beaches, long the food and income source of Unguja Is, (Zanzibar) have been displaced in favor of tourist accommodation.

There are reports that the 3000 looked back to see smoke when their homes were set alight and with their homes some of their livestock. Bitterness and anger would have been felt among the Meru people and they intended to have their lands returned to them.
I guess the European farmers that were installed believed they had a perfect right to their new farms - just like much of the South Island of New Zealand.
I am assuming that it was these farmers who set up the water projects that I had seen - but it may have been earlier. Nobody told me. We carried out six water projects, all of them repairing or hooking into old schemes.

It seems that the farmers installed into the area had been 'helpful' to the British war effort. Just what that means, I'm not very sure, but the farmers were not necessarily British people.

The good thing about all of this was that post WW2 the United Nations was formed and while the Meru protest (about the confiscation of their land) was 'a matter for all African Tanganyikans', the Meru leaders determined to retake their lands peacefully and legally. The leaders managed to avoid violence by their youth - called moran, the same as the Maasai warriors - who were no doubt fired up!

There was a Meru Citizens Union (who had formed a constitution), there was an Indian lawyer from Moshi, named Seaton, there was a young Julius Nyerere and there were others who contributed to an application to the United Nations for the return of the Meru land of Ngarenanyuki.
The Meru won! A short sentence but within the corridors of power in the UN you can bet that the Meru application/appeal was not easy. Britain was a powerful world leader and the bureaucrats would not have liked the Meru stirring things up! There would have been all sorts of delays and tricks played.

However peacefully, the Meru won the day and the European farmers had to vacate their properties. They would not have been happy with the situation and it seems that they did not leave all of their facilities so they could be used by the returning Meru - they would have felt bitterness and anger. One church above Olkung'wado was destroyed - and other things I do not know about.

It is my guess that Ngarenanyuki was not unique - maybe the resolution was, but I refer to the scenario of land acquisition. It may be said that under British rule, the country ran efficiently and deteriorated after Independence, but it is no wonder Tanzanians celebrate Uhuru - freedom, and revere Julius Nyerere as the Father of the Nation.

There are always silver linings and one of those is at Kisimiri. The descendant of a Swiss farmer (from which regime I am not sure) has for a long time provided great assistance at first to Kisimiri Primary School. We too had some involvement there.
I am guessing it is the same family who drive the 'Friends of Kisimiri' extending assistance to the wider Kisimiri area including the secondary school.
I am sure I will be corrected if I have that wrong.
Take a look at www.kisimiri.ch/

I look forward to finding out more information on this issue because there are many gaps.

Life in Africa VI

The road to Mkonoo village (and Nadasoito) in the early days. Just beyond Unga Limited, which is a suburb of Arusha, an industrial area but there are many houses there too.

This is a dusty market area and I always wondered how the food and mtumba - secondhand clothing - was kept dust-free.

We were giving the Mkonoo village environmental chairman a lift and as he had a shop at Mkonoo, we stopped here to collect bulk bread. As the bread was being loaded, a young man reached into the Maruti and made a grab at Mag's bag which was between us. How he knew the bag was there, I have no idea! He was unsuccessful with the bag, and ran off into the village and Joshia took off after him. As Joshia closed on him, he called back, 'I have nothing, why are you chasing me?' Our friend was embarrassed over the incident.

The taxi stand in our early days in Arusha. Much different now but worth recording. The Lutheran church is to the right and in the road to the left there are the tourist shops and Kase Bookshop.

The Catholic church, Lushoto taken from the road to the Grand Mandarin hotel where we stayed many times. Even from here one of the things to distract tourist is the honking of the bus horns early in the morning to attract custom.
There is much that can be done to promote Lushoto but the buses are a distraction - even an annoyance.

The Irente Lookout is a very striking area to look over a large part of Tanzania. The road, red clay, used to be greasy when wet and we were lucky to have our own car to get there. Boys wanted to guide us and some wanted to guard the car - we really had no need for either, but I felt it worthwhile to pay something out of politeness.
Now ex President Mkapa has built a huge lodge that actually blocks the foot track out to the lookout. How he managed that - well that is the business of the country, but it is a spoiler.
At a small bar perched on the side of the track, I took Upendo, Eriki and Vai for a soda and a vervet monkey aggressively decided it would like some of the soda! It frightened the kids and I had to really threaten it to chase it away!

It might look a bit murky in this photo, but the views are stunning from the lookout. It is a pity that a lodge now dominates the area.







The main reason we visited Lushoto was to visit the National Tree Seed Project to purchase seed. The project was originally set up through assistance from Denmark and was a very efficient and well run project. To my knowledge it still is. The seed I purchased was very high quality and cleaned to a high standard.
I sat with the workers cleaning seed and talking to them - the best way to to gain rapport.


Cleaning a few Croton seeds at NTSP. It was a species I didn't need to buy because we were able to collect it locally at Makumira/King'ori.

Grant's Lodge is/was one of the more expensive places to stay at Lushoto - we never did. It is some distance in the hills beyond but a very pleasant journey - even passing through orchards of apple and pear. Much further on is a girls secondary school - the name of which eludes me - but we visited there when the guy from the Grand Mandarin asked me to give him a lift there. It is a very good school from what I saw and what he told me.


A moth at Sanawari with a six inch wingspan! Locals are afraid of such insects and fear that the dust from their wings can cause blindness. Totally outside my experience and I do not know the science behind the myth. There was the story that the fur from caterpillars causing irritation on the skin - well I found that to be correct when on a couple of occasions I had caterpillars down my neck!


Boys with a toy. Very often kids, or perhaps their older brothers, made made their own toys and chasing a wheel is fun and a skill. In this photo to the right is Roger. I wrote about him on a couple of occasions, and his life was not easy. I wonder on his progress now.
They stand in our yard - a pleasant place to live.




We passed the Meserani Snake Park many times on our travels and stopped by only once. It is a very good park and our kids have stayed there too. I have been to few snake parks and this one rates well.
I always though I could outrun a snake but I don't think that is so from one of my experiences at Ngarenanyuki.



Mama Baraka and Nai have a laugh on our porch. People seem to have the idea Africa is all about potbellied kids who are starving and dust and famine. There is plenty of good. Mama Baraka and Nai shared a special bond that is not at all that unusual in Tanzania. Mama Baraka was one in a million to us but that was our connection. We found treasures wherever we went.