ZANZIBAR'S VIRAL UNDERGROUND

by Martin Walsh

The walkway between caves at Mchekeni, Zanzibar (photo: Martin Walsh)

I worry about caves. I’ve been worrying about them ever since reading about the role played by Kitum Cave in the known history of Marburg virus disease. In the 1980s, two separate visitors to this “elephant cave” in Mount Elgon National Park were infected and subsequently died. Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) have since been identified as a reservoir host for marburgviruses, and it may well be that the inhalation of microbes from bat guano was the means by which these unfortunate tourists contracted the deadly disease.

I’m also fascinated by caves: they’re contagious in more ways than one. The islands of the Zanzibar archipelago, with their extensive limestone reef terraces, are riddled with caves and sinkholes. They’re a distinctive feature of the coral rag or karst landscape of both Unguja and Pemba, though often hidden from sight by thick vegetation, especially along the forested scarps in the south and east of the main island. Many of the caves have cultural significance as mizimu, the abodes of spirits that are regularly propitiated by the local guardians who have inherited this responsibility.

Entering one of the caves at Ufufuma (photo: Martin Walsh)

I wasn’t really aware of either the abundance of caves or the extent of this practice until Helle Goldman and I began researching knowledge and beliefs about the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) in 1996. There’s a strong association between leopards and caves, because of the spiritual significance of both and the fact that leopards were believed to be often found in and around them. In some cases, leopards themselves are the spirits that subterranean offerings are made to. 

More recently, Maximilian Chami and others have begun documenting these and other sacred sites, though we’re far from possessing anything like an inventory or gazetteer. Following his father Felix Chami’s pioneering excavations, caves have also been providing us with remarkable insights into Zanzibar’s past, including the people and fauna of Unguja before it became an island. I’ve been a minor contributor to discussions about some of the emerging zooarchaeological evidence – and I look forward to more.

Unsurprisingly, some of the limestone caves on the eastern side of Unguja are now tourist venues. The impressive Mchekeni Caves, in the Kiwengwa-Pongwe Forest Reserve, have been open since 2006, though visitor numbers can be very low. Other caves have been developed privately. Kuza Cave in north Jambiani is more like a rock shelter or overhang (presumably exposed by an earlier collapse), with a beautiful turquoise pool that tourists are encouraged to swim in. The caves at Ufufuma, roughly halfway between Mchekeni and Kuza, are used by a traditional healer (mganga), who also entertains fee-paying tourists.   

Bats in the south cave at Mchekeni (photo: Martin Walsh)

Whenever I’ve visited Mchekeni, I’ve felt distinctly uneasy penetrating deep into the southern cave. This is not because there’s no path and it’s unlit, it’s because I’m thinking about bats. There are plenty of small bats clinging to the walls, harmless enough. But I can’t help but wonder about the viruses they might be carrying. Spillover events may be rare, but as the ongoing global pandemic has painfully reminded us, they can happen, and bats are, for better or worse, the reservoir hosts of numerous viruses, SARS-CoV-2 included.

Perhaps I should be more worried about the fruit bats hanging in the trees, and the fruit that they may have slobbered or defecated on. Or fretting about Pemba, where flying foxes (Pteropus voeltzkowi) and other bats have traditionally been hunted as bushmeat. Who knows what harms this may have caused in the longue durée of island history? Of course, Zanzibar has more pressing public health problems to deal with in the present. Sooner or later, though, Zanzibar and Tanzania will have to start thinking about the biosecurity of the growing number of caves on the tourist trail. Next time I go down there, I’m wearing a mask.

Further reading

Bardenwerper, Julie 2009. Spirits and Sacred Sites: A Study of Beliefs on Unguja Island. SIT Study Abroad, Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. Paper 759.

Chami, Maximilian F. 2019. “Sacred Limestone Caves”: Management and the Use of Sacred Heritage Places in Limestone Cave Areas along the Swahili Coast of Indian Ocean in Tanzania. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg.

Chami, Maximilian F. & Felix A. Chami 2020. Management of sacred heritage places in Tanzania: a case of Kuumbi limestone cave, Zanzibar island. Journal of Heritage Management 5 (1): 71-88.

From the Kuza Cave website, www.kuzacave.com

Faulkner, Patrick et al. 2019. Long-term trends in terrestrial and marine invertebrate exploitation on the eastern African coast: insights from Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 14: 479–514.

Goldman, Helle & Martin Walsh 2019. Classifying, domesticating and extirpating the Zanzibar leopard, a transgressive felid. Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift 30 (3-4): 205-219.

Prendergast, Mary E. et al. 2016. Continental island formation and the archaeology of defaunation on Zanzibar, eastern Africa. PLoS One 11 (2): e0149565.

Quammen, David 2012. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. London: Vintage Books.

Walsh, Martin 1995. Eating bats on Pemba island: a local innovation or cultural borrowing? Mvita: Newsletter of the Regional Centre for the Study of Archaeology in Eastern and Southern Africa 6: 15-18.

Walsh, Martin 2011. From green monkey disease to fruit bat viruses. East African Notes and Records, 26 December 2011.

Walsh, Martin & Helle Goldman 2007. Killing the king: the demonization and extermination of the Zanzibar leopard. In E. Dounias, E. Motte-Florac & M. Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? Paris: Éditions de l’IRD. 1133-1182.

JOZANI-CHWAKA BAY NATIONAL PARK AND COVID-19

by Jonathan Walz

Evidence of beach erosion due to climate change at Paje (photo: J. Walz)

In Zanzibar, 2020 was a unique and impactful year. Covid-19 raised challenges for the state and its communities and environments. Compounded climate change and the national elections in October added stresses. The spring high tide event in mid-October (4.68m tidal change amplified by sea level rise) demonstrated that incremental increases to sea level during the last two decades have real world effects, including breached beach crests, saline wells, and inundated agricultural fields. Dramatically reduced tourism on Unguja and tourist revenue, alongside the aforementioned stresses, influenced biodiversity and the management of protected areas.

National parks around the world face multiple challenges during the global pandemic. For instance, significantly reduced staffing due to a decline in income from tourism influences parks’ capacities and plans to effectively enforce protections, facilitate scientific research, and ensure upkeep. In addition, and as a core threat to global biodiversity, administrators and observers of protected areas cite a parallel uptick in illicit activities that continue to degrade environments, species, and the human-environment interface: land grabs, deforestation for firewood and charcoal-making, animal poaching, an intensification of the illicit trade in wildlife and wildlife products, and the illegal mining of rare minerals and construction materials.

Burned bee honeycomb at Jozani (photo: J. Walz

“Biodiversity” is high species richness and evenness, which is equated with ecosystem health, productivity, stability, and resistance to disturbances, including disease. In general, biodiversity hotspots in Zanzibar – terrestrial and marine – are understudied (scholarly investigations in the archipelago being skewed to social and historical topics). Thus, biodiversity in the archipelago faces threats even before its is thoroughly understood. The sickness, death, and social disruption of the pandemic continue to act on the economically impoverished society and on the uncertainties spurred by climate change. Impacts from climate change are apparent: temperature increase (1.2 degrees Celsius since 1997), reduced rainfall with uncertain distribution, consistent sea level rise (0.28 cm/per year since 2009), and coastline and reef degradation. During the pandemic, pressures on the urban economy and food security in Zanzibar City have increased human and environmental vulnerability and changed behavior.

Up to January 2021, although human mortality and Covid-19 infections seemingly have been lower across eastern Africa than in areas of the Americas, Europe, and South Asia, nevertheless there have been negative outcomes in the region, for instance increased food insecurity and growing strains on health systems and natural resources. However, generalized statements about the pandemic’s impacts to nature conservation in Africa and the Global South more broadly deserve scrutiny and critique. What negative impacts to protected areas are being underemphasized in reports and what conservation positives have arisen during the pandemic?

Red colobus monkeys at Jozani (photo: J. Walz)

The Zanzibar archipelago, a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania, has a single national park which serves as a useful case for analysis: Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park and Biosphere Reserve. Jozani (for short) is an accessible park which in the last two years (2018 and 2019) has received more than 60,000 visitors per year. In April 2020 (during the first global peak in Covid-19), there were 14 total visitors to the park: less than 0.5% the number of visitors in April 2019. Diminished tourism revenue resulted in a temporary 50% reduction in park staff which influenced monitoring and enforcement, park upkeep, and public engagement. Urban job loss and modest food insecurity on Unguja redistributed some residents from nearby Zanzibar City to the countryside near the national park. Schools were closed which left children at home throughout the day to help gather natural resources for these larger households at the park’s edges. In addition, poachers used the ocean – not just land – to access remote areas, a practice previously documented primarily on Unguja’s sister island to the north: Pemba. Ad hoc observations and interviews with rangers documented that illicit activity increased, the evidence of which included tree stumps, cuttings from medicinal plants, shotgun shells, burned bee honeycombs, and traces of sand mining along the bay front.

However, positives for conservation and biodiversity have been lost in caricatures of the impacts of Covid-19. Absent tourists, monkey troops (especially Red colobus monkeys) at the national park reverted to less habituated behaviour. Farmers at the edges of the protected area reported fewer cases of damage to crops from park wildlife. Domesticated and feral animals were more visible, making them easier to humanely capture and relocate outside of park boundaries. In Chwaka Bay, intertidal species like octopus, a popular food served at tourist hotels, rebounded. On June 29, schools reopened; school groups became the primary park visitors and the focus of environmental education programs rather than secondary to the attention of overseas tourists. With few foreign-led NGOs in operation during the pandemic, a few of Zanzibar’s citizens stepped-in as agents of conservation at the park but also in Zanzibar City. They tended to public green spaces, outdoor areas less prone to transmit Covid-19.

Octopus and fisherman at Chwaka Bay (photo: J. Walz)

Biodiversity loss and socio-ecological instability increase vulnerability to on-going and future disasters. To overcome the disabling effects of Covid-19 and the compounding threats of climate change and other influential factors better promotion of evidence-based interdisciplinary study of coupled natural and human systems should be a priority. The multiple invested stakeholders should enforce protections to areas and species through standing or new policies, enhance resources for in-country experts to conduct and communicate research, bolster the health and wealth-being of people and environments through community “green” strategies, and collaborate with mindfulness to improve human livelihoods. The protection and restoration of biodiversity will improve adaptability to threats.

The public should be wary of simple narratives about Covid-19 and its impacts in Zanzibar and elsewhere. Covid-19 has not put threats to biodiversity “on hold”. However, at the same time, Covid-19’s outcomes have not been wholly negative.  As noted, during the pause in tourism, citizens of Zanzibar have initiated and developed conservation practices outside the orbit of ex-patriots, many of whom returned to their home countries due to the pandemic. At national parks in Africa and Indian Ocean island states, Covid-19 produces mixed conservation outcomes. Evidence builds more balanced and meaningful narratives that recognize the vulnerability and adaptability of people, ecosystems, and parks in an era of change.