FLYING FROM DAR TO ZANZIBAR AGAIN

I can't resist posting a few more photos taken on a flight from Dar to Zanzibar, adding to those I put up earlier this year under the heading Flying from Dar to Zanzibar. The following shots were taken on a Coastal Aviation flight on 22nd September this year: we left Dar half an hour after midday and arrived in Zanzibar about twenty minutes later. This time my camera didn't run out of memory and I managed to get some images of the final stages of the flight.

Mlimani: the University of Dar es Salaam

Coastline north of Dar es Salaam

The sea, mid-channel

Controls in mid-flight (flight path and location on the screens)

Submerged island and reef

Chumbe island and lighthouse

Ras Shangani from the south

Zanzibar town from the south

suburbs of Zanzibar town

TANGANYIKA NOTES AND RECORDS ONLINE

The first issue (1968 reprint)

I've no doubt that my interior life would have been much poorer without Tanganyika Notes and Records (renamed Tanzania Notes and Records after Independence), and it's no accident that I've given this blog a related name. I can't count the number of articles that I've enjoyed and used in my own research and writing, an eclectic mix of natural history, ethnobiology (avant la lettre), oral tradition, cultural history, ethnography, and much more besides. I wish I'd had the gumption to write something for TNR before it fizzled out in 1985 (rumour has it that some luckless contributors still have papers in press), and was thrilled to take part more recently in discussions about reviving it (alas these also seem to have fizzled out).

In the 1990s I bought a partial set of the journal from the street booksellers of Dar, including some handsomely-bound volumes as well as loose single issues. For some years I carried around a crumpled piece of paper listing the numbers that I was still after, until there was a crackdown on my favourite traders (whose sources, it must be said, weren't entirely above suspicion) and the supply of odd issues of TNR dried up. The patchy collection I ended up with has given me endless pleasure, as well as providing bouts of frustration every time a much-desired issue disappears or turns out to be one of the ones that I don't possess. I'm still looking for some rogue numbers. 

One of the later covers (with humidity-induced mottling)

Fortunately my days of having to drive to the nearest TNR-endowed library (at least I live near to one) have now ended: the entire run of TNR from 1936 has been uploaded to COS eLib, the digital library of COSTECH, the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology. If you have sufficient bandwidth -- some of the pdfs are very large -- individual articles can be downloaded with a simple click. When the TNR files were first posted almost two years ago, the site itself seemed to have insufficient capacity, and downloading was well-nigh impossible. I'm happy to report that this technical problem has since been resolved, and when I tried last week I was able to download all the articles that I wanted to (Oh bliss!).

As I wish you happy hunting (here's the TNR search page), let me end this post by reproducing Kim Howell's Introduction to the TNR archive:

Introduction and Acknowledgements

This PDF version of Tanzania Notes and Records was made possible through a grant from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) as part of the project Making Data Available on the Species and Sites of the Eastern Arc and Coastal Forest Hotspot in Tanzania to the Department of Zoology & Wildlife Conservation of the University of Dar es Salaam. CEPF is a joint initiative of l'Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, the MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank. A fundamental goal is to ensure civil society is engaged in biodiversity conservation.

Dr. Alan Rodgers, a former staff member of the University of Dar es Salaam, and a member of the Tanzania Society and who served on the editorial board of Tanzania Notes & Records, had generously volunteered his complete set of the journal for scanning as PDF files. After his untimely death, the Joint Library of Nature Kenya and National Museums of Kenya allowed its series of the journal to be used. The East Africana Section of the University of Dar es Salaam main campus library provided copies missing from the Nature Kenya collection. Ms Sydna Kaitany and Ms. Ashah Owano tirelessly carried out the huge task of scanning and indexing all of the issues of the Journal. John Watkin and Kristina Razon of CEPF greatly facilitated funding arrangements that permitted the project and Mr. Paul Matiku, Executive Director of Nature Kenya and Dr. Cuthbert Nahonyo, Head of the Department of Zoology and Wildlife Conservation, University of Dar es Salaam, where the CEPF project was based, all ensured the success of the project.

It is hoped that making this information available will enable a new generation of researchers and interested individuals to be aware of the efforts of previous generations of contributors of knowledge about Tanzania and that it will facilitate the availability of the information to current workers and researchers.

Dedication

When I discussed the inception of this project with Alan Rodgers, who showed his usual enthusiasm and commitment, he had suggested that the PDF version be dedicated to all of those who contributed to the success of the Tanzania Society and its journal over the years, the authors, support staff and selfless editors.

However, in addition, it is the desire of all involved in this project that it honour the memory of Alan Rodgers, who worked tirelessly in his efforts not only to document Tanzania's flora and fauna, but also to work towards its conservation and towards the training of Tanzanians to improve the capability of the country to manage its unique cultural and natural heritage.

Kim M. Howell

Professor

Department of Zoology and Wildlife Conservation

University of Dar es Salaam

18th November 2009

THE NOT-SO-GREAT RUAHA

Water lilies in Ihefu

In an earlier post ('Diani Beach: a forgotten land grab?') I wrote about land alienation on the Kenya coast, and mentioned in passing the East African case of land (and water) grabbing that has exercised me most, the expansion of Ruaha National Park and expulsion of livestock keepers and others from their homes in Usangu, in Mbarali District. My paper on this case, 'The not-so-Great Ruaha and hidden histories of an environmental panic in Tanzania', has just been published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies, as part of a collection on the 'Politics of Rain' edited by Michael Sheridan. It's taken a long time to get this into print -- I drafted the article in 2008, using data gathered in the course of investigative research undertaken the previous year and compiled in a consultancy report (Walsh 2008). During the process of (more than one) submission and revision I was able to update some of the information contained in the paper, but the basic narrative remains the same, and has not been changed by anything I've learned since. In lieu of a longer post on subsequent developments, here's a taster of the paper:

Cattle in Ihefu (before the evictions)

The abstract...

Water is one of the world's most contested resources, and Africa's river basins are no exception. In December 1993 the Great Ruaha River upstream of Tanzania's Mtera Dam stopped flowing for the first time in living memory. This became a matter of national concern in 1995 when electricity shortages and rationing in Dar es Salaam were blamed by the national power supply company (TANESCO) on the continuing drying-up of the Great Ruaha. Since then different institutions and interest groups have sought to explain the river's increasing seasonality, focusing on resource use in and around its immediate source, the Usangu wetland, and laying the blame on different groups of resource users. In 1998 the core of the wetland (Ihefu) was gazetted as part of a new game reserve, and fishermen and livestock keepers were forcibly removed. Increasing government concern over power shortages culminated in the mass expulsion in 2006–07 of livestock keepers and their cattle from Usangu and Mbarali District, large parts of which were to be incorporated in an expanded Ruaha National Park. This was the largest eviction of its kind in recent Tanzanian history, widely condemned by NGOs and in the national and international media. This article examines in detail the development of the environmental panic and events which led to this eviction, highlighting the behind-the-scenes role played by actors and interests in the public and private sectors in fostering the panic and its controversial outcome.

Fishing in Ihefu (before the evictions)

...and the introductory paragraph:

In his speech at the official opening of parliament on 30th December 2005, Tanzania’s newly elected president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, sketched out his government’s agenda for ‘environmental conservation’ and singled out particular problems for attention. One of these was the worrying situation in one of Tanzania’s most important sub-catchments:
"A few areas need special and urgent measures to protect the environment because the situation has deteriorated to an extent that it affects other sectors. One such area is the Ruaha River Basin, which connects almost all major river systems in the country. We have watched as the situation at the Mtera Dam deteriorated. The Great Ruaha River is no longer great—it is almost dry in some parts. The Government at all levels should now intervene and be ready to be held to account for this situation. This damage must be stopped, and reversed."
In response to this and subsequent exhortations Kikwete’s government did indeed take “special and urgent measures” to protect the Great Ruaha. These actions focused on the immediate origin of the river: the wetlands of Usangu in Mbarali District, Mbeya Region. In May 2006 hundreds of cattle herders and their animals were evicted – not for the first time – from Usangu Game Reserve and the permanent Ihefu swamp. In June it was announced that this protected area would be upgraded to become part of an expanded Ruaha National Park, and between November 2006 and January 2007 large numbers of livestock keepers, most of them Sukuma agropastoralists, were forced to leave Mbarali District together with their herds. According to one (probably exaggerated) estimate, more than 300,000 cattle were driven out of the district, around two-thirds of them to Lindi and Coast Regions in the east of the country. This drastic eviction was roundly condemned by pro-pastoralist and civil society organisations in Tanzania, who pointed out that not only were livestock and their keepers in Usangu being blamed for environmental crimes that they had not committed, but also that the process of eviction had involved a number of human rights violations. In April 2007 the government established a special Commission of Enquiry to investigate these allegations, and its completed report was submitted to the president in early June 2007. Despite questions in the Tanzanian parliament, neither the report nor its findings have yet been made public (as of November 2010).

Needless to say, this is still the case, and at a recent meeting in Iringa President Kikwete defiantly declared that he would not allow evicted livestock keepers to return to the protected wetland because of its economic importance to the nation ('Ihefu wetlands out of bounds', Daily News, 23 March 2012).

References

Anonymous 2012. Ihefu wetlands out of bounds. Daily News (online edition), Friday 23 March 2012.

Walsh, Martin 2008. Pastoralism and Policy Processes in Tanzania: Mbarali Case Study. Report to the Tanzania National Resource Forum (TNRF), Arusha.

Walsh, Martin 2012. The not-so-Great-Ruaha and hidden histories of an environmental panic in Tanzania. Journal of Eastern African Studies 6 (2): 303-335. [A limited number of eprints are available here.]

THE CRUMBLING HERITAGE OF THE SANGU

by Martin Walsh

Dancing yailya at mbalino, 7 August 1981

When the first European explorers crossed the mountains to the north of Lake Nyasa in 1877, they found themselves in the thick of a bloody conflict between the Sangu and the Hehe, the most powerful chiefdoms in what are now known as the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. They were welcomed by the Sangu chief Tovelmahamba Merere, who was holed up with his advisors and warriors in a temporary stockade at Mfumbi, at the foot of the escarpment that opens onto the Usangu Plains. After helping to raise the siege Captain Elton and his party then crossed the plains, travelling via the burned-out Sangu capital, Utengule, that had been abandoned by Merere a couple of years before. The Sangu chief didn't live in his old capital again, but died in exile in Usafwa, near modern Mbeya, in 1893. He was succeeded by his son, Mgandilwa Merere (aka Pambalu), who was finally able to return to Usangu at the end of 1896, after the Germans had defeated the Hehe under Mkwawa. In 1899 Mgandilwa went back to live in Utengule, and recruited craftsmen from the coast to build an imposing Swahili-style residence beside the River Mambi, a physical symbol of his authority, albeit circumscribed by German power (Walsh 1984: 42, 47-49).

Malenjela (photo by Alison Redmayne)

When I lived in Utengule-Usangu in 1980-81 Mgandilwa Merere's two-storey 'palace' was still the most impressive building in the village, though political authority now resided with the Village Secretary and other functionaries of the one-party State. The incumbent chief was Mgandilwa's grandson, Alfeo Mgandilwa Merere, and although he preferred to live in comparative isolation in the village of Luhanga, to the north of Utengule, he was regularly persuaded to preside over ritual offerings (mafunyo) to his ancestors at the palace, which everyone knew as mbalino (after, it was said, the name of a village thought to be similarly well-protected, in that case by a surrounding forest). Everyone was invited to these events (once upon a time attendance had been compulsory), the more the merrier, with the merriment provided by copious quantities of local beer and the performance of traditional songs and dances either side of the offerings themselves, which also meant a taste of roasted beef for those taking part. The first of the offerings I attended, at the end of the dry season in 1980, was in many ways the most spectacular, not least because it featured the rarely-heard playing of gourd zither (ligombo) and (separately) the war drums of the Sangu (one large and five small drums known collectively as malenjela). Appropriately enough, this collective offering and celebration was followed immediately by the start of the rains that it was designed to bring.  

Approaching mbalino, 25 August 2007

In all I attended five of these two-day royal rituals at Merere's Utengule residence, two of which were held consecutively. I wrote at some length about one of them in a chapter of my doctoral dissertation and the paper that was based on it (1984: 75-84; 1985). I've always wanted to write more, to try to capture (recover?) something of the emotional impact that these events had upon me, and to record the sights and sounds I witnessed for posterity, including the many banal aspects of these collective rituals and the human interactions that characterised them. More than once, though, I've held back because of discomfort with my evident failure to understand everything that was going on during these events, including the lack of an overall interpretation that would fit readily into the anthropological literature that I was brought up on. It's taken me some years to appreciate that Not Understanding Everything is an inescapable feature of research in Usangu, not to mention in other complex social situations, and not necessarily just a personal failing. My incomplete knowledge and understanding of what has happened in Utengule since I left at the end of 1981 is another case in point, and amply illustrated by the paragraphs that follow.

The crumbling exterior, 25 August 2007

When Alfeo died in 1988 (other dates are available), there was uncertainty over who should inherit the chiefship, and it was offered to two senior members of the royal family, who both turned it down on the grounds (it seems) that they could do without the hassle and not least the expense of having to pay for periodic offerings to their ancestors. The stool was eventually given to Yusuf, Alfeo's eldest son, who wasn't really in a position to sit on it because he lived and worked in Dodoma, the nation's political capital. He was then pushed aside by his younger brother, Ahmed, a schoolteacher who did at least live in Utengule, though not in the palace itself. When I returned to Utengule after a decade and a half absence in February 1997, this was being occupied by his mother Simalisa and her younger children. We sat and chatted in the cloistered baraza, where the large lilenjela drum occupied its traditional position at one end. The building was very evidently starting to crumble, and I made a note of this at the time. The writing was on the wall (quite literally), and Ahmed was subsequently blamed for failing to maintain not only the palace but also the welcoming spirit and traditional practices that had once given it life.

The collapsed wall, 25 August 2007
(Daniel Merere in the foreground, Jonas Mfumbulwa to the left)

I visited Utengule on a number of occasions after 1997, but didn't pay much attention to the Sangu royal residence or even the fate of the chiefship. On my last trip to Usangu in August 2007, I travelled from Rujewa to Utengule with Daniel Merere, whose father Myotishuma (Alfeo's father's brother) had played the ligombo in 1981 (and for anthropologist Alison Redmayne in the late 1960s). We went to see the palace, together with  Maneno Merere, one of Alfeo's sons, Jonas Mfumbulwa, the Mereres' ritual specialist, and Mohammed Mfumbulwa, Jonas' nephew and Chairman of the administrative unit in which the mbalino is now located, Magurula village. I was shocked to see the state of the now unoccupied building, one wall of which had collapsed, exposing its inner chambers and the stairs to the upper floor. I was equally dismayed to see that the large lilenjela drum, once a majestic instrument, had lost its skin and was falling apart. Maneno told me that the four smaller drums had been stolen. The separate kitchen building was also a ruin, and the whole compound, including the nearby royal graves, pervaded with an air of neglect. After inspecting the building and discussing the possibility of raising funds to restore the palace to its former glory -- difficult I thought, without evidence of collective organisation and support for such a project -- I entrusted Daniel with some money for emergency repairs and encouraged him to coordinate with other members of the royal family. He later sent me a detailed estimate of the cost of fixing the whole building, totalling nearly Tshs.3.5 million, but I was at a loss to know what to do with this, other than helping to publicise the plight of the royal palace.    

The neglected lilenjela, 25 August 2007

I haven't followed up until writing this post. Meanwhile, it seems, things have moved on. Ahmed Merere died in the early noughties (or before), and in 2002 (or thereabouts) his elder brother Yusuf returned to live in Utengule and reoccupy the royal stool, though his incumbency wasn't universally accepted. Some people considered the rightful chief to be another brother, Salehe (aka Luvaha), who was a son of Alfeo's by another wife, Simanjaganjali. I was told in 2003 that he had come out on top in the ritual test that was given to Alfeo's sons after his death, a test that was traditionally used to divine who was most suitable to succeed to the chiefship (this ritual and different understandings of it is a subject for another day). At the time he was judged too young to take up the position, hence the accession of his elder half-brothers Yusuf and then Ahmed. Although I can't say exactly how this happened, Salehe Alfeo Merere is now occupying the position that some thought he should have been all along, as chief of the Sangu. He's posted an appeal on a local website, asking for more than Tshs. 43.5 million to renovate the palace and add other buildings and facilities to turn it into a museum. This is an ambitious project, and not well explained or pitched. But it's a sign that there might life yet in the Sangu chiefship and its otherwise crumbling heritage.

Acknowledgement
My thanks to Gundula Fischer at Tumaini University for telling me about a recent joint offering held by Salehe Merere and the Hehe chief, Abdul Mkwawa, at the latter's seat in Kalenga. This started me searching through old correspondence, notes and photos -- I might revise this post if I find more -- and also led me to the online appeal by the Sangu chief. What I know about the events that followed the death of Alfeo Mgandilwa Merere, I owe to one man in particular, his cousin Daniel Merere.

References

Writing on the wall of mbalino

Walsh, Martin 1984. The Misinterpretation of Chiefly Power in Usangu, South-west Tanzania. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge.

Walsh, Martin 1985. Village, state and traditional authority in Usangu. In R. G. Abrahams (ed.) Villagers, Villages and the State in Modern Tanzania (Cambridge African Monograph No. 4). Cambridge: African Studies Centre. 135-167.