TANZANIAJ o u r n e y t h r o u g h

MOHAMED AMIN • DUNCAN WILLETTS • PETER MARSHALL

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Tanzania ia a land of rare beauty. Bordered by shimmering lakes and the Indian Ocean, it is East Africa’s largest nation, half the size of Western

Europe. It’s natural treasures are unique: snow-capped Kilimanjaro. Africa’s highest mountain: Lake Tanganyika, it’s longest and deepest lake: Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest lake; and Ngorongoro, it’s largest unbroken crater. Here too in the mighty Selous and the endless Serengeti wildlife sanctuaries roam the last of the great herds of African game. And then there are 500 miles of palm-fringed tropical coastline with the green islands of Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia.

Although Tanzania is a new nation, it has a rich and ancient past. Fossils in Olduvai Gorge suggest that it was the home of the first race of men on earth. For thousands of years, it was a wealthy trading-centre in the Indian Ocean: a powerful and great Islamic civilization arose along the coast which built beautiful stone cities and gave birth to the Kiswahili language. After the early travellers — Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Rebmann and Krapf — came German and then British settlers who helped develop the country’s rich potential.

Tanzania today is a fruitful and creative meeting-point of African, Arab, Asian and European cultures whose varied influences live on in it’s religion, customs, languages and architecture. Upright and confident, it is a dynamic nation forging a distinctive style of its own. It’s original and independent path of development has moreover made it one of the most closely observed countries in Africa.

Peter Marshall, with photographers Mohamed Amin and Duncan Willetts, has captured the essence of this breath-taking country in a book as handsome as the subject it portrays.

Other titles in this series:

Journey through EthiopiaJourney through JordanJourney through KenyaJourney through MaldivesJourney through NamibiaJourney through NepalJourney through PakistanJourney through SeychellesJourney through UgandaJourney through Zimbabwe

Jacket photographs: (front) Giraffe, Serengeti National Park ................; (back) Ngorongoro Crater.........

Price: UK£34.99

MOHAMED AMINLong acknowledged Africa’s greatest photographer camera-man, the late Mohamed Amin recorded and filmed the major events of Africa, Asia and the Middle East from the late 1950s until his untimely death in 1996.

He was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II in Britain’s 1992 honours to add to the many coveted individual awards he holds, including the University of California’s Theodore E. Kruglak Special Award, the USA George Polk Award, Overseas Press Club of America Award, Britain’s Valiant for Truth Award, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award, the Royal Television Society’s Judge’s Award, and the Guild of Television ‘Cameramen’s Cameraman‘ award.

Mohamed Amin was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1943, and was the chief executive of Camerapix group of television and publishing companies based in Nairobi. He was also the Africa bureau chief of Reuters Television, the world’s largest television news agency.

A fellow of Britain’s Royal Geographical Society, he also held one of Pakistan’s highest civil honours — the Tamghai- Imtiaz — and in 1994 the President of Kenya honoured him with the Order of the Grand Warrior..

His books include Pilgrimage to Mecca (1978), Mecca (1980), Cradle of Mankind (1981), Run Rhino Run (1982), Ivory Crisis (1983), Portraits of Africa (1983), Railway across the Equator (1986), Defenders of Pakistan (1988), and others with Duncan Willetts (see below).

DUNCAN WILLETTSOne of Africa and Europe’s major creative photographers Duncan Willetts was born in England in 1945. A regular contributor to Time-Life, Newsweek, and other major magazines and newspapers around the world, his books with Mohamed Amin include Journey through Pakistan, Journey through Kenya, Journey through Tanzania, Karachi, The Last of the Maasai, Railway Across the Equator, Journey through Nepal, Lahore, Kenya: The Magic Land, Roof of the World, Journey through Zimbabwe, On God’s Mountain: the story of Mount Kenya, Pakistan: From Mountains to Sea, Journey through Maldives, Journey through Namibia, Journey through Jordan, Journey through Seychelles and Spectrum Guides to African Wildlife Safaris, Kenya, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Tanzania, Maldives, Namibia, Jordan, South Africa and Ethiopia.

PETER MARSHALLHe is a widely-travelled writer. After leaving the Merchant Navy, he took a doctorate and taught philosophy at the University of London. He has lived in Senegal and visited Tanzania many times. His writing about the African continent has appeared in Africa Guide, Africa Report, The Guardian, New Society, New Internationalist, the The Traveller. He has two children and lives in the mountains of North Wales.

PHILIP BRIGGSPhilip Briggs is a travel and environmental writer specialising in Africa. Born in Britain and raised in South Africa, he has backpacked through many African countries, researching editions of the Bradt Guides, returning regularly to update his material. He has also led wildlife and bird watching tours. He is the author of a dozen travel guides, Journey through Uganda, with photographer David Pluth, and the spectacular coffee-table book, Africa: Continent of Contrasts in collaboration with photographers Martin Harvey and Ariadne Van Zandbergen. He has contributed more than 100 magazine features to the likes of Wanderlust, BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa, Africa Geographic and Africa Birds and Birding. For Journey through Kenya (which was first published in 1982) Philip carried out major revisions and updates to Brian Tetley’s original text, bringing the book completely up to date.

PO Box 45048, 00100 GPO, Nairobi, Kenya

JT TZ cvr opt2.indd 1 3/4/11 12:30:12 PM

JOURNEY THROUGH

TaNzaNia

• MOHAMED AMIN • DUNCAN WILLETTS • PETER MARSHALL •

JOURNEY THROUGH

TaNzaNia

Half title: Dhow on cerulean waters.

Title page: Mount Meru sticking out of the clouds, view from Mount Kilimanjaro in Kilimanjaro National Park.

Contents: Pointers to other parts of East Africa on the signboard in Arusha’s clock tower roundabout, the centre point between Cape Town and Cairo.

This book was designed and produced by Camerapix Publishers InternationalPO Box 45048, 00100 GPO Nairobi, Kenya

© Camerapix 2011

First impression 1984Second impression 1988Third impression 1993Fourth impression 1994Revised edition 2011

ISBN: 978-1-904722-53-3

Production Director: Rukhsana HaqRevised Text: Philip BriggsEditor: Roger BarnardEditorial Assistant: Cecilia GaithoDesign: Rachel MusyimiPicture Research: Abdul Rehman and Sam Kimani

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in Singapore.

All pictures by Camerapix and David Pluth except the following:-

Ariadne Van Zandbergen: Cover, endpapers, Pages 2-3, 6-7, 26, 27, 54, 63, 78, 108, 113, 117, 120, 125, 130, 134.

Graham Mercer: Pages 72.

CONTENTS

1. Journey through Tanzania 7

2. Green Islands 33

3. The Silver Coast 61

4. Southern Splendour 89

5. Trek to the Interior 111

6. The Northern Parks 135

7. Kilimanjaro — Hallelujah 167

1. Journey through Tanzania

8 Previous pages: Tanzania, Zanzibar, fishing boat

Below: ‘There, where monsoon breezes slant in off a deceptively gentle sea, visitors might laze on the coral sands, lulled by the soporific surf and the rustle of the palms, their daydreams untroubled by history’.

Tanzania is a country of stunning beauty, a kaleidoscope of landscape, wildlife and people. With an area of approximately 939,700 square kilometres (362,820 square miles), it is half the

size of Western Europe and East Africa’s largest nation. Situated just south of the Equator, it is bordered by shimmering blue lakes and the Indian Ocean. Its landscape varies from the green tropical coastline and beige semi-desert of the central plateau to the eternal snowcap of Mount Kilimanjaro. It possesses the largest and best game reserves in the world.

This country, where modern man may have originated, possesses a mosaic of peoples. In its long history, it has become a fruitful meeting-point of African, Arab, Asian and European cultures. Here Kiswahili, the lingua franca of East Africa, was born. Here, modern practices have been grafted on ancient customs, blending the best of noble traditions with the benefits of the new. Today, Tanzania is a land of great contrasts.

Somewhere in the great inland plains, a pride of lions intently watches nomads with their cattle, who in turn gaze at the clouds of red dust raised by a heavy lorry carrying wheat to the capital. As the dust settles, the cattle graze once again alongside the wildebeest and zebra in the immense stillness of the bush. Life continues as it has for thousands of years.

In the capital, Dar es Salaam, children in their neat blue-and-white school uniforms watch the traditional dances (ngomas) performed by a textile factory troupe to the beat of the coastal drums. A sea-breeze stirs the palm trees which tower over the tin roofs of the brick houses. A silver jet flies unheeded in the deep blue sky. Here life changes little from year to year.

Out of the bush and the fields, out of the villages and towns, a new nation has been forged: a nation full of energy, beginning to tap its wealth and to map its path through the 21st century. In so doing, it draws profound lessons from a rich history and varied culture to share with materially richer but socially poorer countries.

What first strikes the visitor to Tanzania is its sheer physical size and infinite variety. The country embraces the green offshore islands of Pemba, Zanzibar and Mafia. It has some 800 kilometres (500 miles) of palm-fringed coastline, with silver sand, coral reefs and mangrove swamps dipping into the tepid waters of the Indian Ocean. A north-east monsoon blows from October to February, and a south-east monsoon for the rest of the year. A fertile plain, up to 65 kilometres (40 miles) in width, stretches along the coast where abundant rainfall and average daytime temperatures of 30°C (86°F) support dense vegetation.

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Map of Tanzania

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The land then rises to a range of mountains which form a great figure ‘9’, the loop encircling the Maasai Steppe in the north and the tail curving in an arc to the south and west. Beyond this lies the vast arid central plateau. It is known in Kiswahili as nyika (as in ‘Tanganyika’) which means wasteland: the scrub, sparse woodlands and savannah grassland are harsh and unwelcoming. Only an occasional granite outcrop relieves the monotony. Here there is only one rainy season, from November to May, and temperatures can reach as high as 32°C (90°F).

The interior of Tanzania forms part of a vast highland plateau that extends from the Zambezi Valley to northern Ethiopia, and is bisected by one of the world’s most remarkable geographical features: the Great Rift Valley. This immense chasm, a product of gradual tectonic drift, spreads northwards from Lake Nyasa in a Y-shape, with the western arm running through Lakes Rukwa and Tanganyika and the eastern arm extending northward to Lakes Manyara and Natron.

Tanzania in fact has 51,753 square kilometres (19,982 square miles) of inland water — more than any other African country. Lake Tanganyika, which runs along the western border, is the longest and second- deepest freshwater lake in the world. Within Africa, it is exceeded in area only by Lake Victoria, the second largest lake on earth, set in a huge shallow depression that spans the borders of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. Three great rivers, the Nile, Congo and Zambezi, are fed by Tanzanian watersheds. Then there is the sprawling Rufiji, the major river system within the country, flowing through the dry plains of the vast Selous Game Reserve before it empties into the Indian Ocean south of Dar es Salaam. During the rainy season, the country is traversed by swirling watercourses.

Yet even this survey does not exhaust Tanzania’s physical wonders. In the north is the remarkable Serengeti National Park, whose plains support more than three million head of game. Further east is the Ngorongoro Crater, the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera, its walls enclosing a magic world teeming with animals. Nearby Lake Manyara, at the foot of the Rift Valley, is a bird watcher’s paradise. In the south, the Selous Game Reserve, the largest in Africa and one of the last great wildernesses on earth, is the lynchpin of a tourist circuit that also includes Ruaha and Mikumi National Parks.

Inland of the coast, the series of isolated ranges known collectively as the Eastern Arc Mountains is swathed in ancient forests that support one of the world’s highest counts of endemic plants and animals. Chimpanzees haunt the forested slopes of the Rift Valley Escarpment above the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, while elsewhere the rifting process is pockmarked by dormant and active volcanoes such

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Above: Skull of the ‘Nutcracker Man’, Australopithecusboisei (Zinjanthropus), in the National Museum, Dar esSalaam. His massive skull housed a tiny brain. One of theearliest hominids, he was probably a vegetarian and diedout. The skull is estimated to be 1.75 million years old.

Top (left): Stone tools found at Olduvai on display in the onsite museum.

Left: Louis Leakey, working at Olduvai Gorge. He helped elevate African palaentology to international status.

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Above: Plaque commemorating Mary Leakey’s discovery,in 1959, of the skull boisei, from a creature believed to have roamed the area around Olduvai Gorge almost two million years ago.

as Rungwe in the Southern Highlands and Ol Doinyo Lengai in the north. Above all, there is mighty Mount Kilimanjaro, a long dormant volcano that rises in majestic isolation from the dusty bush of the northern Maasai Steppe. Its densely forested sides give way to the blue glaciers and unbelievably white snow of its rounded peak. At about 5,895 metres (19,340 feet), it is the highest mountain in Africa. Without doubt, Tanzania is a land of superlatives.

To enter the country moreover is to enter a landscape continually changing shape, colour and mood. Iridescent underwater coral gardens give way to shimmering white beaches. The colour of the earth changes from black, to grey, to ochre. Brown scrub and savannah can be suddenly transformed by carpets of blue, yellow and crimson flowers; coconut, mangrove and casuarina trees grace the coast, while upcountry flat-topped acacia and gnarled baobab trees spread their limbs under the implacable sun. The blue waters of the sparkling lakes vie with the deep azure of the sky. And the infinite spaces and towering peaks, which reduce man to nothingness, become gentle places with intimate fields and reassuring homesteads.

It is through this varied setting that the last great herds of wild animals roam. Over a quarter of Tanzania is made up of national parks, game reserves and controlled areas. Of total land use, less than 10 per cent is cultivated; of the rest, half is rough grazing where for the most part nature still reigns and man gives way. Few places on earth can offer a wilderness so complete or tranquillity so profound.

Although a new nation, Tanzania has a long history: a journey through the country is a journey of space and time. For about 3.6 million years ago, near the Equator in the north of the country, two of our ancestors, hairy people, about 1.5 metres tall, with low foreheads, strode apprehensively with a child across a layer of grey ash from a belching volcano to the east. It was raining. They were moving fast, terrified no doubt by the angry mountain and the restless elephant- like animals nearby.

The foot-prints of these proto-humans, or hominids, were discovered by Mary Leakey in 1979 under several layers of solidified ash in Laetoli near the Sadiman volcano. They are the earliest known ones in the world. Two decades before that, in nearby Olduvai Gorge, Mary and her husband Dr. Louis Leakey unearthed what were then the oldest hominid fossils on record, and the first to date human evolution back to more than a million years ago. Subsequent finds in northern Kenya and the Afar region of Ethiopia have pushed that calendar further back, by another five million years, but Olduvai remains a site of huge significance to palaeontologists.

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Above: Arab settlers mixed with the native Zanzibaris, producing the Swahili.

Opposite: Street in Stone town.

It would appear that about 1.75 million years ago, two types of hominid lived at Olduvai: Paranthropus boisei (nicknamed ‘Nutcracker Man’) and Homo habilis (literally ‘Handy Man’). Only the latter, Louis Leakey believed, had the brain and hands capable of making tools, which together with various other morphic similarities, marked it out as a likely direct ancestor of modern man. More recent finds at Koobi Fora in Kenya confirm this, although they suggest that Homo habilis evolved more than two million years ago.

Our early ancestors were hunter-gatherers, living in small groups that made shelters out of rough circles of stones and brushwood. They wielded choppers to hack meat, but did not use fire. Their world, however, was quite different from ours. Many of the animals around them were giants: rhino-sized pigs with 90 centimetres (three feet) long tusks; the great buffalo-like ‘Pelorovis’ with a horn span of around 1.8 metres (six feet); the gigantic elephant ‘Deinotherium’ whose tusks were set in the lower jaw and curved downwards; and the ‘Hipparion’ or three-toed horse.

Little is known of the early Stone Age which followed. Between a million and 500,000 years ago, a type of man known as Homo erectus emerged, making use of hand-axes. Beautiful ones have been found in Olduvai Gorge, but one of the world’s finest collections is to be found at Isimilia, a big erosion gully near the southern Tanzania town of Iringa. Both sites are near lakes which provided ideal hunting grounds.

Modern man or Homo sapiens evolved around 400,000 years ago, and gradually improved the techniques of tool-making. By the late Stone Age, Tanzania was sparsely populated by groups of hunter-gatherers who built burial cairns, some of which have been discovered in the Ngorongoro Crater. Many lived in rock shelters which they decorated with paintings. The hunting scenes at Kondoa, with their stylised wild animals and human figures, are particularly impressive.

This hunter-gatherer lifestyle, though marginalised, is still practised in north-central Tanzania by the Sandawe and Hadza, who speak a Khoisan (or ‘click’) language. About 3,000 years ago, Cushitic-speaking people like the Iraqw came from the north-east bringing knowledge of agriculture. They were largely absorbed however by waves of Nilotic-speakers, the most recent of whom were the Maasai.

In the meantime, from the first millennium, Bantu-speaking people travelled from the west and south, bringing the skills of iron-working and pottery-making. They absorbed most of the hunter-gatherers into more settled communities. Engaruka, north of Lake Manyara, with its stone circles, terraces and irrigation furrows, is a fine example. From the 14th to the 18th century, salt was extracted from the springs

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