tanzania – wanderwarbler

December 20, 2018January 29, 2019

The Silent Death Of Giraffes

Free roaming Angolan giraffe in Damaraland, Namibia. It hasn’t rained in five years, survival is a fierce fight.

Giraffes are the supermodels of the animal kingdom, they turn the savannas of Africa into their cat walk with each sway of their elegant long necks, with each long-legged stride and each long-lashed bat of their eyes. They fill us with this warm feeling of satisfaction one gets when witnessing beauty and perfection. Humans adore giraffes – so much that the number of Sophie La Giraffe rubber toys sold each year in France alone is bigger than the number of Giraffes living on the entire African continent.

The world’s tallest animal is at the risk of extinction. Nearly 40% of the wild giraffe population in Africa (that means worldwide) was lost in the past thirty years, according to the authoritative list compiled and issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Masai giraffe in the Selous GR, Tanzania. Giraffes and oxpeckers live in symbiotic harmony. The gregarious little birds feast on the tics and keep the giraffe’s fur clean.

It is, as with any other endangered species, the growth of human population that led to this dramatic decline in numbers. Tackling the underlying causes requires economic and ecological collaboration on a global basis.

While poaching is a considerable problem – their natural curiosity makes giraffes easy prey, loss of habitat through agriculture, mining, urbanization and pollution seems to be the bigger problem. These giant animals need space to roam – space which many protected areas like national parks and reserves can’t offer. Loss of wild crops like mangoes and sunflowers, which are more resilient to droughts and diseases, and which provide food supplies when times get rough, constitutes another important problem.

Giraffes have exceptionally long tongues, extendable to 30cm, and are the only animal that can manoeuvre around the long thorns of the whistling tree to eat its leaves. Ants that live in the thorns are therefore the giraffes’ natural nemesis. They bite the giraffes in the tongue.

Silent Extinction

“These gentle giants have been overlooked. It’s well known that African elephants are in trouble and there are perhaps just under half a million left. But what no one realised is there are far fewer giraffes, which have already become extinct in seven countries,” the British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough said.

While their conservation status has been considered of least concern, giraffes are now “vulnerable”. In numbers, giraffe population has plummeted from 157,000 to 97,500 since 1990. Today they count less than 100,000.

After the rain in KwazuluNatal. South Africa has been successful in raising the number of giraffes.

Recently, researchers have discovered through DNA analysis, that there is not just one species of giraffe, but four distinct species: The Southern Giraffe with two subspecies (the Angolan Giraffe and the South African Giraffe); the Massai giraffe; the reticulated giraffe; and the northern giraffe with another two subspecies (the Kordofan and the West-African giraffe).

This might seem like an irrelevant academic detail, but it is in fact problematic since in the wild distinct species do not interbreed. This means, that while the South African giraffe is actually growing in numbers due to successful protection efforts in South Africa, the three others are facing extinction.

According to IUCN chairman Julian Fennessy giraffes are especially under threat in war torn areas like northern Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia in the border area with South Sudan. With his wife, the biologist has founded GCF, the Giraffe Conservation Found that saves giraffes in their habitat. Their breathtaking work can be supported at their website: giraffeconservation.org .

This year, French babies are still happily squeezing their rubber Sophies, but they grow up into a dim future, where the living, breathing giraffes will be a nothing but a silent memory.

December 12, 2018December 15, 2018

Tanzania: Endangered Life

The Rufiji River in the Selous Game Reserve still there.

Yesterday, December 11^th 2018, a contract was signed between Tanzanian President John Magufuli, nicknamed the Bulldozer, and Egypt. For more than 300 milion US Dollars, The Arab Contractor’s Egyptian Company will build a dam and hydroelectric Power Station at the basin of the Rufiji River, the so called Stiegler’s Gorge. But the actual prize will be much higher, paid by generations to come.

Stiegler’s Gorge is located within the Selous Game Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage property and one of the only remaining wilderness areas in Africa, with – according to UNESCO – undisturbed ecological and biological processes and exceptional biodiversity. But of this little might remain, once the dam gets built.

Inhabitant of the Selous Game Reserve: A Velvet Monkey

The Selous Game Reserve is indeed nothing short of breathtaking: peach colored sunsets over endless grasslands, swaying palm forests and golden savannahs, lazy, meandering sand rivers peppered with hippos and crocodiles. The Selous is teeming with wildlife; not only home to the world’s biggest populations of elephants and rhinos, it’s a place of pristine nature: where the endless cycle of life and death continues, designating a vital role to every creature, from dung beetle to lion, from whistling fish eagle to whistling tree.

There is something magical, life-altering even about watching wildlife, in its natural habitat. To see this planet in the state it is supposed to be, which is a place of perfect balance. The lesson that nature teaches cuts deep: there is space for everybody, there is enough for everybody, and we humans, who have come to rule the world by means of technology, need to act according to a moral, and not ask for more and more, insatiably.

The area now known as Selous Game Reserve is located in South Eastern Tanzania and has known a breathtaking past. David Livingstone got lost there on his search for the source of the river Nile. And Morgan Stanley, who would later find Livingstone, barely made it through it alive. It is indeed an isolated area, remote and difficult to access because of natural barriers like rivers and mountain riffs, and biological barriers: the miombo – the local woodland – is the ideal habitat of the Tse Tse fly, which carries parasites that kill cattle and inflict the sleeping disease on humans.

Hippo fleeing the sun. A hippo’s skin is very sensitive to the sun. If it stays out if the water during the day, it will get sunburned.

Tse Tse flies, Malaria and Elephantiasis are not the sole reason why the area is free of any human settlement. In the 19^th century slave trade ravaged through the land, capturing humans and killing elephants: Slaves were forced to carry the ivory along two main corridors to the East coast, in massive convoys made up from thousands of slaves, that were cynically called Black and White Ivory. It was witnessing the inhuman living conditions of the slaves that turned Livingstone into the anti-slavery champion he is still venerated as in Tanzania. Yet, after the abolition of slavery, brutal colonialism by both England and Germany, as well as military battles between the same two European nations during WWI took care of the rest.

It was the German colonisateurs however who first realized that if not people, then wildlife needed to be protected in their Eastern German Africa and established the first Game Reserve. But under another name. The current name Selous – pronounced Seloo – goes back to an English daredevil, Frederique Selous, a hunter and ranger who spent his life in the wilderness of Tanzania. He is also the historic figure after whom screen hero Indiana Jones was modeled. A captain in the British Army, he fell in battle against the Germans in WWI, right there in the Selous, near the Beho Beho hills, right next to Stiegler’s gorge. His grave is still a pilgrimage site for modern day hunters, yet ignored by ecotourists for whom the Northern part of the Selous is reserved.

It is through a combination of eco-tourism in the North, hunting concessions in the South and a budget granted by UNESCO that the Selous Game Reserve has finally managed to prevent poaching and provide the high standards suitable for up scale safari- and ecotourism. That’s how local communities and businesses benefit from the Selous – by job creation in both wildlife protection and tourism, but also by strengthened social resilience, an important factor in a poverty ridden land like Tanzania. However, all this can soon be history once the bulldozer switches the engines on.

Lion cub. There are big prides at the Rufiji River. But for how long? Will the next generation still see wildlife?

The UNESCO “…is concerned that the construction of the Stiegler’s dam is likely to have a devastating and irreversible impact on Selous’ unique ecosystem, and that it will jeopardize the potential of the site to contribute to sustainable development”.

“The survival of our wildlife is a matter of grave concern to all of us in Africa. The wild creatures amid the wild places they inhabit are not only important as a source of wonder and inspiration, but are an integral part of our natural resources and our future livelihood and well being. In accepting the trusteeship of wild life we solemnly declare that we will do everything in our power to make sure that our children’s grandchildren will be able to enjoy this rich and precious inheritance.”

Julius Nyerere, First President of Tanzania and Father of the Nation, Arusha Manifesto, 1961

A Lilac Breasted Roller, the Africa’s most photographed bird, feeding its chick.

November 28, 2018November 29, 2018

Tanzania: Mtu Ni Watu or: The People United

In 1964, three years after President Julius Nyerere had peacefully walked the former Eastern African colony Tanganyika out of British colonial rule, he united his country with Zanzibar. This archipelago in the Indian ocean just off the African East coast was by the time an even younger democracy: it was two weeks since the end of the Sultanate.

Three syllables, Tan(ganyika), Zan(zibar) and Ia (the Swahili ending for together) melted into one new word, into one new nation: Tanzania.

Children playing in the harbor of Stone Town, Zanzibar

120 separate tribes with distinct languages had for centuries lived in Tanganyika, due the vastness of the land in relative peace and tranquility. It was colonialism that drained the soil and wildlife, and left cracks in society.

First it was the slave and ivory trade by European and Arab merchants that turned not only elephants, but humans into cheap and abundant merchandise. Unspeakable misery was cast over the land. When the Germans colonized and shamelessly exploited the country, rebellions against their ruthless regime ended in more bloodshed and tears. In WWI, enlisted as soldiers for their colonial powers, Askaris (as African soldiers working for their colonial powers were called) were made to kill their own neighbors, their own cousins even, in the name of Germany respectively Great Britain, or the colonies of German East Africa and Malawi. And after WWII, the new colonial power Great Britain tried to use the land as a granary to stave off a famine in their war torn homeland. The notoriously unsuccessful Groundnut Scheme afforded the UK a loss of 49 million pounds, and turned the land into a useless dust bowl.

When Great Britain finally dismissed Tanganyika into liberty, it was mainly because they had failed to draw enough profit out of a land that had been drained for too long. The Tanganyika Julius Nyerere took over was one of the poorest places in the world.

But the man had a plan. First, he re-united the estranged tribes by one common language: Kiswahili, a hybrid language that had formed in the run of centuries by mixing Arabic and tribal languages, was promoted through literature, drama, and poetry. It was also made official language and installed as educational language in the schooling system. For Nyerere also introduced obligatory schooling from the age of six.

Nyerere’s plan was a socio-economic system he called Ujamaa , family in Kiswahili, or commonly called African Socialism. Emancipation from colonial rule, pride and solidarity as a nation were paramount, economic self-reliance and cultural independence the goal.

But unlike other socialist economies, he didn’t build massive factories. Instead he villagized the economy and put family and solidarity into the center of attention. His policy showed success. Infant mortality dropped, life expectation rose, as did literacy. The Tanzanians called Nyerere The Father Of The Nation.

a man lugging two logs, an incidental cross. There is religious freedom in Tanzania. While Nyerere was a devout catholic, the language and culture of Swahili is muslim. Christians and Muslims live peacefully side by side in the villages.

But Ujamaa could not withstand the pressures of capitalism and neoliberalism. In 1985 Tanzania was still among the world’s poorest nations. Nyerere resigned and the chapter of Ujimaa
was forever closed.

On the beach. Also the proud Massai people, who have preserved their customs and dress codes for centuries, speak Swahili

Lately, it has been Safari tourism, nature and wildlife that brought Tanzania and its economy back into the game. Especially since the unrest in neighboring Kenya, hitherto a number one Safari Tourist destination, Tanzania has known an influx of upscale tourism. The secret is the social peace and stability that Kenya, which never unified its country under one language, lacks.

Tanzania’s current economic upswing is still owed to Ujamaa. Let’s hope it will continue – despite today’s different political and economic system. The current president of Tanzania, John Jospeh Magufuli, also has a nickname: The Bulldozer.