In 2005 and 2008, I returned to Tanzania on journeys following some of the Eastern and Northern Province roads of my childhood and youth 50 years earlier. Places like Korogwe, Handeni, Ifakara, then District outposts, have become sprawling towns, whilst Morogoro is a metropolis. In the intervening countryside, I found the wilderness and wildlife quite gone. Not even a guineafowl to be seen, only people, everywhere. At Amani, the only forest reserve in the Usambara Mountains, people are cutting down the trees to plant crops, whilst the Conservator lives 30 km away at the bottom of the mountain (See also Jens Finke, p362). The construction of a tarred road from Dar, inexorable population growth, pollution and beach harassment, have quite destroyed the charm of old Bagamoyo. My home on the sea-front was pitifully derelict, and the Boma, together with many other buildings, is (was then) in danger of collapsing (fig 15b). The Ruvu flood-plain inland from Bagamoyo, once filled with creeks and ponds and prolific bird-life, has been completely destroyed by the upstream, Canadian-built pumping station supplying water to Dar (where the water is constantly in short supply). The city sprawl had reached the Mpiji River, by then a furrow running through grass, those beautiful pillarwood trees all gone. After Uhuru, Tanzanian fishermen took to blasting fish with dynamite, utterly destroying many of the reefs, which as I saw in Msasani Bay, now look like a moonscape, devoid of all life. Saadani was however a surprise. Lying between the Wami and Mlingasi rivers and the coast, this last unspoilt part of the Nyika was first declared a protected area by my father in the early fifties, and its present status as a gazetted National Park would have given him great joy. Miraculously, elephant, buffalo and lion, hunted to the verge of extinction in Nyerere’s dark-age of the 70s and 80s, re-appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. The development of fresh water for animals in the dry weather is Saadani’s biggest problem. Udzungwa remains an isolated paradise, but the vast wetland next to it contains only sugarcane, whilst the Ruaha is nothing more than stream, with no surrounding vegetation. (see the pitiful Tanzanian website expressing surprise and dismay at the destruction of the Ruaha river). At Tarangire, the elephants have destroyed much of their own habitat through over-population; we were told there are spies all over Tanzania reporting to the Mwarabu and others, so that any animal with tusks setting foot outside the park, is soon hunted down. The elephants know this, and many of us know they know (fig 20, ref Kapuschinski).
Writing In the 1950s, Gerry Swynnerton described the dire threat to the wildlife of Tanganyika, and the difficulties confronting the Game Department, particularly with regard to poaching. 50 years later, I myself witnessed the inevitable consequence of an ongoing national failure on the part of black Tanzanians to recognize that conservation becomes meaningless in the face of overpopulation and political greed. On those journeys, it also became clear to me that Tanzania is now an Indian colony, worsened by the new invasion of Chinese people and their money.
