1318, 2232, 2647, 3104, 3198 TANZANIA / KENYA - Maasai people

3104 Tanzania - Young maasai milking a cow

Posted on 26.10.2014, 22.01.2016, 03.07.2016, 01.07.2017, 16.11.2017
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic people, pastoralists, inhabiting southern Kenya (840,000) and northern Tanzania (800,000), i.e. the African Great Lakes region. They originated from the lower Nile valley and began migrating south around the 15th century. Their territory reached its largest size in the mid-19th century, and covered almost all of the Great Rift Valley and adjacent lands. Followed a period of epidemics and drought (1883-1902), then the British evicted them from the fertile lands between Meru and Kilimanjaro, and most of the fertile highlands near Ngorongoro, to make room for ranches.

2647 Tanzania - Maasai men

As with the Bantu, and the Nilotes in Eastern Africa, the Maasai have adopted many customs and practices from the neighboring Cushitic groups, including the age set system of social organization, circumcision, and vocabulary terms. They are herdsmen, and had a fearsome reputation as warriors and cattle-rustlers. The raiders used spears and shields, but were most feared for throwing clubs (orinka) which could be accurately thrown from up to 100m. In modern time they have resisted the urging of the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle.

1318 Kenya - Maasai morans

The Maasai are monotheistic, worshipping a single deity called Enkai or Engai, who has a dual nature: Engai Narok (Black God) is benevolent, and Engai Nanyokie (Red God) is vengeful. The end of life is virtually without ceremony, and the dead are left out for scavengers. A corpse rejected by hyenas is seen as having something wrong with it. The Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. They eat the meat, drink the milk and on occasion, drink the blood. The measure of a man's wealth is in terms of cattle and children.

2232  Tanzania - Maasai dancers

Maasai society is strongly patriarchal, with elder men deciding most major matters. A full body of oral law covers many aspects of behavior. The men are born and raised to be warriors, and the central unit of the society is the age-set. Every 15 years or so, a new generation of Morans or Il-murran (warriors), formed boys between 12 and 25, will be initiated. One rite of passage to the status of junior warrior is a painful circumcision (emorata) ceremony. The healing process will take 3-4 months, during which urination is painful and nearly impossible at times, and boys must remain in black clothes for a period of 4-8 months.

3198  Tanzania - Maasai woman

The junior warriors live together in a circle of huts built by their mothers (manyatta), until they have passed on to senior warrior status and are allowed to start families. This period generally last between 5-7 years, although 8-12 years is not uncommon. Effectively a military garrison, in the manyatta they learn the arts of survival, cattle raiding and warfare (Eng Kipaata), although nowadays this period is more symbolic than practical. In the past a moran could be expected to prove his manhood by killing a lion armed with nothing more than a spear (olamayio).

2846, 3097 TANZANIA (Kilimanjaro) - Kilimanjaro National Park (UNESCO WHS)

3097 Mount Kilimanjaro (2)

Posted on 31.10.2016, 24.06.2017

Kilimanjaro National Park protects the largest free standing volcanic mass in the world and the highest mountain in Africa, rising 4877m above surrounding plains to 5895m at its peak. With its snow-capped peak, the Kilimanjaro is a superlative natural phenomenon, standing in isolation above the surrounding plains overlooking the savannah. It is composed of three volcanic cones: Kibo (5895m), Mawenzi (5,149m), and Shira (4,005m). Mawenzi and Shira are extinct, while Kibo is dormant and could erupt again.

2846 Mount Kilimanjaro (1)

The mountain has five main vegetation zones from the lowest to the highest point:  Lower slopes, montane forest, heath and moorland, alpine desert and summit. The whole mountain including the montane forest belt is very rich in species, in particular mammals, many of them endangered species. The mountain is drained by a network of rivers and streams, especially on the wetter and more heavily eroded southern side and especially above 1,200m. Below that altitude, increased evaporation and human water usage reduces the waterflows.

3057, 3074, 3081 TANZANIA - Serengeti National Park (UNESCO WHS)

3057 Wildbeest during the Great Migration in Serengeti National Park

Posted on 18.05.2017, 01.06.2017, 08.06.2017
The Serengeti National Park lies in northwestern Tanzania, to the northwest of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and is bordered to the north by the Kenyan border, where it is continuous with the Maasai Mara National Reserve. It covers 14,750 km2 of grassland plains, savanna, riverine forest, and woodlands, and is usually described as divided into three regions: Serengeti plains (the almost treeless grassland of the south), Western corridor (the Grumeti River and its gallery forests), and Northern Serengeti (open woodlands and hills).

3074 Elephants in Serengeti National Park

The Maasai people had been grazing their livestock in the open plains of eastern Mara Region, which they named "endless plains", for around 200 years when the first European explorer visited the area in 1892. The name Serengeti is an approximation of the word used by the Maasai to describe the area, siringet, which means "the place where the land runs on forever". The park was established in 1951, and in 1959 the residents Maasai were evicted from there by the British, being moved to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

3081 Black rhinoceros in Serengeti National Park

The remarkable spatial-temporal gradient in abiotic factors such as rainfall, temperature, topography and geology, soils and drainage systems in park manifests in a wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial habitats. The combination of volcanic soils combined with the ecological impact of the migration results in one of the most productive ecosystems on earth, sustaining the largest number of ungulates and the highest concentration of large predators in the world. The biological diversity of the park is very high with at least four globally threatened or endangered animal species: black rhinoceros, elephant, wild dog, and cheetah.

3053, 3059 TANZANIA - Ngorongoro Conservation Area (UNESCO WHS)

3059 Ngorongoro - Buffalos chasing lions

Posted on 15.05.2017, 21.05.2017

Located 180km west of Arusha in the Crater Highlands area, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) includes the spectacular Ngorongoro Crater,  the world's largest inactive, intact and unfilled volcanic caldera, and Olduvai Gorge, a 14km long deep ravine. It spans vast expanses of highland plains, savanna, savanna woodlands and forests, from the plains of the Serengeti National Park in the north-west, to the eastern arm of the Great Rift Valley.

3053 Ngorongoro - Zebra in Lerai Forest

The area was established in 1959 as a multiple land use area, with wildlife coexisting with semi-nomadic Maasai pastoralists practising traditional livestock grazing (About Maasai I wrote separately, here). The area has been subject to extensive archaeological research for over 80 years and has yielded a long sequence of evidence of human evolution and human-environment dynamics, collectively extending over a span of almost four million years to the early modern era.

3050 TANZANIA - Mount Meru

Located 70km west of Mount Kilimanjaro, just north of the city of Arusha, Mount Meru is a dormant stratovolcano, which constitutes the topographic centerpiece of Arusha National Park. At a height of 4,562.13m, it is visible from Mount Kilimanjaro on a clear day, and is the second-highest mountain in Tanzania, and the fifth in Africa. Its fertile slopes rise above the surrounding savanna and support a forest that hosts diverse wildlife, including nearly 400 species of birds, and also monkeys and leopards.

1374, 3048 TANZANIA - Stone Town of Zanzibar (UNESCO WHS)

3048 Old Fort of Zanzibar

Posted on 24.12.2014, 12.05.2017
Zanzibar (name originated from the Perso-Arabic word meaning "the coast of the blacks") is the semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, composed of the Zanzibar Archipelago, 25-50 km off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba. Its capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja, which comprises two main parts, Stone Town and Ng'ambo.

1374 The wooden doors of Zanzibar

Stone Town, also known as Mji Mkongwe (Swahili for "old town"), is the historical core of the city, former capital of the Zanzibar Sultanate, a flourishing centre of the spice trade as well as the slave trade in the 19th century. It is a city of prominent historical and artistic importance in East Africa, and its architecture, mostly dating back to the 19th century, reflects the diverse influences underlying the Swahili culture, a unique mixture of Arab, Persian, Indian and European elements. For many centuries there was intense seaborne trading activity between Asia and Africa, and this is illustrated by the architecture and urban structure of the Stone Town.