Elly D.Kimbwereza
Email: Elly.Kimwereza@gmail.com
‘‘Take off your shoes, for this is Holy ground “ is what many visitors who travel long distances to Malameni rock in Mbaga, Southern Pare Mountains feel or tell themselves.
So do many local and International visitors entering this remote and in the recent past virtually inaccessible area.
Our journey starts from a small town Same; 120 km from Moshi on the Arusha –Dar highway. Hills are everywhere but nowhere more spectacularly than in Mbaga as you drive up the winding roads to this mountain village Manka. Natural awesome forces created the landscape over millions of years, but men and women continue to mould it to its present appearance. In the shadows of the mountains deep green valleys, numerous trickling away small rivers, the landscape is littered with a legacy of human endeavors from our ancient past – Mysterious stones imposing residential houses and churches continue to transform the landscape too. Miles of winding roads that criss-cross the landscape and the villages, the agricultural patchwork fields, soft contours of the lowlands also transform the landscape. And yet those high mountains and deep valleys still prevail – just as powerfully impressive as when our remote ancestors first set eyes on them. They are mountains of incredible beauty, rich diversity and abundant, offering a visitor great variety of attractions. They are home to very friendly people who proudly have maintained their culture and traditions.
There was no way you could reach the Malameni rock by car until recently when the villagers accepted to construct a road that can take you right up to the ‘Holy place’’. The local people refer to the stone as the rock which throws off children (Mkumbavana).
There the rock sticks out over the depth as a tongue out of the mouth. Many people know nothing of those terrible things that happened here in the past. If a child was born and come into contact with the earth during birth or it was brought into the world as a breech birth ,or if it had a mark on its skin or if the rack was bended to one side or if it had the upper incisor come before the lower ones, then they thought in any case the child was a ghost child which would bring disaster to the family and ruin for the country. Horrified friends and neighbors ran to the village chief to bring him the news and to obtain the command to kill the child. So the parents took their child and wondered with sad feelings in their hearts to this place, the rock which throw off children. Once more the parents hugged their child. The mother took it to her breast for the last time in order to feed it until the child fell asleep, then they laid it carefully on top of the utmost peak of the rock above the dreadful depth and they went away the mother weeping softly and the father with sad heart and when the child moved then and woke up from its peaceful sleep it fell into the dreadful rocky cliff.
Hundreds of children were eliminated from this place until the colonial government effectively banned this practice in the 1930’s.
Today Malameni rock has turned out to be a holy shrine with many people traveling from far distance to make sacrifices not in the form of children any more but Prayers with the guidance of the rock keeper who stays with his family near the rock. Superstitious beliefs also continue to beleaguer a number of Tanzanians so even today they travel to this place to connect with whatever they believe in.
On the other hand a small beautiful Christian church has been built next to the rock as a way of trying to educate people not to continue with such ungodly, heathen, and superstitious beliefs.
Not far from Malameni rock there is another rock called Mkumbavana. Here a similar story can be told how children were also abandoned and left to die. The hill of that ledge fall gently away into a hole.
Down there just there where the children were thrown off there is a hole hidden in the fern bush. Some children were a little older and taller so they could hang into the brink and climb up, they whimpered so that the inhabitants of that area could hear them. Some cried for days until finally a leopard or hyena came up the way to the child and ate it up, others had enough strength to find their way back to their home .When they come to someone” shut, worn out and shuttered from the fall of that rock and very tired, people took them and brought them back to the rock.
A family got a child and looked after the child with great care and joy. Months later they saw that their child got its upper teeth first and that was a bad omen. The parents were very frightened. They loved their child so much and decided not to sacrifice the child to the ghosts and never send it to the rock. They brought it up secretly.
In public, they mourned for their child that it was not alive any longer. Years later it came to the light and the clan found out that the tooth child was not dead but alive. Many diseases and much bad luck had come into the clans lives and in the meantime they blamed the child for all the misfortunes .They complained. The ghost took revenge. they are angry and must be appeased. The child must be killed so that the evil ghost come to peace. The father brought his child to the rock. He had to do it himself. He laid it down at the edge of the rock. It fell into the depth. It fell without any broken bone and crawled back out of the hole and found his way back home. The parents were much more afraid now. The father brought him to this place for the second time, fell down again and again but survived the fall. It seemed to be a wonder, scratched at the whole body by thorny bushes, whimpering in the pain and hunger he came home to the hut of his parents who got very excited and members of the clan were indignant.
This time the father took the child back to the rock along with a club so that he could hit the child and throw him off from the rock. This is a very painful story which teaches us that we may be doing the same to our children today without realizing it. If you have been moved by this true story of the past please land your support for the children who today grow around this place of past terrible pain and lamentation. Help the children to grow to a decent classroom instead of the rock that kills children. When we now have the courage to be able to say ‘‘Never again’’ our Nation is put into International shame of killing our fellow citizens with albinism. Tanzania.,.this world acclaimed country of incredible beauty and rich diversity should not accept the devil to rule supreme.
*Elly D.Kimbwereza is the coordinator of Cultural Tourism in the South Pare Mountains Same.