“Who does not know Mt Kilimanjaro? Who doesn’t know our marvellous game
parks so rich and stunning? After all they are in every travel guide about
East Africa safaris you will ever come across. They offer the richness of
our biodiversity but there are more attractions beyond that few travellers
know about. ” This is Elly D. Kimbwereza or Kim as he prefers to be called,
speaking. He is the chairman of Same Tourism Network.
He is a man in love with his calling. And you can see it in his
dancing eyes as he talks about his pet subject- the potential of the
Southern Pare Mountains as a tourist destination.
“We want tourists to know that there is Africa outside and beyond
their hotel room and the nice beaches,” he says adding that is basically
the essence of eco and cultural tourism. He speaks with a voice full of
life and optimism.
The Wapare have lived for hundred of years in the rugged mountain
ranges intertwined with swaths of savannas and marshland where the only
foreigners who remained after independence were a few white Lutheran and
catholic missionaries, he says.
We are at Tona Lodge in Same District, a cultural and ecological
tourism based project perched on the Mbaga Hills in the Southern Pare
Mountains overlooking Mkomazi Game Reserve on the Savannah plains and
Chome/Shengena forest reserve on the mountaintop, which he is the managing
director.
“Our land has not been marketed as a great tourist destination. When
we told villagers about ecological and cultural tourism project they could
not believe it. Tourists coming to villages including here at Mbaga Hills,
they wondered? Almost seven years down the line, it has paid off,” he says
with pride.
Kim has managed through his lodge to put Southern Pare Mountains
attractions in major travel guides like the Lonely Plant, which has often
been described as the travellers Bible.
He says TONA (Tourism of New Age) is an attempt to come up with
strategies for making tourism work for the poor whereby tourists pay a
compulsory fee for village development (Ths2000) daily during their visits.
Speaking later to the elders in the village they confirmed just as
Kim had told me the tourism project has brought several new developments.
There have been improvements of several primary schools, construction two
new roads and two bridges linking the villages and only recently about 12
computers were provided to Manka Secondary School in the village.
Then Kim gives me a brochure of Same Tourism Network. Perusing it
quickly, it says cultural tourism is the alternative to rapacious resource
extraction of uncontrolled logging and forest fires as it could earn the
desperately sought income and bring in revenues to properly managed
villages and protected areas in the Southern Pare Mountains of Kilimanjaro.
“Cultural tourism appears to hold promise to ameliorate another
dilemma of our age. We have seen and witnessed tragic and rapid demise of
our cultural heritage as a result of the relentless pressure of modern
industrialized society [globalization],” it says.
I ask him how this kind of tourism is saving cultural heritage. He
does not answer my question. Later in the day he takes me for two hours
walk to next-door village – Chongoma. In the heart of the village there is
Changoma Sunrise Lodge comprising several pare style traditional cottages.
After sampling the serene hills up to Taita Hills in Kenya at the lodge,
the proprietor takes us to one cottage set aside as a museum. Though it
contains only a dozen items or so, the collection takes me back to the
history of the Wapare and their way of life – their traditional cooking
appliances, containers for charms and amulets and other items the present
day Pare generations know nothing about.
Back later at the Tona Lodge Kibwereza says Tourism of New Age offers
direct participation to the population and that is why he believes it is a
socially responsible and sustainable tourism product.
“Our visitors are shown whatever the surrounding offer from ancient
caves and the breath taking rocks in our land. Tourist here can have a lot
at our whole way of life. They can learn how Pare traditional brew is made,
visit potters and learn how to make pots and so on and on,” he says.
He adds Southern Pare Mountains offers the kind of leisure and
pleasure travel leaflets often promise but seldom keep -the very close
contact with other cultures: “Here this is a reality.”
Its also noteworthy, the tourist guides are all villagers born in
the mountains who know every valley and ridge. Most of them were jobless
before the cultural tourism project began in Same.
According to Kim, cultural tourist settings like Tona lodge
“probably fulfils the subconscious longing of the travelers coming from a
highly industrialized world: wanting to go back to mother earth, striving
for a simpler life in harmony with nature feeling safe and comforted in the
bosom of an intact community which does not know anonymity and loneliness.”
He says the local communities as a result of cultural tourism are
slowly realizing “that their culture, their lives and the things they
produce and the way they produce them as well as their interaction, is
something special for the foreigner and is an attraction in itself.”
There is need for government and international community support to
communities to maintain and develop sustainable tourism solutions to
protect and enhance indigenous cultures and the environment, he says.
“There are several attractions to the mountains based on nature,
culture and social activities. This includes the mountains and hills and
the resultants features like unique rock and unforgettable moorland. There
is also Mkomazi Mkomazi Game Reserve, small forests preserved for worship
and rituals by clans among others attractions,” he says.
He also spoke of Malameni and Ibwe leleta rocks, which I later
visited. He told me Pare children born with abnormalities were sacrificed
to appease evil spirits atop Ibwe Leleta rock many years ago. It’s a truly
an amazing site. (Read The Guardain, 07/07/05 page features section)
Kim says its unfortunate, on the side of Southern Pare Mountains no
adequate research has been done on biodiversity. Ancient caves have not
been explored scientifically, and there is a big possibility there is fauna
and flora still to be discovered in the mountains, he adds.
Southern Pare is the forgotten jewel of the Eastern Arc, he says
adding:
“We have a lot of gold here, but our people don’t realize it.” And I
believe him.
Fact sheet:
The Eastern Arc Mountains are a chain of isolated mountain ranges extending
from Tanzania to Kenya. The main blocks are the Taita Hills in Kenya, the
North and South Pare, the East and West Usambara, the North and South
Nguru, the Ukaguru, the Uluguru, the Rubeho, and the Udzungwas. There are
also smaller isolated outliers such as Mahenge to the south of the
Udzungwas, Malundwe Hill in Mikumi, and the Uvidundwa Mountains north of
the Udzungwas.
These mountains are “hot spots” for forest biodiversity and serve as
water catchments for urban areas such as Dar es Salaam, Tanga, and Morogoro.
The Mountains, according to Conservation International possess large
numbers of endemic plants and animals at some of the highest densities in
the world.
End