the wooden soldiers of east africa

In a dusty corner of an African antique shop he stands to attention. He is neatly dressed in his colourful colonial uniform. With a short sleeved safari suit, brown boots and a fez on his head, large ears and squinting eyes he is the embodiment of a tourist souvenir.

Amazingly the history of these carved askaris can be traced back to one man. Mutisya Munge was a Kamba tribesman from the Wamunya location of Machakos in Kenya.  He was a skilled carver but continued his training with the Makonde tribe, great traditional carvers, from an area on the Mozambique-Tanzania border. Born around 1850, Mutisya Munge joined the army in 1914 where he served with the Carrier Corps in Tanganyika. At about this time he started creating stylised carvings of Askaris and African people in traditional dress with the sole idea of selling them to Europeans as souvenirs to take away from East Africa.

Upon his return to his village after the war, he continued with the carvings and had to recruit his neighbours and family members to keep up with the demand of a growing tourist industry. By the time of his death in 1927, his and other carving copies were a regular sight at any market frequented by tourists. At this stage they were even being exported to other east African countries.

Today the market he singlehandedly created in Kenya brings in over 200 million Kenyan shillings in foreign currencies annually. It creates employment for about 60’000 people who are entirely dependent on carving sales for family income, considering family structures this could mean that up to a quarter of a million people are partially or whole dependant on the carving industry.

As occasionally happens, something won means something lost. And in this case the trees. The carving industry has desecrated previously dense tree populations. Having used the trees, and even the roots, carvers in some areas are travelling up to 200km to find trees suitable for carving. The knock on effect is worth acknowledging as well, no trees , no animals, no birds, no insects for pollination of food crops.

Programs to address the issue and protect threatened trees are in operation across eastern Africa. In conjunction with UNESCO, Kew Gardens, WWF and the Royal Botanic Gardens, a program called People and Plants is in action to support “creative solutions for the sustainable use and conservation of plants”. With the support of governments and communities, the carving can still be done in controlled environments with sustainable resources.  Thanks to the efforts of these conscientious organisations, tomorrow’s tourists will still be able to take home their wooden curios, but with a clear mind.

Bumble Bees

A fat cherubim creature flits between the flowers of the garden with the grace of a plump fairy. Softly buzzing, humming his way through the daily chores. He slowly nudges his head between the petals, coating his hairs with the fine sunshine dust. He knows each flower, like a good friend he visits each one on his rounds, before waving goodbye and moving on. The bumble bee is a friend of the flowers, friend of the world, precious.

 The bumble bee belongs to the bee genus Bombus, and there are over two hundred and fifty known species scattered throughout the world. It is considered a keystone species. This means that a number of other life forms depend on them directly for survival. This humble bee is directly accountable for 14.2 billion Euros with of fresh produce production in Europe each year. They are increasingly being used as agricultural pollinators, because of their behaviour known as buzz pollination. This is when a bee inspects a plant and by doing so its buzzing releases the pollen of the flower. For this reason the bumble bee is used in green houses and specifically in tomato farming.

Their value and use have been well documented. Research on the bumble bee has lead to the first bumble bee sanctuary, which  was established in 2008 in Scotland. Unfortunately this recognition is only so in the developed counties. The third world counties have decreasing populations of bumble bees due to the use of dangerous chemicals and lass of habitat. Without the bumble bee, many of the world’s rare plants would disappear. They are the major pollinators of wild flowers throughout the world. Over the course of 70 years, 2 bumble bees’ species have naturally died out in the UK alone, with several others on the watch list.

These industrious creatures typically live in extended family units, colonies of about 50 individuals, often in vacated sub terrarium homes of other creatures. Flying up to 2km away from the nest to find suitable pollen, they revisit the same patch of flowers daily and demonstrate a trait known as flower consistency. They can fly up to an unbelievable speed of 54km per hour and learn which flowers to attend to by colour recognition. Unlike other bees they only store a few days worth of honey at a time, consequently allowing themselves to be far more susceptible to food shortages. 

One last and immensely interesting fact about their wonderful creatures...the buzzing noise that the bees makes is not made by the beating of their wings, rather it is the vibration of their muscles and the body itself that makes the noise. They do this to create a high body temperature to take flight, especially in cold weather, some bees have been documented as having achieved a 30*c internal thoratic temperature.

 "If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live." Albert Einstein



Dark Damp Africa

Monsoon time is not always the best time of the year. Really.

The long rainy season begins at the end of April, when most of the annual average 65 inches of rain falls over the course of about 3 months.  Combined with an insignificant drop of 4 degrees Celsius, the rains provide a welcome relief and an average temperature of 24 degrees.

A typical rainy day starts off with the most glorious sunshine mornings, no clouds, quiet wisps of wind and the uncanny desire to grab a good book and lie under the trees with a freshly brewed cup of coffee. A good stretch and a boiled kettle later, the dark grey clouds have snuck up from behind the tree at the back of the neighbour’s house, and are getting ready to deposit half that annual rainfall on your sunhat.

Stone Town is really not the cleanest place in the world. Although a world heritage site, it would appear at first sight to have lost the memo on cleanliness and sanitation. A quick walk through the fish and meat market outlines the distinct need for gallons of disinfectant. A year’s worth of slop and off cuts has luckily not blocked the drains this year.

Zanzibar's streets disappear when it rains, and whatever was lying under or on the street races down the alleyways, knee deep in some places. This spring clean reveals a sparkling new paradise, lush and green, free of the plastic and scraps that usually line the roads. On one hand, wonderful, on the other not so good.

The streams channelled by the alleyways of Stone Town always find their way to the sea. The rainy season lines the beaches with an array of  trash, destined to lie buried beneath the sand or washed out to sea. The unfortunate consequence of a blind eye.

Increased rains on the mainland of Tanzania contribute to hydropower generation, which feeds the national power grid. However this year the water level in the Mtera Dam has not risen to the level required to guarantee a regular power supply. Tanzania will be experiencing a week of daily 11hour blackouts, in order to do general maintenance on the Songosongo gas plant, to ensure electricity supply over the next year. 

So people of Tanzania please enjoy the rain, appreciate the cool air and damp darkness of the African night.