Devastations in the Garden of Eden

By Abisai Temba

Devastation in the Garden of Eden is a book in which the author aims to paint a picture of what actually has been happening on Kilimanjaro Mountain area. He almost emotionally endeavors to enlighten mankind and especially people who know Mount Kilimanjaro and the area around it about how attractive the mountain and the area around has been since the time immemorial. It was such a masterpiece of God, giving the example of the Biblical Garden of Eden in which God put the first man and woman, but in spite of the perfection, beauty, and bounty of resources that were put in that garden, still mankind decided to trespass. They decided to disobey God’s rules, and in the end, they got banished from the garden.

The author has deliberately made this comparison with the Garden of Eden for the similarities are so closely related. In reality, that is exactly what the mountain area was like. Many people from different parts of the world have stood up and bear witness that Kilimanjaro Mountain is not only a geographical place somewhere in the continent of Africa but is a unique place and serves as a magnet to attract the humankind from various parts of the world and of various walks of life to it.

Unfortunately, we will soon or later see mankind getting banished from Kilimanjaro and the area around it. Like what happened in the Garden of Eden, Kilimanjaro has faced a lot of mismanagement, and that has been in spite of the laws, regulations, and rules that, at one historical time or the other, have been put in place. Natural resources have disappeared in various ways and forms. People, ecology, and the overall ecosystem are being put to great danger.

The author shows concern and calls upon the local as well as international community to come forth to address the situation. He does not attempt to point an accusing figure to any specific person or community, as almost all of us have been involved in one form or the other. He thus concludes that this should not be a war for one person, one community, or one nation, but the whole global community should join hands to reverse the ongoing situation. He ends with a remark “We must hang together, or we will all perish.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728380353

Abisai Temba

Abisai Temba is a Development Planning cum Policy Research and development analyst with long working experience in various fields of social, economic and environmental sustainability matters. He has been involved in various strategic actions at national, regional and international forums. Due to those engagements, he is well travelled and has served as a resourceful person in various global fora. He is Author of Devastation in the Garden of Eden; and many more titles are on stream

Book preview

DEVASTATIONS in the

GARDEN OF EDEN

ABISAI TEMBA

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© 2019 Abisai Temba. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Published by AuthorHouse  11/11/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-8036-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-8035-3 (e)

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1     Historical Background and Features

Chapter 2     Features Vegetation and Land Use

Chapter 3     Human Settlement and Impact on the Environment

Chapter 4     Popularity of Kilimanjaro

Chapter 5     Demography, Resource Need, and Environment

Chapter 6     Changes in the Mountain Area

Chapter 7     The Changing Environmental Conditions of the Mountain Area

Chapter 8     Impact of Industrial Development on Environment

Chapter 9     Climate Change and Social Integration

Chapter 10   Issues of Environmental Degradation and Pollution

Chapter 11   The Need to Keep Our Kilimanjaro Area Environment Clean and Green

Chapter 12   Concerns at the Global Level

Chapter 13   The Global Strategies

Chapter 14   The Environment and Economic Development

Chapter 15   The Great Depression on Kilimanjaro Mountain Area

Chapter 16   Mismanagement Issues

Chapter 17   Agriculture and Other Economic Activities

Chapter 18   Deforestation and Desertification Threats

Chapter 19   The Scramble for Land

Chapter 20   Focus on Environmental Plans and Strategies

Chapter 21   The Impact of the Declining State of the Environment

Chapter 22   The Failing Cohesion

Chapter 23   Need for Better Vision towards the Future

About The Author

Endnotes

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CHAPTER 1

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND FEATURES

Mountain Area

Devastation in the Kilimanjaro Mountain area is not a recent thing. It has been there for many years. For a long time that problem lacked people who were keen enough to open their eyes and put in place mitigating measures. For something close to a century, these discussions kept on emerging, albeit in a very limited extent, with the intensity increasing with the passage of time. Due to the low profile of the discussions, they at first never drew much of the world’s attention.

However, people remained worried not because of the envisaged disaster or the devastating state in the Kilimanjaro Mountain area which came to be popularly known as the Garden of Eden but mainly due to the devastation impacts that were beginning to emerge. The effects and impacts emerged in form of declining amount of seasonal rains, the increasing frequency of stormy and distractive rains, increasing occurrences of landslides, shortage of irrigation water, inadequate farm harvests, increasing intensity of sun shine, increasing spread of malaria and other deadly diseases and the increasing frequency of forest fires. Due to the low profile of the discussions, such factors were not able to draw much of the world’s attention.

However low-profile caused a lot of fear. People have remained worried not because of the envisaged disaster and the devastating effects in the so-called Garden of Eden but because of a lack of proper understanding of what was happening. That has been exacerbated by the symptoms that have been emerging. Symptoms for bad days ahead have gradually been increasing, but nobody has had the vision to see beyond the dark walls of time.

Experts say the level of devastation that has already been reached could lead to an end of life on earth, as was the case with the biblical floods, where only righteous people like Noah and his family survived. The rest of humankind and all other living creatures were swept away by the hurricane or rather, the floods. Surely what is going on, especially on Mount Kilimanjaro, could lead to serious consequences.

The local communities think this is a result of too much sin. People have been sinning so much that God is now mad and preparing to destroy or eliminate all those who are occupying our God’s creation in order to, perhaps, come up with more disciplined species. People are asking why the hardships that are emerging should surface now and not any time later. They wonder who could survive the mounting devastation.

The situation, like that of the great floods, is stunning humans in the local area and in all corners of the planet. When this issue is brought up for discussion, and especially when the issue of the Garden of Eden is repetitively made, many souls on this planet wonder if this is the same Garden of Eden in which God Almighty put the first man and woman. Others wonder where exactly God’s Garden of Eden was located. If God created it, who on earth could destroy it except God Himself?

Some people quickly jump into answers. They say that the Garden of Eden was literally in the Middle East, because that is where the rivers Tigris and Euphrates are found. Yes, the Bible mentions these rivers. But these rivers could exist elsewhere in the world. Why not? Those are just names of rivers. We will have to find out as we move along.

With the issues posed above, we see the weight in this book being thrown to the term devastation. The reality of the matter lies in the strong emphasis on devastation, a term which in its common use may refer to the highest level of loss. The term denotes a level of destruction of the highest order, with superlative expression.

Looking at what other people say about devastation, it becomes easy to note that devastation really means devastation and nothing less than that. The tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the Hiroshima bomb in Japan during the Second World War, floods that took place in many parts of Tanzania during the last millennium, fires that occasionally swept the whole of the Mount Kilimanjaro area before and during the 1990s, and famine in many parts of East Africa during the last few years give one a feel of what a devastating event could mean. Such happenings turn life upside-down. Most dictionaries define the term devastation as action that is destructive, ruinous, or disastrous. Other definitions include the results of a catastrophic action or situation that leads to severe shock or those that have great distress or are calamitous, shocking, traumatic, extremely upsetting, etc.

When we talk of devastation in the Garden of Eden, we have in mind shocking, distressing, or seriously catastrophic situations like all the others mentioned above combined. That is what has been taking place in the famous Garden of Eden. But let us look back again and ask, Where exactly is the Garden of Eden? We also need to know in what way we have come to be part of these complications.

In the meantime, let’s shift our attention to the Mount Kilimanjaro area. That provides a good starting point. Only after we have brought Kilimanjaro to the spotlight can we move on to the Garden of Eden with a view to getting a better understanding of what has been going on there. Kilimanjaro and the area around it will be the starting point.

Kilimanjaro is a mountain in Tanzania. It is the tallest mountain on the continent of Africa, with features that are unique. The mountain and the area around it, together with the natural resources in and around it, have for over three centuries been life providers for all those who depend upon it. Here we have in mind the Shaka popularly known as Chagga people and others who consider themselves as citizens or associate citizens of Kilimanjaro. These mountain dwellers’ lives have almost entirely been associated with the existence of the mountain.

The relationship between the people and the mountain has undoubtedly been very cohesive. The area has been heaven for all the people who live there. The natural resources in particular have made the people of this mountain area economically and socially prosperous. The rains in the area, the fertility of the soil, the freshness of the air, the snow on Kibo, the rivers, the forest, and others aspects have added to the splendour of the mountain and to the pride of the people who have been privileged to be dwellers of this place.

The bounties of resources notwithstanding, many challenges are apparent. They are, in fact, enormous, and their surfacing has been a continual phenomenon. Most have been related to the environmental state and have cropped up in various ways. For instance, the environment has for a long time suffered due to the type of antagonism that keeps surfacing and driving a wedge between the people and the mountain’s resources. The prime cause for the antagonism is basically the human lust for personal gain. At some scale, the global climate change has been identified as another major cause.

Most references to Kilimanjaro do not limit themselves to the mountain structure but to all the area that surrounds it. The term has also been used politically to cover areas that are outside the mountain area. The Kilimanjaro region, for instance, covers the whole administrative area of northern Tanzania. The colonial authorities, especially the Germans during the early years of their presence on Kilimanjaro, called the whole area from Usambara Highland to Arusha the Wider Kilimanjaro Highlands—what we are now calling the Kilimanjaro Mountain area. This is the area that they ad¹mired most. They made it the centre of the wider Kilimanjaro, with Moshi as their administrative headquarter.

For our purposes, the mountain and the area around it (excluding Usambara, Pare, and Arusha) will be defined as the mountain area. This will include the mountain and all the geographic and socio-economic activities that take place in its proximity. The Kilimanjaro Mountain area is the traditional home of the Wa-Chagga. For these people, Kilimanjaro and the area around it is not only known to be a most exciting historical site but also a spiritual as well as socio-economic power engine. It is a centre for religions, especially Islam and Christianity, to which most of the local people are attached.

Insofar as the traditional religions and beliefs of the local people are concerned, the mountain area is an inspirational site. The early Wa-Chagga used specific areas of the foot of the mountain as their spiritual temples and sacrificial altars. They had very specific points where rituals were performed. Some areas were also used as underground wartime hiding points for the women, old men, children, and all that the society possessed, such as cattle, sheep, and goats. Some of those sites still exist.

Kilimanjaro and the area around has been a homeland for various types of flora and fauna, with some species so unique that they have not been seen anywhere else in the world. In the case of the flora, we have, for instance the mountain gladiolus, the elephant’s trunk flower (sometimes known as Impatiens kilimanjari), the Kniphofia thomsonii or red-hot poker, Viola eminii, Impatiens pseudoviola, Lobelia deckenii, asteraceae (which is a bright yellow daisy-like flower), Helichrysum newii, and Helichrysum newii. These are unique plants found at various places and levels on Kilimanjaro.

Besides the plants and animal species, the mountain is both a homeland and a spiritual centre of the Wa-Chagga tribe. For the Wa-Chagga, the area is one to be adored. It has something that is eternal. A Chagga man can travel to any corner of the world, but he should see to it that he ultimately gets back to his motherland of Kilimanjaro. That is where he belongs. It is almost an abomination to bury the body of a dead Chagga man in a place outside this mountain area; the wrath of the mountain spirits working together with ancestral spirits will never be at peace with such happening.

But that is only for men. A man worth his salt will have to get back to the place of his fathers and forefathers. The story may be different for women, who end up in their husbands’ land.² For a man, no! He will have to get back to his homeland, whatever the costs that may be incurred. The corpse of a Chagga man must be carried back to his homeland for burial. It is a spiritual bond between the Chagga society, the super-beings that brought the Wa-Shaka people to this area, and the soil that sustained life here. It is something that cannot be discussed but it is there. It will need to continue to be respected forever.

The bond has been there since the first ancestor set foot in the mountain area, and there has not been anybody with power to break the strings that tie the people of Kilimanjaro to the mountain. The strings have been growing stronger as time moves by. The bond is a lasting one. It is expected to last forever. It is not written in any book of law but in every Chagga heart and spirit. It remains evergreen. No soul will ever manage to come and break it or take it away.

The definition of Kilimanjaro goes further to embrace the total geographical, social, economic, and cultural system in and around the mountain. It is a magnetic place which for over one and a half centuries has attracted all types of mankind to it. At the formative stage of the mountain until the time of Chagga occupation, the area is said to have been the most beautiful place mankind could have ever lived. Some historical stories have it that this area of the universe was created by God on the eighth day—after the six days of God’s creation of heaven and earth and the seventh day which God earmarked for complete rest. On the eighth day, when God had had a good mental and physical rest, he went out and created Kilimanjaro Mountain area.

Observers associate the tranquillity of Kilimanjaro with peace, success, opportunity, and prosperity. All these have been used to indicate or to make one feel how perfectly the place was before it was brought to a level of devastation—a level it is at today.

Commercially, Kilimanjaro has been a magical term for those who have wished to make business advances. The term has been developed into a popular brand for commercial entities throughout East Africa and beyond. In Tanzania, for instance there is the Kilimanjaro water, Kilimanjaro coffee, Kilimanjaro tea, Kilimanjaro beer, Kilimanjaro textiles, the Kilimanjaro hospitals or medical centres, Kilimanjaro schools, Kilimanjaro industries, Kilimanjaro cement, Kilimanjaro hotels, Kilimanjaro airport, Kilimanjaro National Park, Kilimanjaro sports, Kilimanjaro food, Kilimanjaro culture, Kilimanjaro marathon, and many others. For Tanzanians and East Africans, Kilimanjaro is an term that reminds the local society to wake up and work hard with a view to getting to a point above the rest of the society. Relating one’s business with Kilimanjaro is equivalent to wishing it a big success.

Various peoples, communities, and businesses try to associate themselves with Mount Kilimanjaro. Other users of the term do so without even being conscious of the fact that the term has something to do with Mount Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro is considered to be a term that brings fortune, meaning that it is a good thing to use for whatever business one wishes to undertake. Kilimanjaro is a reflection of purity, integrity, fidelity, security, and accuracy.

It is common to hear statements about something being as pure or as white as the snow on Kilimanjaro. There are snows elsewhere in the world, but such a remark implies that the purest and whitest is that of Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro has people who are so hard-working they are always successful in their endeavours. They are said to be the best African businessmen in the whole of eastern and southern Africa. They know the power of being positive in their ideas and deeds. The other quality that many have noted is that the people of this mountain area have clean hearts. Unlike many others, the Wa-Shaka are generally not sycophants.

All those parochial factors aside, Kilimanjaro is a point of attraction for all mankind. Kilimanjaro is loved by many people on this planet. Mankind will defend it the same way a lion defends its cubs. There is a lot of evidence that Kilimanjaro is considered a destination by world community, and that will continue, given the fact that it is famous and known throughout the world. The whole world community loves Kilimanjaro Mountain, and many citizens of this planet aspire to pay a visit to it. World organizations have been working tooth and nail to enhance this facility, which has been earmarked not only as one of the seven natural wonders of the modern world but also as a World Heritage Site.

The mountain area certainly covers the mountain and its beauty. The surrounding physical features include everything that makes the area what it is today, including the flora and fauna, the rocks, the snow, the forest, the foothills, the people and their developments, the climatic conditions, the water, the sky, and everything else that has direct and full impact on Mount Kilimanjaro and its people. In the recent past, at least a few decades ago, the banana groves as well as the coffee plantations added to the special features of the Kilimanjaro Mountain area. A person flying over saw banana and coffee plantations in a wide, green blanket that covered the whole are.

In the plains or savannah plateau—an area that covers most of the foot of the mountain—one finds a brownish blanket of sun-scorched brush grass decorating most of the area during the sunny seasons. But the area changes rapidly when the rainy season starts in February or the beginning of March. The whole area turns green as the maize crop which the local people have planted grows swiftly, making the area look like it has been covered with a beautiful green carpet. That survives only until June, when the maize crop starts to mature, ready for harvesting in July or August.

The new scenery paves the way for sunny, dry, dust-loaded winds and high temperatures, which in some places, such as the Sanya plains, registers a high of almost 40 degrees centigrade, That temperature is considered to be among the highest in the whole continent of Africa. Here is where you may find the Masai people roaming the area as they graze their cattle. In the south-eastern parts of the savannah plains, huge sisal farms are seen dotting many parts of the area.

These features and others are among those which make the Kilimanjaro Mountain area a place of extremes, mysteries, and magnetic forces unseen elsewhere in the world. It is important to note that the area covers a good proportion of Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania. It is a fairly small area that embraces only one of the over twenty administrative regions of Tanzania, with eight small districts, six of which comprise what is referred to as Kilimanjaro Mountain area.

Kilimanjaro has always been a magnet for mankind of all races, all continents, all social status, all religions, all businesses, and all political inclinations. Everything, especially in the area above the savannah plains has been capable of enticing the human mind, including the weather, vegetation, food supply, holiday resorts, smiles of the local people, and communication systems. These are unique for a place in a basically rural setting in a relatively poor country. These factors are perhaps the ones which made the mountain and the areas around it attract the attention of the world community which, through the United Nations (UN), recognized and pronounced it as a world splendour.

Through the United Nations, Mount Kilimanjaro was voted one of the seven natural wonders of the modern world. Certainly there is no doubt of that, at least not for those who have had a chance to go there and can bear witness that the mountain is a unique spectacle and a rare feature of natural creation. Kilimanjaro Mountain is a structure, or rather a natural creation, that does not exist anywhere else except in this northern part of Tanzania. These characteristics are there aplenty, in spite of the devastations that have taken place during the last century or more.

The first glimpse a visitor to the area usually has is of white snow caps that always seem to be guarded by an army of clouds moving swiftly and smartly in front of the white plate. Unfortunately, over time, the plate has been thinning, and in most parts, the white plate is completely disappearing. Yes, the snow plate has been in a hurry toward total disappearance. This shining plate of snow confused visitors to the area during the early years of European discovery expeditions. It equally confused those who received reports of those adventurers.

The visitors, such as Johannes Rebman in the company of his colleague Krapf (missionaries from Germany, who were the first to pay a visit to the area), told their colleagues in Europe that they had seen a mountain with snow on it. Those reports were strongly denied, condemned, and declared unfounded. They were written by people who were growing lunatic due, perhaps, to malarial infection. That was the position of the recipients of Rebman’s reports in Europe. Perhaps the recipients and readers of the reports were intellectually right. What magic was there to hold snow on a mountain, however high it was, in a place a few steps from the equator? Intellectually, the contents of the reports did not make sense, especially considering that the place that was being referred to was supposed to be the hottest point in the universe. It was intellectually right to declare those reports as false, baseless, and misleading.

This was at the time of the industrial revolution in Europe, which meant that the arguments were being made in a place of educated and knowledgeable people—an intellectual centre of the world. European communities of those days were fully convinced that, geographically, Africa and especially regions close to the equator were so hot that those human beings who survived were abnormal; they suffered from one tropical disease or another and they had been so sunburnt that their skin had turned as black as charcoal. The popular belief in Europe at that time was that temperatures in places close to the equator were so high that they were always near the boiling point. That was reason enough for denying any report that suggested there could be snow on a mountain found in such area.

That is how mysterious the history of Kilimanjaro has been. It was mysterious several centuries ago, it remains mysterious today, and it will certainly continue to be mysterious in the future. The Wa-Chagga, the first permanent settlers in the Kilimanjaro area, adored and actually worshipped what they saw on top of this great mountain. They believed and still believe that human life without that mountain was never possible.

The first Europeans who came to settle in the area conceived and carried forward the idea. The young men and women had not seen, or rather they had never been to, the true Garden of Eden, but they had read about it. According to them, the Garden of Eden would never be able to have something that did not exist in Kilimanjaro Mountain area. Actually, it was on the basis of this argument they started referring to Kilimanjaro Mountain area as their new Garden of Eden, their envisaged future home away from home.

Today, the mysteries seen by foreigners who visited the area over a century and a half ago are still there, though perhaps in a different way. As already hinted, the area that is called Kilimanjaro is fairly small compared to other administrative regions in Tanzania. The region has eight districts, with two of the districts not under this definition of Kilimanjaro Mountain area. These are Same and Mwanga. The reason for this exclusion is obvious. These two districts have physical features, culture, climate, and ethnic and political backgrounds that are not exactly similar to and directly influenced by Kilimanjaro Mountain.

The so-called mountain area is generally the most productive and most admired area of the Kilimanjaro region. Same district, which is not part of the Mountain area, is in the southernmost part of the Kilimanjaro region bordering the Tanga region. Most of its area is semi- arid, and the per capita income of its people is relatively lower than that of the Kilimanjaro Mountain area. The system of irrigation in Same and even in the Mwanga district is very different from that of the Kilimanjaro Mountain area. The cultures, including rituals and other traditions, also have no close relationship to those of the people who live in the so-called Kilimanjaro Mountain area. The mountain area is fairly distinctive from the rest of Kilimanjaro region, and the picture that this book paints of Kilimanjaro Mountain area would not entirely fit in the other areas or districts, namely Same and Mwanga.

This book intends to pay deserving attention to developments and devastations that have taken place in the Kilimanjaro Mountain area. Most attention will be directed at how humanity has decided to be cruel to nature. What will ultimately be noted is nature is seen to be the only loser in the confrontations that ensues, while human beings get declared the winners. But ultimately, gains by human beings are of very short duration. In the long term, none of the two parties wins. Nature loses, and human beings lose even more. That has always been the way things have ended up, and it is surely the way the story has gone on Kilimanjaro Mountain.

We could take the case of Sahara Desert, which is said to have been a very productive and green area some million-plus years ago. Today, that place is a desert of sand and sand dunes, where human habitation is difficult. This also reminds us of what we read in the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis. Here, the Bible tells the story of God’s creation. God put man in the Garden of Eden, but within a short while that same man began to be lavish. He started to harvest and consume resources that God forbade him to even attempt to touch or pick the fruits and eat. That was the disobedience demonstrated by the first man and woman in the beautiful, productive garden.

Kilimanjaro Mountain area can be viewed in the same way. The people who were entrusted to keep the nature and resources in this fantastic place have failed to follow the simple rules given to them, which if observed would make them live happily without the uncalled-for hardships they are facing today. What is worse is that when the first man and woman in Eden did not follow the rules and regulations given to them, they got cursed. What happened in the Garden of Eden is not different from what is happening in the Kilimanjaro Mountain area. The curse for the people of Kilimanjaro includes disappearing snow, the gradually diminishing water flow into rivers and streams (with those river beds drying up), highly disorderly seasons, lessened productivity in the fields, unreliable rainfalls and abnormally hot sun shines, and increasing terminal diseases due to accelerating pollution.

God put the Wa-Chagga people in a place that had nothing less than what was in the Garden of Eden. Unlike any other place on this planet, Kilimanjaro had features and resources that were unique. All these were given to the people of the area by God almighty. But as in the Garden of Eden, those resources were not given without conditions. The issue or conditions to preserve nature would always have to be a priority number one. Unfortunately, the people of the mountain area have been big-headed largely due to ignorance. For a long time, they have failed to observe laws and rules related to the preservation of nature, and thus the natural environment has been completely devastated.

The punishment that befell the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden is now falling hard on the men and women of Kilimanjaro Mountain area. There is no escaping. These men and women are certainly going to perish if they don’t start now to repent for their disobedience. They have been called upon to change their ways of life; otherwise, they are going to end up being the greatest losers. That end result will become most obvious when we come to note that while God created the world and made human beings to be managers of everything that was put before them, those same human beings have been too selfish to be responsible.

Human beings on Kilimanjaro have been harvesting and consuming what was forbidden, and consequently, they have proved to be even crueller to nature and other resources put before them than Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Kilimanjaro Mountain area people have decided to displease God, their creator. As has been said, Adam got cursed because of the destruction or the non-observance of the rules given by God about the environment around him. But disobedience alone was not what mattered most. The punishment that followed was what was most painful and lasting because they were banished from the beautiful Garden of Eden.

And that is what we are going to witness for Kilimanjaro. The devastations that have occurred in the Kilimanjaro Mountain area cannot be differentiated from what God witnessed in the Garden of Eden. The area has lost its original form, and this is what is going to cause people to be banished from the mountain area. These people have displeased the Creator with their greed and personal lavishness. Some of them have done what they have out of ignorance, but as is usually said by legal experts, ignorance is no defence before the court of law. Those who have been victims of ignorance will not escape the day of judgment.

God is God, and human beings will remain human beings—the ultimate losers in this game. God will keep watching sadly for the way His creations are being made extinct. The fury of God against the disobedience of human beings will be seen when he puts the people he loved into the eternal fire of Hell, which will be seen right here on earth, a punishment which will be a result of disobedience. This indeed is the message this book wishes to bring to humanity.

The Physical Features of the Mountain Area

The mountain area is divided into three distinctive physical features, namely the savannah on the foot of the mountain, the green belt, and the rocky zone. There are also five climatic zones, including the hot, mosquito-infested savannah zone at the foot of the mountain. This is a flat savannah plateau which was almost unsettled until as late as 1970s. It is mainly occupied by the Masai cattle keepers who were, until then, nomads roaming the plains as they kept on grazing their huge herds of cattle.

Above the savannah plains is the settlement area for the majority of dwellers in the mountain area. This is the area the local people refer to as the banana groves land or simply Mgombani.³ The Mgombani area is succeeded by the montane rainforest, followed by the alpine, and ultimately the top of the mountain, characterized by three cones: Kibo, the highest point of the mountain; Mawenzi on the left; and Shira in the right. These features make the Kilimanjaro Mountain area a unique place to stay.

Watched from below, the mountain scenery is and has been most fantastic, which one of the factors that have contributed to the magnetic force is attracting mankind from all corners of the world to come and visit. For a person watching from the top or from below or from a point midway between the top and the foot of the mountain, the attractiveness and the uniqueness remains convincingly most memorable. Nobody denies that other places in the world could also be unique, but there is hardly an equivalent of Kilimanjaro and the area around it.

All that said, and in spite of the scenery which has no equivalent in this world so far, what is seen today has much to be desired compared with what existed in the past, and more so in the period as recent as 150 years ago. During that period, the mountain area went through many changes. Some changes represented great improvements while others led to the worst situations. For instance, trekking became much easier for those who wished to get to the top of the mountain. The number of routes increased remarkably, and surveillance in the surrounding areas of the mountain has improved a lot, especially in the recent years. The flora and fauna, however, are not the same as what was there one hundred years ago. Socio-economic activities have increased to immeasurable proportions. More and more people have been attracted to the mountain area, and the population settling in the lower parts of the mountain, especially in the area below the montane rainforest, has consistently been increasing.

The climatic condition from the top to the bottom of the mountain has changed dramatically since the turn of the 19th century. The water flowing from the top of the mountain has substantially lessened both in volume and in purity. The snow on top of the mountain has thinned and in some areas has completely disappeared. Certainly the level of devastation of the environment in most parts of the mountain area has increased, and the list of issues continues to lengthen. In other words, the centre is no longer holding.

Most of the settled area of Kilimanjaro has suffered some type of environmental devastation, and the banana groves area has been affected the most. It has reached the worst level of environmental distortion, destruction, and even devastations. The area has been the centre of social and economic activity for the majority of those who live in Kilimanjaro. The devastation is a consequence of human development which cannot be avoided as long as people use the existing natural resources to sustain their lives. The question we need to ask is whether human beings have been using those resources responsibly.

The terms banana groves area or Mgombani have been popularly used by most of the local people, as well as many of those who have visited the area, to mean the place that is most popularly settled by the local communities whose occupation is the growing of bananas. These people are the main growers and consumers. Mgombani is derived from Swahili language and means nothing more than a place with banana plantations or groves. There is nothing very special about the term besides the fact that most people who know the area have been referring to it as Mgombani or banana groves area.

Each household in the area has developed a banana grove; each household has a grove of its own, and also each has built a house or has a residence inside its respective banana grove. The groves in the area are so close to each other that, the extensiveness of the banana plantation area is amazing. It makes the area look like an expansive forest of banana trees. That spread of banana forest has made even foreigners who visited the area appreciate the scenery.

Local people who hail from that area of Kilimanjaro are known as the people of the banana groves or Mgombani. Over 90 per cent of the Wa Chagga people⁴ live or have their residences in this banana groves area. The socio-economic activities that have been going on for over three hundred years have been concentrated in an area which is generally very small, but people have resisted moving away and finding more spacious land elsewhere. The intensity of the use of natural resources in this area could explain why this is the most human-being-supporting and most environmentally devastated area of Kilimanjaro and Tanzania in general.

The montane rainforest area has also suffered. It is the one which succeeds the banana groves or Mgombani area as one moves towards the higher parts of the mountain. Most of the destruction that has taken place in this zone has in one way or the other been associated with illegal practices. The rainforest has been a reserve area since colonial times, but human beings have been using illegal means to get into it and harvest or destroy the natural resources, which include the various types of fauna and flora.

The forest had many types of hardwood trees and other plants that were of great significance as a natural heritage of the area, Tanzania, Africa, and the world at large. Most of the special species of trees have been destroyed or illegally harvested. The forest area has also housed many types of tropical animals, ranging from elephants, lions, giraffe, rhinos, monkeys, and zebras to small organisms and birds. All these have become endangered because of the poaching that has been going on—a common practice for many decades—and also because of fires which used to be a common phenomenon in the forest area. Illegal human actions inside the reserved area have been the basis for devastation in the mountain area.

A mention needs also to be made regarding the people who have lived in the mountain area, especially in recent years. Just before the turn of the nineteenth century, the whole mountain area was sparsely populated, with climatic conditions that were admired by anybody who visited the area, including Europeans who later became colonizers. The soil and water supply were then very abundant. There were many wetlands in the forest reserve area, and the clean and fresh water that flowed down the slopes of the mountain made it a very attractive tourist attraction. The green virgin vegetation, with varieties of attractive wildflowers that decorated every part of the area, made it a unique place for visitors. The scenery made visitors who chanced to get there wish to stay longer to enjoy nature.

The attractiveness of the mountain area was actually the reason the early young Germans who visited the Kilimanjaro Mountain area just after the Germans had taken over Tanganyika before the end of the nineteenth century referred to the area as a Garden of Eden. They did so not with a light touch but seriously. They continued to make that observation as they tried to get a feeling of the beauty and the splendour that surrounded them, which was unseen in the world they knew. To them, the beauty and splendour of the mountain area was comparable only to the Biblical Garden of Eden.

Many young Germans chanced to visit the Kilimanjaro Mountain area while on duty as members of the German army. The army brought these young people to this part of East Africa to maintain peace and order after the German government had taken over German East Africa, which later came to be known as Tanganyika. After that, the Germans who chanced to come and stay in the area kept referring to it as their Garden of Eden. According to them, it was the place where Germans were going to build a new Germany.⁵ With that high level of motivation, the German administration started immediately to build infrastructure with a view to transforming the wider Kilimanjaro area into a German enclave.

That is what the situation was like until the turn of the nineteenth century. The Germans were defeated in the First World War in 1918, which meant that their intention of building a new Germany away from Germany got shut down. We don’t know what the Germans would have done to ensure that their new Germany (which their young people liked to call their new Garden of Eden) survived. However, today the so-called Garden of Eden is a paradise no longer. Of course, the whole area is still attractive today, but not to the degree that it was for the early European visitors, especially the German administrators and military personnel who came to the area during the last two decades