CHAIN SAWS AND RITUAL TREES

This monster known as CHAIN SAW whoever invented it has caused a lot of grief to trees around here. This is Hai district in Kilimanjaro where the government has fought with loggers for years and neither seems to let go. One interesting piece of legislation that loggers have found ways to circumvent is “It is strictly prohibited to cut trees or engage in agricultural activities alongside river banks, there should be a 50 meters wide riparian strip on both sides of a river free of human activities to allow for natural vegetation to grow” but again logically if a tree falls by itself say of old age or disease we should use it, now that is exactly where a few tricks come in. Trees have been known to be helped to fall ill by themselves by using gunny bags filled with diesel-logged sand and buried conveniently close around tree rootstocks and given a week before being reported and a permission sought from the authorities to bring them down, but why should a disease strike just a single tree? It can just as well strike several, especially a number sufficient to fill a truck. And again a sickness strikes at random so the randomness being arbitrary in nature may also stick to the species with the most expensive timber. Just convince the authorities that it is a disease. 

The monster you see having been eaten away by chain saws is Albizia Gummifera, neighbors say it was more than a hundred and fifty years when they arranged for it to come down, in their case they used a different approach, they dug around the roots until it could no longer stay upright, they used their muscles because diesel is too costly for them being mere peasants. Trees of this size are no longer common in this area’s skyline as they used to be during the seventies, especially in the inhabited zone but one very sure way of a tree surviving to eternity (if they could when left alone that is) is by declaring it sacred and publishing the news or rumors or whatever you choose to call such propaganda. The tree you see here, dwarfing everything around it is said to be more than two hundred years and every male circumcised here has been around it in a special ritual while every newborn baby has also been taken by its mother around it. Another interesting aspect of this tree is that when the annual sacrifice of a male and female goat done at the beginning of every year in river Weruweru (Weruweru river lodge is eight kilometers from the spot) is for whatever reasons delayed,the necessary warning is conveyed by ghosts singing sorrowful songs every night on the high reaches of the tree until the ritual is performed, otherwise great calamities may happen to the society.

Now that is one of the trees you will never hear anybody discussing to bring down or negotiate its price with timber dealers.There are others protected by the same kind of mysterious reasons,the harm perceived to be capable of befalling breachers of such prohibitions are unprovable in practical terms as no one is ready to risk death in endeavors of this nature.I heard a story that happened in 1995 in Vigwaza, Coast Region, in Bagamoyo district, where a greedy charcoal dealer from Dar es salaam hired workers to fell a giant tree that had been used for sacrifices for years. They brought the giant down with axes as chain saws were not common then, they suceeded to produce a hundred and twenty bags of charcoal from the log but all the workers, including the rich dealer never saw Dar es salaam again as they perished in an accident along the way there, the vehicle also caught fire and was completely destroyed.He had brought workers from Dar es salaam as the locals refused involvement.

This is a story from Bagamoyo,more than five hundred Kilometers from Hai,the people there speak Kikwere not Kichaga as they do here but they share this fear of touching trees deemed sacred.Go figure.

Deforestation is quite rampant here especially as there are few opportunities for making ends meet and especially if there are hidden interests at play,the next image is of a stand of four years old Gravelia Robusta trees belonging to the Karanga prison, underneath you can see thick stumps belonging to an older grove of the same species, planted more than forty years ago but brought down to provide firewood to cook for the prisoners. Now a forty years old Gravelia has such huge branches that you could run the prison kitchens solely by using the branches alone leaving the main trunks to regenerate new branches for future use but when you feel it is necessary to cut the whole logs,well you got to have needs far more important than just firewood. Now they have to rampage a new area for firewood as the young trees are allowed to grow.The new area they are currently attacking is a few minutes drive from the edge of Kilimanjaro National Park,just upwards of Tanzania Coffee Research Institute(TACRI)