THE SWAHILI COAST ZONES

 THE SWAHILI COAST ZONES

British East Africa is naturally divided into three belts or zones. First is the tropical and less healthy zone, which is adjacent to the coast. Above this are the healthy highland and mountainous regions described as " a white man's country." Beyond these the country falls again to the inland lowlands of the shores of Lake Victoria and Uganda, considerably less healthy and more trying in climate than the coast.

Some of the coast towns with their inhabitants have already been described. These form, as it were, a narrow fringe of old Swahili and Arab civilisation bordering the thick bush and uncivilised native tribes of the interior.

I shall now endeavour to give a short description of the country which lies immediately inside this civilised fringe, and of the people who inhabit it.

First of all, as regards seasons. There are on the coast as in most parts of tropical Africa a very wet season and a very dry season. However, these do not divide the year into equal portions as in many parts of the continent. There are the mwaka, or rains of the year, which raise the crops; they begin in March or May, and last three or four months; and again the mchoo, or lesser rains, occurring about September, which latter during a good year are sufficient for light crops.

Back from the coast there is in the south a desert region called " the Taru Desert," which divides the coast from the highlands. In the north, viz., Jubaland, the desert region stretches right back, dividing the highlands of East Africa from the mountains of Abyssinia, and continues westwards across Africa till it meets the swamps of the Nile and Sobat Rivers. The southern and narrow desert, the Taru, is intersected by two big riversone, the Sabaki , having its origin in Kilimanjaro and the Masai highlands ; and the other, and bigger river, the Tana, supplied by the well - watered Kikuyu country and Kenya.

In the north, but one river reaches the sea, the Juba, which originates in the mountains of the Borana and Abyssinia, while the Webbe Shebeli , or Leopard River, which springs from the highlands of Eastern Abyssinia, almost reaches the ocean near Mogadishu in Italian Somaliland before losing itself.1

As I know nothing of the eastern part of Jubaland, I will not speak of this country till I come to Lake Rudolf and the Borana, the western part.

Just back from the mangrove- lined, or coral - bound seashore of the southern coast line there is generally a thick bush belt, wherever the country has not been cleared to make way for plantations.

Behind this the country rises some 700 feet in a series of low hills, grass - covered, and affording fairish grazing in certain places, as in the Shimba Hills and near the railway line, about Mazeras.

Behind these again is a country covered with red earth and thick thorn, the Taru Desert. In the dry weather this red dust is raised in powdery clouds by the passing train, pervading the compartments, covering everything and filling the eyes , nostrils , hair, and pores of the skin with its fine dust. In the hot season passengers emerge from the train at Mombasa station looking like red Indians, and for a day or two afterwards traces of the Taru appear as red streaks on the towel when one dries one's face.

Now of these four divisions into which I have divided the coast belt longitudinally, I have already tried to give an idea of the first, the seashore, either mangrove- lined, or of coral rockand sand dunes.

The next in order is the low bush belt such as is found in the centre of the islands of the Lamu Archipelago, and for a few miles back from the shore of the mainland. In some parts this bush belt seems to merge into the desert without the intermediate layer of grass - covered hills. Such is the case near the Tana River.

In this country there are but few inhabitants except near the coast towns or along the banks of the Sabaki and Tana.

There are two little-known hunting tribes inhabiting this tract, the Wasanya and the Wachoni, who live much as do the Waboni of Jubaland . They are both numerically very small tribes. Possibly they are some of the remains of the original inhabitants of this country, as are said to be the Midgans of Northern Somaliland and the Waboni of Jubaland, both hunting tribes.

I have never met any of these people withthe exception of the Midgans. I am indebted, however, to the District Commissioner of Malindi for the information that the Wasanya and Wachoni of that neighbourhood practise the rite of clitoridectomy, and that the women wear their hair plaited . The former rite is carried out not after the manner of the Masai, but as performed by the Somali.¹

These customs appear to me to be most interesting, as they differ entirely from those of the adjacent tribes, and correspond with those practised by the Midgans, while their manner of living would also appear much the same.

Now the customs of the Unyago and the extending of the lobe of the ear practised amongst Swahilis, alluded to before, are foreign to the Arab, and have evidently been borrowed from the original African inhabitants of the coast . Similarly, it is not improbable that the customs of plaiting the hair and clitoridectomy, customs foreign to the alleged ancestors of the Somali, have been borrowed from the original inhabitants of their country, the Midgans. Even to- day it is the heathen Midgan woman who is called upon to perform the latter operation on the Muhammadan Somali girl.

Bearing these facts in mind, and remembering that a hunting tribe is apt to become thinly distributed over a very wide area, as is the case with the Wandorobo of the highlands, it is within the bounds of conjecture that these four small scattered tribes, the Midgans, Boni, Sanya and Choni, are of nearly allied if not common origin, and that they all represent some very old inhabitants of the country, who lived in Somaliland and Jubaland before the coming of such tribes as the Somali, Galla, and many others .

It is believed by the Swahili that before the founding of the coast towns, the inhabitants were wild men of the bush, like the Boni.

A comparative study of the languages of these four hunting tribes might decide how much truth there is in these conjectures. With regard to the game of the coast belt, there is not the variety obtainable in the highlands, but the game that is found is as a rule uncommon elsewhere, and worthy of being hunted, in that, in this kind of country, it needs skill and patience to obtain a decent bag.

If I were going to East Africa for the sake of sport alone, I should certainly not follow in the wake ofthe hundreds of sportsmen who flock up to Nairobi and jostle each other round the Athi, Lemek and Guas Ngishu plains like golfers on a crowded links. I should search out some quiet little nooks in the coast belt, and every day congratulate myself that there were no other sportsmen within reach , while each hardly- earned specimen in a very small but very refined bag I should consider worth a hundred of the cheaply- earned, plain- dwelling animals . I should hope to include in my little bag two elephants, small tusked, but shot under very difficult circumstances , one old male buffalo, one or two bush lions, more wary and difficult to catch napping than their plain - dwelling kinsmen, a leopard , two Oryx callotis , two lesser kudu, three or four nice-sized bushbuck, two Hunter's antelope , two topi , a few duiker and dik dik, and perhaps a sable ; while of birds, not being a shot-gun shot, I should hope to pick off enough guinea fowl, spur fowl, florican and partridge with a miniature rifle to keep a good stock- pot fairly well replenished.

On my return journey to England I should be indifferent alike to the jeers or the sympathy of brother sportsmen who numbered their bag in hundreds or perhaps even in thousands, for I would have the satisfaction of knowing that each one of my little bag of trophies had been a wary animal, hunted , tracked and outwitted with conditions all in its favour.

However, reader, do not take my advice, because you will get fever, and you will get scratched by thorns, and a very bad backache from stooping and crouching through the narrow, obstructed bush paths . Perhaps you will even think I am a terrible romancer to say that there is any game at all in these horrible places.

Before going on to the higher country of the coast belt, let us take a look at the lower Tana River and its riverine population , the Pakomo.

This river appears to have near the mouth a considerably less volume of water than it has higher up, no doubt caused by wastage passing through the Taru Desert.

However, it is generally deeper here than it is before it enters the desert tract.

It is navigable for some 300 miles up from the coast, but the multitude of snags and waterlogged trees in its course are constantly damaging the propeller of the little river launch which ascends it. The old mouth of the Tana used to be some distance south of its present mouth at Kipini. The old course leaving the new at the Mbelezoni Canal now only contains water during the rains .

This old course was a much more direct entrance to the sea . It now follows a course parallel to the sea coast, and only a few miles distant from it, from Mbelezoni to Kao, and the sand- hills of the shore can be seen from the river as one passes in a canoe.1 

Near the mouth of the river a certain amount of rice is grown, which appears to do well , although the natives are too lazy to pay much attention to it. If this industry were developed, the product could be easily transported by river and sea transport to Mombasa, at which place there is a considerable demand for rice which now has to be brought from India and Burma, and also from the Lake Victoria . The rice from the latter place is of an inferior quality ; it is locally known as " Muanza " rice.

The soil close to the Tana appears wonderfully rich and fertile, and crops grow rapidly, while the ground can be flooded during the rains and would be easy of irrigation at other seasons .

In spite of, or perhaps because of, the richness of the soil , cocoa- nuts do not do well . They spring up quickly and flourishingly at first, but then rapidly decline, soon after they commence to bear. Possibly their roots strike something at a certain depth which does not agree with them.

There are excellent fish to be obtained on the river.

The Pakomo inhabit the banks of the river from almost as high up as it is navigable, to the mouth ; they plant their crops on the bank and ply their canoes up and down the stream with great dexterity. The canoe is generally propelled by two men, one seated in the stern with a paddle, and one standing in the bows with a long pole forked at the tip. With this he dexterously propels the canoe by poling, now at the bottom of the stream where shallow, now shoving the bank, and now catching a group of reeds or a mangrove root with the fork and shoving away from it. Meanwhile his comrade in the stern with the paddle keeps the canoe close into the bank so as to allow the poler to make use of the marginal vegetation , for the river is generally too deep and the fall of the bank too abrupt to allow him to pole at the bottom of the river.

In plying upstream the paddler lazily sits in the stern taking a stroke every now and again to keep the canoe in to the bank, while his comrade propels the boat.

However, the canoe must make frequent crossings of the river, so as to always keep to the bank with the least current; that is to say, generally the concave side of the numerous bends. Then the paddler paddles for all he is worth to reach the opposite bank with as little loss of way as possible.

Coming downstream of course the reverse is the case, as the canoe will pass from side to side of the river, or even remain in mid- stream wherever the current is greatest.

Many of the Pakomo are said to be converted to Islam, while the missionaries are busy with those who still hold their old pagan religion.

There is supposed to have been a discovery of coal on the Tana River near Mafano, but as yet one has heard little or nothing about it .

The Galla stretch down as far as the coast by Witu, and occur on the left bank of the Tana. The Galla and Borana, both talking the same language with slight variation, cover an area only less than the Somalis, stretching from Wollo in Abyssinia to the coast here.1

Behind the thin belt of coast bush there is, as before stated, in the south part of the Protectorate, a country of grassy hills. This is a pleasing- looking country of green downs and hills, -dotted with clumps and patches of bush, but is unhealthy, and the water supply is bad and poor.

This is the country of the Wanyika, a tribe from whom the Mombasa Swahili has borrowed many words, customs, and superstitions.2

They inhabit the country west of Kilindini Harbour and south of the railway line between Mombasa and Mazeras. They are a finely developed people, though of primitive manners and customs.

The women wear many- pleated kilts of calico round the waist, but from the waist upwards are nude. The kilt is not a made- up kilt, but is carefully pleated afresh from time to time, as I had occasion to notice whilst camped in a Kinyika village. The lady whom I had the audacity to watch making her toilet had one end of a very long strip of calico fastened to the wall of the hut, while she was carefully folding and pleating it from the other end. After an immense amount of trouble spent in getting the pleats equal and symmetrical, she donned the kilt, pulled and pleated it here and there, took it off again, rearranged it, pirouetted and looked over her shoulder at the fall in the rear. It was a tremendous time before she was satisfied with the hang of the skirt.

" Nyika " in the Swahili language means " forest and thorn bush country," generally a dry thorn country, and it is very probably derived from the same source as the name of this tribe, for they lived partly in thorn country and partly in the Shimba Hills .

They own a certain amount of cattle, and, as with most of the coast peoples, do not take their cattle out till the heavy dew has dried from the grass . About eight or nine o'clock is called by the Swahilis for this reason " Mafungulia ng'ombe," or "cattle opening time."

No such precautions are taken in the highlands, and although the dews are there heavy, they do not appear to exercise the evil effect on the cattle that they do on the coast.

North of the Wanyika country and the other side of the railway line is Rabai, occupied by a small community of that name who speak a language differing both from Swahili and Kinyika. South of the Wanyika are the Waduruma and the Wadigo, the former living near Gasi on the coast.

We next come to the Taru Desert, the flat red earth and thick thorn desert commencing on the line just after Maji ya Chumvi (salt water) station , and reaching to about Makindu. About this place it begins to give place to less wooded country, gradually rising and growing more open until the highlands are reached .

The greater part of this desert is uninhabited, for there are no nomadic or camel-owning tribes suited to the requirements of life there.

Toward Taveta, however, live the Wataiita, a tribe paler thanthe Wakamba and Wanyika, but not so pale as the other Kilimanjaro tribes.

Both sexes file the teeth to a sharp point, as do the Wakamba.

On the road from Voi to Taveta the Seringeti plains form a break in the dense thorn of the bush. These plains are well known to sportsmen, who visit them generally during the wet season , as at other times lack of water prevents them moving about. During the rainy period of March and the following months game is numerous and lions are said to abound.1 Here are found Waller's gazelle and the fringe- eared oryx, both animals suited to life in waterless regions.

Game is not very plentiful in the thick thorn recesses of the Taru, but in parts, especially in the little - known parts back from and north of the line, lesser kudu and oryx are said to be numerous.

To return to the south side of the Taru Desert. Kilimanjaro is reached viâ Voi and Taveta.

This mountain appears all the more majestic in that it rises. from a lower level, and not from such elevated country as Kenya. It is able to carry on its broad back a very massive amount of snow, and this, coupled with the fact that it is 2,000 feet higher than Kenya, makes no comparison possible between the amount of snow visible on the two summits. Perhaps Kenya is the most beautiful, but there can be no heavy accumulation of snow on its pointed summit, and so the glaciers push down to a comparatively short distance.

It is strange that natives never seem to realise what it is that shines white on the top of these mountains, and refer to it as silver or white rock or diamonds. Kilimanjaro is , of course, the home of a devil, and all kinds of magic, according to the natives. Its top consists of pure silver which is occasionally changed by Satanic agency to gold or blood . Add mother-of-pearls, opals, and a few other precious stones, and this is a fair description of the colours assumed by the snowy dome under varying conditions of sun and moon.

No wonder that the natives think that if one could only reach the enchanted top, jewels and precious stones can be had for the picking up.

The Jin who inhabits the mountain resents strongly any intrusion in its domains, but is not wholly an evil spirit, as the following little story will reveal :-

Once upon a time a caravan of porters was passing the mountain. There was a youth, the boy of one of the porters, who had hurt his leg, and came limping along behind the caravan. At last he was unable to go any further, so the porters, with that kindly solicitude for the afflicted and distressed which characterises the African native, abandoned him without food or blankets , and continued on their way rejoicing.

The youth, with whom we do not sympathise so much, as one knows that he would have done the same to a weaker fellow under similar circumstances, struggled to the foot of the mountain, and there lay down cold and hungry, till sleep overcame him. In his sleep he dreamed that the spirit of the mountain came to him and brought him unlimited wealth on one condition ; that was, that he was not to divulge how he obtained it.

When he awoke in the morning, he discovered lying beside him a jewelled casket, which he picked up and brought back to his own country, and from this he draws as much wealth as he likes .

Many people have tried to make him tell where he obtained the casket, but to all he replies, " Oh, I just bought it. "

It would appear, according to native legend, that a certain white man, name unknown, was not so discreet . He reached the summit of the mountain, and there received a similar gift under condition that he was to tell no one that he had successfully accomplished the ascent. 

On his return he gave a banquet with the wealth that he had accumulated, during which he became talkative, and at last said, 'It has been declared that no one can reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, but I have reached it, and see what the Jin of the mountain has given me, " producing his jewelled casket. The following morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the casket was missing, having flown back to its home.

The natives who inhabit the base of the mountain are very pale for African natives . The Taiita are paler than most East African tribes, but some of the people of the mountain, the Wapari and the Wachaga, if it were not for their woolly hair, might be almost mistaken for Arabs.

These last tribes do not file the teeth like the Taiita, but they remove one tooth from the centre of the bottom jaw.1

These people, I am told, hold the mountain in great veneration, and certain of their old men ( corresponding to Druids) occasionally ascend to the snow level to perform sacrifices . Before leaving the coast belt, just a word about the possibilities from the white man's point of view.

The towns of the coast contain the usual types to be found in tropical countries, viz .: the white official and the white merchant, both temporary residents and dependent on leave every few years to Europe to maintain their health. The merchant's chief trade lies in ivory, copra, logwood , cotton and a few other things as exports, and calico, cotton robes, etc. , as imports. The ivory chiefly comes from Uganda and the Congo, while the other three exports come from the coast.

There is now, however, another kind of white man on the coast, rapidly increasing in numbers, the planter. I do not wish to go into the heated arguments as to whether the highlands of East Africa are a white man's country " or not, or even into what is the exact meaning of this phrase.

There are hundreds of men willing to stake their last farthing that there is a great future " before the country, but though this phrase has been in vogue some years , no definite hint has yet been given as to what that future will be.

It seems to me that foreign countries as fields for the white man's energies, other than official , fall into two easily distinguished classes .

One is the healthy country where a man goes with his whole family, and stops for good, such as Canada, Australia, etc. In these places he does not expect to get rich in a few years , but he slowly builds up an estate which subsequently his children and children's children can enjoy and subsist on. His riches are not of a movable character, but are attached to the country.

The second class of country is the tropical and unhealthy country where a man expects, to use a Swahili expression, "After toiling in the sun, to rest in the shade."

That is to say, that after a certain number of years ' struggle against adverse conditions of health and climate, he hopes to have made enough to enable him to retire to England and enjoy a comfortable old age.

The coast belt comes under this second class . The climate is not especially bad or trying , and the conditions of life can be made comfortable enough for a temporary sojourn, but on the other hand, the profits at present do not appear to be very considerable. However, if not great, they are at all events discernible and steadily increasing.

The chief products are cotton, by way of a start, and then rubber and hemp, while judicious investments in cocoa-nut plantations , I believe, can be turned to good account. The coast planters are men, many of them of modest means, who have had the sense to hold themselves aloof from the wild rush to grab land in the highlands, and have grasped the present, leaving the future to develop in the hands of the more wealthy experimental farmers.

The planters of the coast are the men who are laying the solid foundations of a structure on which the future prosperity of the country may be based, and so my good wishes go out to them, and I trust that after " toiling in the sun " they will , like the Swahili, be enabled to rest comfortably in the shade.

page 32

Book Name: THE LAND OF ZINJ

Published: 1913

BY CAPTAIN C. H. STIGAND