I saw clouds making love to Arusha hills

Jan 18, 2003

Unable to resist the undulating emerald Lusoto hills in Korogwe on the highway to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the gently whirling clouds seductively descend, caressing, kissing and fondling the rugged green peaks in a passionate, yet timid embrace.

By Raphael Okello

Unable to resist the undulating emerald Lusoto hills in Korogwe on the highway to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the gently whirling clouds seductively descend, caressing, kissing and fondling the rugged green peaks in a passionate, yet timid embrace.

I watch with admiration from my bus seat this sensational, dreamlike romantic episode between nature.

After an arduous bus journey from Kampala through Nairobi, I arrive in Tanzania, the land of the radiant Kilimanjaro Mountain, fascinating landscapes and home to one of Africa’s most captivating pastoral tribes whose age-old nomadic movements and unrestricted cattle grazing custom are slowly crumbling in this age of modernity.

The grassland had opened and greatly spread out with the sameness of a desert from the outskirts of Nairobi to Namanga, the border of Kenya and Tanzania.

However, from then on, we began traversing successive features that consistently dazzled me. Gently rolling hills, islands of thorny bushes and fields of white flowers set against a hazy backdrop of mist and cloud covered hills cast on the horizon. Together with the prevalently distributed wide trunk baobab trees, the monotony of what had been a beautiful yet mundane flat topography for over five hours, diffused into a stupendous vista. I begin to wake. This is the Masailand.

The bus, revving through the enormity of this captivating countryside charges forward with a familiarity. The grass, trimmed by the continuously grazing livestock, inherits, at irregular intervals impressive colour contrasts of immaculate green and dull golden brown.

Cryptic networks of narrow and wide galleys awash with pebbles and silt are remnants of seasonal rivers that rampantly purr through the inspiring land of the masai. We see teeming herds of cattle, goats and sheep grazing in the distant plains and rolling hills littered with evening shadows of white clouds. Tanzania’s Masailand begins to awaken with new life.

The Masai grass-thatched village homesteads built with mud, emerge in isolated rings enclosed in protective parameters made of sages and thorn bushes. Three Masai herdsmen draped in bright patterned cloaks watch their grazing livestock with interest.

The uncharacteristically corrugated iron sheets of clay- brick shelters spread in the meadow brightly shimmer in reflection of the dull evening sun. They reflect the unfamiliar tradition that is slowly creeping within the Masai society. Restrictions on movements of these nomads and their grazing livestock, due to land use conflicts and other reasons are forcing the Masai to adopt an unfamiliar way of life in the areas near towns, cities and the highway.

The Masai are now compromising their nomadic traditions of settling temporal manyattas (traditional Masai homesteads constructed and owned by women) to permanent villages. The women have decided to commercialise their sewing and beadwork that initially symbolised strong traditional social gestures.

At Namanga border, we encountered enthusiastic sales Masai women who rushed to sell to tourists their traditional ornamental jewellry mainly woven out of beads. This included head dresses, strap earrings, necklaces made with coiled copper discs and ankle and waistbands. Others swarmed around the tourists begging for money.

It then began to occur to me that the hideous monetary influence of the modern capitalist world is slowly creeping into the Masai’s simple way of life. Some now measure wealth in terms of monetary value rather than grapple to accumulate greater cattle head counts –– the traditional Masai measure of wealth and status.

Feeling exhausted and weary on the journey of which I have only gone half way, I begin to tire. I, however, strain to explore far into the wilderness of the Masailand shelved off beyond where my eyes seemingly appear to stop. I search for that dusty trail in the wilderness that still remains unbeaten by modern influences –– where the Masai still proudly conform to their traditions. Traditions that have remained unchanged for centuries.

In my little imaginary exploration, I visually wander into a dreamscape. An almost enigmatic world I have only known in travel magazines and television documentaries. A remote world where antelopes, gazelles, ostriches, zebras and giraffes harmoniously graze with the Masai cattle in the wild green plains where land is a communal asset untamed by policies of the modern world, granting the Masai nomad families free will to spend most of their lives freely hopping from one manyatta to another. They move in a rotational search for new meadows free from disease and abound with fresh grazing grass and streams of water for their cattle.

A world where time drags under its apparently significant measure –– the sun. in this world, time is even meaningless for the adult male Masai. They customarily live sedentary lives under tree shades while their women routinely busy themselves with household chores in the manyatta from sunrise to sunset.

The women build the manyattas with fine twigs or sage shaped into a low dome-like structure rising about 5- 6 feet high and covered with a light layer of fresh cow dung.

The rugged hills and the faintly viewed Kilimanjaro mountain sighted from Moshi draw me back from my illusory journey in a far away hidden Masailand.

This almost 30-hour bus odyssey from Kampala to Dar-es-Salaam had carried me through to the predominantly flat plains of these nomadic pastrolists. After Arusha, we then drive through cloud-kissed peaks of craggy hills jutting massively along the highway. I finally begin to concede to sleep that I had for the past 14 hours successfully managed to repress. I then recline in the adjustable bus seat and gently close my eyes, trying to get some sleep.

I shut out the blocks of massive steep hills in Korogwe and freely slip into a land that is my destination. I marvel at endless miles of sparkling white sand beaches fringed with coconut trees whose leaves rustle flirtatiously with the breeze from the extensive blue ocean waters. I dream about Dar-es-Salaam.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});