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Arusha|Manyara. “We had five cows and 10 goats. When the drought worsened, all the cows died and only five goats remained,” said Helena Leiyan, a mother of four children who has been abandoned by her husband since 2021.
Helena, who lives in the village of Terrat in Simanjiro District, Manyara Region, says that as the drought worsened, her husband sold the remaining goats and disappeared.
She added: “Life became harder after he vanished. Before he fled he was working as a labourer on people’s farms and doing other activities, but it wasn’t enough. He had to leave without even saying goodbye.”
“We don’t know if he’s alive or dead, and he never tried to contact us,” added Ms Helena, who is the mother of four sons aged nine, 11, 16, and 17.
Ms Helena says her husband, named Leiyan Nelukendo, left five years ago, in 2019. Since he left, she says she continued to struggle with her children until 2023 when things became difficult, and she decided to seek help from her husband’s relatives, where she currently lives.
“We were two wives; my co-wife and her two children went back to their home after my husband left. I stayed until last year when I came here, and they welcomed me,” she added.
Ms Helena and her children, two of whom were in school at the time, even though it was Saturday because they had exams coming up, were living with Leiyani’s brother named Isaya Nelukendo.
“We’re grateful to have a place to stay, but I also need to have my own farm or livestock. My husband didn’t have these, but if I can get them, I’ll ease the burden of where I’m currently living,” she explained.
We spoke with Isaya Nelukendo, who said: “We’re not sure where he (Leiyan) is; I once heard he’s in Mirerani. This is his family (Helena and her children), so it’s mine too, and I have a responsibility to help them.”
When asked about providing land or livestock to the mother, Mr Nelukendo said he would have done so if he had them, but what they have is not enough.
He added: “We’ll eat what we have according to God’s plan. And they’ll stay here until they can stand on their own.” Men leaving their families is not uncommon in those areas, as this issue also introduced me to a middle-aged mother. She introduces herself as Naitapuaki Lukas in the village of Oloswaki.
Ms Naitapuaki, living with her elderly husband, says: “We had two sons. As they grew up, they left, and we don’t know where they are.”
She believes her sons are in the city. “I don’t know if they’re in Mirerani or Dar es Salaam. They haven’t been in touch with us at all since they left.”
She, along with six other women, agreed, saying it is not just their village; many men have left neighboring villages as well.
Despite this situation, there are men who, despite the hardships, have persevered and engaged in other activities. Here, I met Noah Lukas in the village of Oloswaki, who is engaged in irrigation farming and animal husbandry.
“Animal husbandry has become difficult due to the decrease in grazing land. Although I have a few goats, my main focus is on farming. We’re grateful the government brought water close by. I sell vegetables and can support my family,” said Mr Lukas.
Maasai in the city
In other urban areas such as Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, there are Maasai people who are known for small businesses, security jobs, and some engage in hairdressing.
In Mwenge area, Dar es Salaam, I met Naranda Saling’o, who runs a small business selling wallets, belts, nail clippers, and fabrics around the neighbourhood. Despite having lived in Dar es Salaam for over seven years since leaving his home, Engarenaibor, in Longido, Arusha, he admits to having lost contact with his relatives due to lack of communication.
“I don’t have a phone,” said the young man, who claims his life hasn’t changed much because the money he earns isn’t enough to sustain himself, including finding a place to sleep.
“When night falls, I’ll sleep anywhere. Even clothes, this is the only one I have, I wash them and wait for them to dry so I can wear them. I shower in rivers and waterways that I consider clean,” he says.
At the age of 25, he has no plans to start a family because he does not have a place to accommodate a partner, and he cannot afford his daily needs. “I have no money, family needs money, I don’t have any. Besides, where would she sleep” he says.
For his part, Mr Joseph Nendukai works as a security guard in one of the buildings in Sinza. He is cheerful and says he came to Dar es Salaam in 2017 to seek a livelihood. “I had 20 cows and 50 goats, but they died, leaving only three calves and 10 goats. There was no grazing land, and some got sick,” said the young man from the Nanja village in Monduli District.
Mr Nendukai says he left his wife and two children back home, under the care of his brother’s homestead, and he communicates with them, helps them, and visits at least once a year or every two years. He added: “Our communities have been greatly affected by drought; many animals died, which is why many of us left home to seek a livelihood to support our families.”
How village leaders receive and resolve cases of climate mobility
The phenomenon of men leaving and abandoning their families is not uncommon in these areas, although leaders say it is not on a large scale.
The chairman of Terrat village, Kone Medukenya, says that the main activities of the villagers in the village are farming and animal husbandry, acknowledging that farming has become more prevalent recently due to the harsh conditions for large-scale animal husbandry.
He says that drought has greatly affected the availability of pasture and the well-being of many households.
“There are many cases we handle related to family disputes caused by the hardship of life, people are struggling to find food and their livestock are dying… some have left and abandoned their families, although not on a large scale.”
The cultural leader of the Maasai tribe, known as Laigwanani Lesira Samburi says there are many cases of people leaving, especially the youth.
“People are fleeing households, especially the youth. You know, life has changed a lot. Despite the presence of drought these days, the lifestyle systems have greatly affected the youth,” he said, pointing out the presence of communication devices and lack of morals among educated youth.
Mr Samburi said many educated youth who are fortunate enough to study often leave and forget where they come from.
“I tell the youth not to forget where they come from; this is their home,” he said.
Regarding men fleeing their households and families due to the hardship of life, the Laigwanani said: “The village committee, in collaboration with close relatives of the husband, discuss the issue, and those without livestock are given a small amount to start with so they can continue to stay with their families.”
Climate change mobility and what expert says
Statistics from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) showed that by 2020 severe weather conditions caused over 24 million people to be displaced from their homes, while International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that by 2050, the effects of climate change – if significant changes are not made now – will result in millions more people being displaced.
Meanwhile, the Groundswell network predicts that over 216 million people will be displaced, with three out of five being from the African continent. Lecturer at the Center for Climate Change Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, Professor Pius Yanda, stated that in areas affected by drought, floods, or lacking in animal grazing pastures, people are forced to migrate to other areas.
Professor Yanda emphasised the importance of ensuring that the environments to which people migrate are equipped with infrastructure to support them, thereby preventing conflicts in the areas they move to.
“Projects like BBT ‘Building a Better Tomorrow’ provide significant support, but they need to be expanded to reach more areas. Infrastructure for irrigation and research to support sustainable agriculture are crucial,” he said.
Dr Wessam El Beih from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) stated that some policies that can protect people at higher risk of displacement involve enhancing resilience and adaptation within rural communities. This can be achieved by facilitating access to basic services, livelihood opportunities, and measures to mitigate the impacts of disasters such as floods and droughts.
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Without explicitly naming the source of the external financial interference, both the party’s National Chairman, Mr Othman Masoud Othman, and the Vice Chairman (Zanzibar), Mr Ismail Jussa Ladhu, highlighted several attempts to use illicit funds to infiltrate ACT Wazalendo’s hierarchyContinue Reading
President Mwinyi emphasized the successful implementation of reforms in air transportation, which have enabled Zanzibar to achieve its aviation goals.Continue Reading
Note: If you yearn to experience classic and modern African music in person on the continent, consider joining Afropop Worldwide’s, February 2025 Music and Culture Tour of Tanzania and Zanzibar. Details here!
The early rumba bands of East Africa, particularly Tanzania, have often been overlooked in the wave of classic Afropop reissues in recent decades. (Fine collections by Douglas Patterson and Werner Graebner are clear exceptions, but they are few in comparison to volumes of early Congolese rumba or West African funk reissues.) This scarcity is partly due to the fact that Tanzania in the Independence era (1950s and 60s) did not have a real recording industry. Most of the recordings made by these exceptional bands were done in state radio stations, and most of those tapes have long since been lost to history. So here comes a set of 17 commercially recorded Tanzanian tracks from the late ’60s to help fill in the gap, and it could not be more welcome.
Politics helped to keep this delightful music obscure. Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (Swahili for “fraternity”) philosophy emphasized social, even socialist, cohesion over commercial development. Though Ujamaa would ultimately prove an economic failure, its early years were peaceful, and that easy going vibe is one thing that distinguishes these recordings from Congolese rumba of the same era. These bands did not rely on recordings, but rather on frequent, live performances, and later, government and other official sponsorship. They played constantly, and the tightness and polish we hear on these tracks can’t be achieved any other way.
As compilation producer Rob Allingham–a longtime friend of Afropop Worldwide based in Johannesburg–explains in the sleeve notes, Cuban son and cha-cha-cha recordings made a big splash in Tanzania starting in the 1930s, just as they did in West and Central Africa. Local imitations blending Tanzanian traditions and sung in Swahili began immediately, well before Congolese rumba swept the continent. It was only after 1960 that prominent Congolese musicians like Remy Ongala fled war and chaos to establish bands in Dar Es Salaam, Kampala, Nairobi and other East African cities. These Tanzanian recordings from the late ’60s emphasize the local sound, a genre often called muziki wa dansi (dance music), though some connoisseurs prefer the more descriptive term Swahili rumba.
Allingham organizes these tracks as a kind of “battle of the bands” with six bands each taking turns with two to five tracks. They are all gems, but if I had to pick a winner, it be Nuta Jazz, with Atomic Jazz Band as the runner-up. But let’s go through them.
Salum Abdalla got his start as a singer in Koranic school, but soon fell for Cuban son, and formed his band Cuban Marimba in 1952. By the time of these recordings, Abdalla had died in a car crash, and Juma Kilaza was leading the band. Organic arrangements, beginning in one tempo and pivoting mid-way to a faster tempo, is a feature of Cuban dance music that gets developed in many varieties of African rumba. Here, in the stinging guitar work, we can tease out the phrasing of marimba traditions from the Mogorogoro region where this band was formed. The song “Afrika Muye Muye,” from which this compilation takes its title, is particularly lively in both its tempos. A song lamenting division in Africa–“We don’t even know how to work together”–this is the most serious of all these tunes from a lyrical perspective. It’s a theme with a long history in African music ever since. Elsewhere, we mostly get angst-ridden love stories, about which more later.
Next, we have Tanzania Jazz Band and L’Orchestre Spear, each with two sharp, spare tracks featuring lyrical melodies and tricky guitar work. The interplay between lead and rhythm guitar parts is notably prominent in these tracks; nothing gets buried. Vocals are generally delivered by two or more singers in unison. Might this be an influence from Arabic music, where unison singing is common? In any case, it’s a characteristic feature.
Nuta Jazz, with five tracks here, marks the beginning of the era of state-sponsored bands. Named for the national trade union association, this band added brass to the lineup and became hugely influential. The band’s name changed three times over the years, as the national politics evolved. Since 1979, they’ve been an independent outfit under the name Msondo Ngoma. From the start, Nuta incorporated musical influences from the Zaramo ethnic group around Dar Es Salaam. The brass work on the first three tracks here is particularly tasty. By the way this is the only band from the early Swahili rumba era to survive today, with excellent young players continually refreshing the sound.
By the way, you can experience Msondo Ngoma and contemporary Swahili rumba bands live in Dar Es Salaam as part of Afropop Worldwide’s, February 2025 Music and Culture Tour of Tanzania and Zanzibar. Details here!
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Morogoro Jazz Band gets four tracks. This outfit grew in popularity through the ’50s and ’60s, and in the ’70s it was joined by Mbaraka Mwinshehe, destined to become the most popular singer in East Africa. In these recordings, he’s the singer, composer and lead guitarist. Unison saxophone and lead guitar adds a distinctive touch to these tracks, although the lyrics tend to the dark side of romance: “I’m tired of you,” “You will destroy me.” On “Sitaki Tena,” Mwinshehe sings, “She was like an itch on my mind/Now I don’t feel anything anymore/Let me just be on my own, catering for myself/Enough! I don’t want anymore.” A bitter pill in a sweet sauce! On “Lucia Rudi (Lucia come back),” both the vocal and guitar performances palpably plead for the return of a lost lover.
Finally, we get two crisply recorded tracks from Atomic Jazz Band formed by Haj Juma and Julius Kiluwa in Tanga’s Swahili Street quarters in 1954. The fact that this band had its own club helped to make it one of the most popular combos of the era. All these years later, the jousting between tart guitar and sax lines and those passionate unison vocals give us a potent echo of a glorious time.
Source: allafrica.com
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New research shows the “upside-down trees” originated in Madagascar and then caught a ride on ocean currents to reach mainland Africa and Australia.
Baobabs are one of the most charismatic trees on Earth, thanks in part to their unusual appearance. Their cartoonishly thick trunks are conspicuously oversized relative to their diminutive crowns, earning them the nickname “upside-down trees.” They can also live for thousands of years, contributing to their prominent place in cultural traditions and works of art.
For all the tales told about baobabs, though, their origin story has remained a mystery.
Scientists have debated for years how baobabs wound up in the places where they grow. Eight species exist around the world, and their distribution, like the trees themselves, is unusual: One species occurs across much of mainland Africa, while six are in Madagascar. The last is found faraway, in northwestern Australia.
Most researchers have hypothesized that the trees originated on mainland Africa. But findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature tell a different story. Baobabs instead most likely first evolved in Madagascar, where they diversified into different species. Two then embarked on long-distance oceanic journeys to distant continents.
“Madagascar is this wonderful natural laboratory,” said Tao Wan, a botanist at the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an author of the new study. He added, “In the case of baobabs, some very special geographical history on the island contributed to the species’ diversity.”
Dr. Wan and his colleagues sequenced the genomes of all eight baobab species and then used those data to understand how the trees evolved. They also investigated ecological factors that influenced the distribution of baobabs around Madagascar.
Their results indicate that baobabs’ common ancestor most likely arose in Madagascar around 21 million years ago. Competition with other plant life and factors like altitude, temperature, precipitation and volcanic activity caused new baobab species to emerge across Madagascar, as did fluctuating sea levels during various ice ages.
Source: nytimes.com
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