Water Brings No Harm. Matthew V. Bender
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in home gardens, and kept livestock in stalls. They also held similar forms of social organization, living in clusters of homesteads along ridges and identifying with the clan. The Meru, Taita, and Pare even constructed irrigation canals, though on a smaller scale than on Kilimanjaro.5 By the nineteenth century, many of these communities had ties to Kilimanjaro through trade. It is likely, for example, that much of the raw iron used by blacksmiths on the mountain came from Pare.6
How might these groups have viewed the waters of Kilimanjaro? Given their shared descent, common experience of mountainside living, and deep cultural similarities with the peoples of Kilimanjaro, these communities—particularly North Pare, the closest highland community—likely found the region’s features familiar. Michael Sheridan’s work on the Usangi area of North Pare shows not only how its water management bears striking similarity to that of Kilimanjaro, but also how irrigation networks shared symbolic similarities with the human body and human fertility, similar to the dichotomy of water as blood and land as body, discussed in chapter 1.7 Thus, neighboring mountain peoples would have seen Kilimanjaro as a lived space very similar to their own, and its significance would have been understood in terms of cultural connectivity and trade ties. It also seems likely that these groups would have acknowledged the diversity of the mountain’s physical space as well as its population.
Aside from mountain farmers, the Kilimanjaro region has also long been home to seminomadic peoples who have resided on the steppe. The earliest were Khoisan hunter-gatherers, followed by Cushitic and Nilotic pastoralists.8 Most are no longer in existence, having either migrated away or assimilated into other groups, and very little is known of them. By the 1850s, the Maasai had emerged as the largest community in the steppe. In many ways, they could hardly be more different from the peoples of Kilimanjaro. They were Nilotic speakers, they practiced pastoralism and limited crop cultivation, and they organized themselves into bands rather than clans. Most of all, they lived in the lowlands, known for its absence of water. As Wimmelbücker notes, by the nineteenth century, those on the mountain considered the Maasai as “prototypes of the foe.”9 This stemmed in part from their frequent incursions on the mountain aimed at seizing cattle and other goods. Yet as he and others have noted, the relationship was considerably more nuanced. Maasai peacefully frequented mountain markets to exchange goods including salt, milk, and meat for wood, bananas, yams, honey, and other foodstuffs. People also passed between the two, such as prisoners taken in fighting and women of marrying age. It is likely that some social and cultural practices, such as age-sets, passed into mountain society from the Maasai. In the words of Nurse, the relationship was more akin to love-hate than strictly negative.10
As seminomadic peoples, Maasai depended on surface water to support themselves and their cattle, and those living near Kilimanjaro recognized the mountain as the source of the rivers and streams on which they depended. These water sources not only provided a needed resource but also served as pathways guiding them to the mountain’s chiefdoms. Maasai may have considered the mountain’s white peak to be its distinguishing feature. Rebmann claims that those he encountered called it Ol Donyo Eibor, meaning “White Mountain” in the Maa language.11 Maasai had no familiarity with ice in the 1850s and therefore would only have recognized the peak as distinctive by its coloration. It is also possible that “white” refers to the cloud patterns that leave the peak obscured for much of day. In either case, the white peak clearly would have marked the mountain as different from others in the steppe. Some have also speculated that Maa is the source of the term “Kilimanjaro.” In his 1893 memoir, Catholic missionary Alexandre Le Roy claimed that several children in Taveta told him that the Maa word for water is ngaro and that they refer to the mountain as the “Mountain of Water” because all the rivers rise from it.12 However, this is questionable given that there is no word in Maa approximating “Kilima.”
These surrounding communities, though distinct from one another, all had a long-standing connection with the peoples of Kilimanjaro through cultural ties, trade, and warfare. The Bantu communities came from similar alpine spaces and did not endure especially long journeys en route. The Maasai dwelt in the lowlands, the very space that mountain peoples deemed harmful, and thus would not have seen the mountain as a superior space but as only different in its features. Though not encountered as an oasis, Kilimanjaro did serve as a focal point for communities living in its shadows.
African communities from farther afield came into contact with Kilimanjaro as well. Given its tremendous size and its abundance of water, it has been part of regional trade networks for centuries. At the start of the nineteenth century, Kilimanjaro emerged as a center of regional trade, largely because of the rising value of ivory. Between the 1820s and the 1890s, prices for ivory at Zanzibar increased by roughly sixfold.13 This precipitated a massive growth in ivory trading that eventually connected areas of the interior as far inland as central Kenya and the Great Lakes with the coastal ports of Mombasa and Pangani as well as Zanzibar. Initially, most traders that reached Kilimanjaro were from groups such as the Giryama, the Digo, the Shambaa, and the Kamba.14 For them the mountain served two purposes: a place to secure water and provisions for the continued journey and a place to purchase ivory from local hunters.
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