How does the “mapping” discerned in the Human Relations Area File layer in Africamap for your region, play against or support larger questions of landscape and the ways it is used?

How does the “mapping” discerned in the Human Relations Area File layer in Africamap for your region, play against or support larger questions of landscape and the ways it is used?

I think that the human relations area file map in Africamap supports and provides evidence for the issues of landscape that I am dealing with. The first map layer that I looked at was the settlement patterns. In this map layer the Serengeti Conservation Area was made up of three different types of settlements Nomad or fully migratory, compact and relatively permanent, and neighborhoods of dispersed family homesteads, exactly what you would expect in an area of land where the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments restrict land use in favor of the preservation of animals in protected areas. In the areas that are blue are the areas where nomadic or fully migratory groups live. That makes sense because the map that shows the ethnoliguistic area that belongs to the Maasai, the prevalent nomadic tribe that lives in the region covers the same exact area.

Settlement Patterns in the Serengeti

Maasai Ethnolinguistic Area

The second human relations map layer that I picked to look at was the prevailing type of dwelling. In the area where the Maasai live on the map the map key showed that that area has rounded or semicylindrical roofs. Again this makes sense because as nomads the Maasai people generally live in circular grass and mud huts  that they build as temporary homes whenever they stop for long periods of time before they go looking for better pasture.

Prevailing Type of Dwelling: Shape of Roof

Source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3535/3943293267_ed54119490.jpg

What specific challenges are posed in your region that impact issues of landscape?

The biggest challenge that is posed in my region is the one that I have been talking about for weeks now. It is the issue of development in the Serengeti region, specifically in the proposed construction of a highway through the Serengeti National Park to link Northern cities with the Southern and Eastern parts of the country. This proposed road would greatly impact the landscape and perhaps even the entire ecosystem of the Serengeti because it would be built directly across the path of the seasonal migration of millions animals that occurs twice a year.

The two articles that I read for this blog were The Reconstruction of Environment Rights in Urban South Africa by Ben Wisner and Climate Patterns and Land-Use Practices in the Dry Zones of Africa by Jim Ellis and Kathleen Galvin. The first article talked about urban areas in South Africa – a great departure from the prairies of the Serengeti. While the places are different the issue of environmental rights is the same. The violation of environmental rights – including the effects brought on by overcrowding and rapid development such as pollutions brought on by the harsh apartheid regime meant that human rights in South Africa were violated. This is was the reverse in the Serengeti; the Maasai were kicked out of the area in order to protect the National Park. I believe that their human rights were violated as well. They were forced to abandon a way of life that did not endanger the area in any way. In an apparent attempt to regain those human rights the Tanzanian government now wants to build this highway. They apparently want to link the people living in these areas ( which they had previously declared illegal to do) to the rest of Tanzania. Unfortunately their plan will endanger the environment. Unlike the case of South Africa the rights of the people are not aligned with the notion of protecting and caring for the environment. Do the rights of the people living in the area trump those of the environment?

I chose the second article on land-use practices in dry areas of Africa because of its discussion of seasonality and rainfall. These are aspects of the Serengeti that are at the center of the highway debate. The article points out that areas that are near the equator such as the Serengeti National park receive two rainy seasons that occur six months apart. This is what causes the seasonal migration of animals in the Serengeti as they travel to find water. The proposed highway would cut off this seasonal migration and potentially many animals could die. If you look in the diagram below you will notice that Northern Tanzania where the Serengeti is located receives very little rain. It is crucial therefore that this migration happens. 

How has Africa Map Changed your View of Africa and Its History? What additions/changes would you like to see?

I think Africa Map has definitely increased the scope through which I looked at Africa. The map layers of information give a deeper sense of what is happening in Africa and with the landscape. Africa map has definitely been an amazing tool to use because there is so much that you can learn about the land, its history, people, how they live and what they do. It offers snapshots of moments in time that tell you so much about what was happening and how that compares to what is happening today. The fact that you can layer different maps of information and compare them directly is also a plus.

Layering Tool on Africa Map

I think that Africa map could definitely be improved though, there needs to be more information gathered for the map that would increase its usability. It would also be great if all the maps could be seen on google earth, that would make it easier to manipulate them and then upload them onto google maps. If the maps could be seen directly in google maps that would also be great. 

The things listed under the tab Places are a really good feature as well but there is no information about the amounts of quantities of them, they just appear on the map. For example when you click on hotels, little red triangles appear on the map but what do they mean? What are we classifying as hotels? The quantity listed next to hotel in the Places tab says that there are 1120 hotels. That number seems really small for the whole of Africa so there must be some way that whoever plotted these hotels is defining hotels. We don't know though so the information is useless.

Hotels in Africa

You can also only do one of the things under the tab Places at a time so you can't compare the prevalence of them directly because they are all represented by small red triangles. That makes using the map really hard. Those are the only things that I would improve on, overall Africa Map is a great tool but it definitely needs to be further developed.

How has the past marked the landscape?

The Serengeti is rich in history....and it goes as far back as the beginning of mankind. One of the most interesting places in the Serengeti is the Leoteli footprint site. The majority of the Laetoli footprint site was excavated in 1978. Until then, the oldest known footprints of human ancestors were tens of thousands of years old. But this trail, some 80 feet long and preserved in cementlike volcanic ash, had been made by some of the first upright-walking hominids. An almost unimaginable sequence of events preserved what paleontologist Ian Tattersall calls a fossil of human behavior -- prehistoric walking.

Initially, a nearby volcano called Sadiman erupted a cloud of fine ash, like beach sand, that left a layer on the landscape. Then a light rain fell onto the ash to create something like wet cement -- an ideal material for trapping footprints. Birds and mammals left a great number of prints, but, spectacularly, so did a pair of hominids, one large and one small, trekking across the ash. (Some analysts conclude that it is possible to detect the trail of a third, smaller individual whose tracks overlap the footprints left by one of the others.) A subsequent eruption from Sadiman dropped more ash, sealing the footprints like a laminated driver's license. Finally, erosion over millions of years unveiled the prints for Hill and other researchers in Mary Leakey's group to discover in 1976. 

Another site is the  Gong Rock, located on one of Serengeti's Kopjes. It is the oldest instrument yet discovered and its many dents tell us a story of how early man invented music playing simple melodies on the metallic sounding rock. The masaii later used it to make sounds to warn or contact other warriors. 

 

Questions Raised by the Proposed Serengeti Highway

            The proposed Serengeti highway is the part of my region that I have chosen to explore in this region. The Tanzanian government has approved the planning and building of a large commercial highway across the Serengeti National Park. This road would link two commercial areas in Tanzania, the Lake Victoria region on the north west with eastern parts of Tanzania such as the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam. This proposed highway would bisect the Serengeti National Park in two and would run in the migration path of the wildebeest and zebra populations during the rainy season. In total about 2 million animals may be affected by the building of this highway. 

            The highway could have disastrous consequences for the wildlife that makes this annual trek but it would also have a negative effect on the wildlife that lives in this area. Commercial and personal vehicles travelling down this road would increase the number of road kills that happen each year, it might introduce new diseases as humans get closer to animals and it could also change parts of the ecosystem as animals begin being affected by the close contact of humans.

             The proposed highway brings up some major questions about the use of land, the choice between conservation and economic gain and the value of Serengeti National Park as part of the culture of heritage in Tanzania. As I have mentioned before the Maasai were pushed out of areas like the Serengeti because of concerns about the preservation of the animals and wildlife that existed there. If the decision was made that this nomadic tribe would cause damage to the environment how can this highway be justified? How is the Tanzanian government going to deal with the loss of animal life and how do they propose to prevent it?  What will the backlash in loss of tourism to the area be? Will the Serengeti lose its world heritage site status?

Sources

-       http://thecitizen.co.tz/component/content/article/37-tanzania-top-news-story/2762-government-on-why-serengeti-road-is-a-must-project.html

-       http://www.savetheserengeti.org/news/highway-news/scientific-impact-statement-survey/#axzz12jg0x6kD

-       http://www.zgf.de/?id=72&reportId=85&language=en

Book Discussion

The Language of Landscape by Anne Whiston Spirn is an interesting book about how the landscape around us is alive with meaning; these meanings can be understood like a language. Landscape is has its own grammar, structure, metaphors, modifiers and processes that are similar to the way that language is constructed. To fully experience and understand landscape we must speak the language through which this meaning is carried.

Spirn’s writing style is beautiful and poetic throughout most of her book, it weaves a story through her experiences and illustrations that she uses to make her point. In her description of the mountains in Japan (Spirn 1998; 134) Spirn poetically presents the mountains of Japan. In her description she not only weaves in their geographical features, she also provides the history of the mountains, the context in which they exist today and the culture that they have helped create. What emerges is a complete picture of why the mountains have formed the way they have, their significance in Japanese culture and the consequences that this specific landform has had on the living habits of the people, their way of life and what landscapes they have created in response to the presence of those mountains. I feel that this type of writing gives me an overall sense of what is happening but lacks in detail, what are the myths about mountains that lead her to the conclusion that they are considered powerful? Specifically how do the mountains affect other features of landscape?

In other parts of the book she loses the poetic flare as she goes into longer case studies, these parts I feel are the richest parts of the book. One of the most compelling of these parts was towards the end in chapter 9, in this chapter the author focuses on the city of Berlin after World War II. Spirn vividly describes the landscape of Berlin, she focuses on how the landscape has been destroyed, built up and reconfigured in order to forget the past and move on. In 1966 when she visits Berlin is still feeling the aftereffects of the war, the buildings have gunshots through them and most of the city lies in ruins (Sprirn 1998; 242). When she revisits in 1993 the change is drastic, all that is left is Checkpoint Charlie and the memory of the city has been carefully crafted. There is a plaque that commemorates the worker’s uprising in 1953, that has deliberately been made to look old (Spirn; 244), this manipulation shows how landscape can be made to evoke a distant memory, how it can reshape a story.

The other book that I read was Economies and the Transformations of Landscape by Lisa Cliggett and Christopher Pool. They deal specifically with landscapes that have been shaped by human beings as a direct result of the flow of capital. Money changes landscapes as economic need or gain forces land use to change, money also stimulate factors such as population growth, living space and types of industries. What may start of as grazing fields may turn into farm land, once exhausted it may be turned into an urban area which may turn into a waste disposal area. The most fascinating part of the book for me was the chapter dedicated to the decline of Mobile Pastoralists. This section of the book touched on the Maasai people who are my main focus in the Serengeti area that I have chosen to focus on in Tanzania.

We learn that the landscape in which the Maasai lived in East Africa was changed drastically with the introduction of colonial states, they no longer were free to roam nomadically as they were used to. They were now segmented within German Tanganyika and British Kenya. They lost a majority of their land to European farms and ranches and were forced to graze in game reserves like the Serengeti which Britain created in 1954 (Cliggett 2008 ;155). This first economic induced transformation was one of many. The Maasai have been increasingly been pushed off land that they have historically used. As a need to grow the tourist industry and the increasing pressure from conservationists from the west grew, the Maasai were pushed off protected national parks (Cliggett 2008;156). They have had to switch from a nomadic lifestyle to a more agricultural type of lifestyle on ranches where they raise cattle. This has had a profound effect on the landscape as some areas are intensely grazed while others such as those in national parks remain relatively wild.

I am not convinced landscape speaks a language per se, rather I think that landscape tells a story. It tells of what went on, what is it to come and what is happening presently. Landscape often negates the kinds of life that exist in a particular place, the culture that springs up, the everyday decisions that people and animals make. Landscape is also a storage of memory, it tells of the secrets that people wish to hide and it can be deceptive, it shows the history they wish to remember and it is a reminder of things that are deemed best forgotten. It is not a language that one has to learn because you can discover these things about a landscape if you study the history, the culture of a place, the people that live there and by carefully analyzing elements of the landscape itself.

How does Africa Map help address sensory issues in landscape

Africamap helps to address sensory issues in landscape by providing canvases through which we can imagine the taste, smell, touch, sound and sight of the landscape that we are looking at. The area that I am looking at on Africamap is the northeastern part of Tanzania, specifically the Serengeti National Park. Through Africamap we can imagine how the Serengeti looks. The way that I first imagined how the Serengeti looked was through the use of the landscape use map layer. 

The Serengeti National Park

This land use map layer helps me imagine what the Serengeti looks like by evoking certain images. The brown on the map of the Serengeti area is land that is herbaceous and protected. This conjures up images of a serene savannah  landscape that is not inhabited by people and has not been damaged by people through farming who have lived in the area. The next largest color-coded areas are in white, this signifies that there is no land use, further adding the serene image of the Serengeti national park.

Land Use

 

While the Serengeti is virtually uninhabited I know that people do live in the area, their presence is shown through the light brown color-coded areas, this color is for intensive pastoral practice. I know from my research that the nomadic Maasai people live in this area and that they often keep large herds of cows with them as they travel. This is evident through the spread of the spots of light brown that are scattered in this area. This speaks to our sense of smell because rather than a fresh smell of the outdoors in these areas we can imagine that the air may smell of cow dung, the cooking fires of the of the Maasai people, the smell of their food as they cook it as well as other man-introduced smells.

Another way that we can imagine the landscape through our senses is through the maps of malaria epidemic and seasonal duration. I chose these maps because malaria is such a sensory disease. You hear as mosquitos buzz around you, you feel the sting of the mosquito, the itch of the bite, and when malaria overcomes you feel the effects through a fever and other symptoms. The map of malaria epidemic shows of there is little water in the area, as well as low populations. Mosquitoes need water to breed and people to infect in order for malaria to spread. This is because most of the Serengeti national park is savannah, there are small lakes and streams but they are highly dependant on the seasonal rains and there are not many people. You can imagine hearing the sounds of the mosquitoes buzzing softly in this space.  

The map of the seasonal variation of malaria allows us to imagine various things, over 4 months between outbreaks of malaria we can imagine that the land is arid and dry for a good part of the year because when rain does not fall there are few breeding grounds for mosquitoes. In those months the land is dry and dusty, with little moisture even in the air. The terrain is full of bushes and dead and dry plants. These plants bloom when there is rain and are completely revived, creating beautiful green pastures and lakes full of water that are teaming in life. The mosquito and other animals can once again breed and produce young.

Maleria Epidemic

Malaria Seasonal Variation