Beach
LESS THAN A HUNDRED MILES NORTH OF THE BUSTLING CITY OF DAR ES SALAAM, JUST THIRTY BEYOND HISTORICAL BAGAMOYO AND FACE TO FACE WITH ZANZIBAR, LIES SAADANI NATIONAL PARK.
A CONSERVATION AREA BOUNDED BY BEACH AND RIVER.
Moat-like the Wami River envelops the park's southern border. The Msangazi River, which forms part of the Pangani basin, clings to the park's northern frontier and to the east the bush slips seamlessly to caramel coloured beach.
And thus this parcel of 1000 square kilometres of land, whose evolution from game reserve to national park status in 2005 meant a doubling in size, is swaddled.
Where in so many parts of Africa, civilisation squats heavily on conservancies and squeezes them into uncomfortable compromise, Saadani is being enabled to throw its arms out wide and breathe more easily. It is just one reason why this place is gaining ground as a destination for visitors: its utterly unmatched geography.
Saadani is the only park in East Africa which gathers beach, river, bush and marine areas within its safeguard. On a map the protective limits of the park extend unimpeded from the Wami in the south up to the north west and east across Madete beach, a last breeding haven - established almost two decades ago - for endangered green turtles. The limits of preservation don't end there though; they stretch out to sea towards the Maful Sandbanks which play host to a flamboyant array of reef life including a sizeable population of anemones and their resident clownfish. These small fish, members of the damsel fish family, are so dependent on the protection of their hosts' stinging tentacles that they are not found anywhere else. In return for the guardianship they are afforded, the clown fish act as housekeepers, hoovering debris up, and driving off butterfly fish which feed on the anemones' tentacles.
The sea off Saadani's shore supports ocean life that varies as spectacularly in colour as it does in dimension: from the infinitesimal to the considerably bigger. Bottle nose dolphins, the largest of their species and renowned for their inquisitiveness, are frequently seen in these waters - and humpback whales have been sighted migrating through the slender Zanzibar Channel. Curiously, and on account of its extraordinary location, whilst the ocean here offers up a conventional population of inhabitants, a morning walk along a wide are of butterscotch beach reveals surprising nocturnal traffic not normally associated with beach living. The tread of so many animals - serval cat, genet, mongoose, bush babies, monkeys, warthog, hyena, even leopard and lion - is an indelible reminder that they got here first. To witness our own faint footprints, which mark the sand so feebly, alongside that of the wildlife is oddly - and appropriately - humbling.
The genets and the mongoose feed on crabs under cover of darkness but all that remains of their night-time picnics come dawn are deep scratch marks scored around the crab holes.
A CONSERVATION AREA BOUNDED BY BEACH AND RIVER.
Moat-like the Wami River envelops the park's southern border. The Msangazi River, which forms part of the Pangani basin, clings to the park's northern frontier and to the east the bush slips seamlessly to caramel coloured beach.
And thus this parcel of 1000 square kilometres of land, whose evolution from game reserve to national park status in 2005 meant a doubling in size, is swaddled.
Where in so many parts of Africa, civilisation squats heavily on conservancies and squeezes them into uncomfortable compromise, Saadani is being enabled to throw its arms out wide and breathe more easily. It is just one reason why this place is gaining ground as a destination for visitors: its utterly unmatched geography.
Saadani is the only park in East Africa which gathers beach, river, bush and marine areas within its safeguard. On a map the protective limits of the park extend unimpeded from the Wami in the south up to the north west and east across Madete beach, a last breeding haven - established almost two decades ago - for endangered green turtles. The limits of preservation don't end there though; they stretch out to sea towards the Maful Sandbanks which play host to a flamboyant array of reef life including a sizeable population of anemones and their resident clownfish. These small fish, members of the damsel fish family, are so dependent on the protection of their hosts' stinging tentacles that they are not found anywhere else. In return for the guardianship they are afforded, the clown fish act as housekeepers, hoovering debris up, and driving off butterfly fish which feed on the anemones' tentacles.
The sea off Saadani's shore supports ocean life that varies as spectacularly in colour as it does in dimension: from the infinitesimal to the considerably bigger. Bottle nose dolphins, the largest of their species and renowned for their inquisitiveness, are frequently seen in these waters - and humpback whales have been sighted migrating through the slender Zanzibar Channel. Curiously, and on account of its extraordinary location, whilst the ocean here offers up a conventional population of inhabitants, a morning walk along a wide are of butterscotch beach reveals surprising nocturnal traffic not normally associated with beach living. The tread of so many animals - serval cat, genet, mongoose, bush babies, monkeys, warthog, hyena, even leopard and lion - is an indelible reminder that they got here first. To witness our own faint footprints, which mark the sand so feebly, alongside that of the wildlife is oddly - and appropriately - humbling.
The genets and the mongoose feed on crabs under cover of darkness but all that remains of their night-time picnics come dawn are deep scratch marks scored around the crab holes.
River
JUST NORTH OF THE WIDE WINDING WAMI, THE VILLAGE OF SAADANI, ONE OF THE OLDEST HUMAN SETTLEMENTS IN TANZANIA, STRADDLES THE PARK'S SOUTHERN-MOST BORDER.
Its residents live unperturbed by the game that surrounds and infiltrates; the warthog here are - in a Muslim community - guaranteed of peace and longevity. They lie fat and flat, outstretched in the cool shadow cast by huts and look like quite different animals than their erect-tailed, bush-trotting brothers and sisters inside the park. A fort bears testimony to the Germans war time presence; a grave to that of passing Christian missionaries and the name
- Saadani - from the mispronunciation of two Swahili words. A wealthy slaver who took up residence here long before Bagamoyo was famous as a trading post is responsible for that. The trader owned a clock which created much interest amongst the villagers who beseeched him over and over again to tell them the time until he prevailed upon them to learn how to tell the time themselves because, after all, as they could see, there was a saa ndani. It strikes one as paradoxical that the word Saa should feature in this place at all far less have become an integral part of its name; here where the sun and sky and stars tell the time with a historical precision mankind could never imitate. Marking off time seems superfluous in Saadani where beach and bush spill with a gentle seamlessness, interrupted in a way it must have millennia ago.
The Wami, with waters that ebb and flow with the tide, and rise with the fall of rain in the Eastern Arc Mountains, boasts staggering breadth . So extensive is its girth in places you wonder that it can meander ribbon-like for hundreds of miles at such languorous pace. It is as if its attentions have wandered on the way and the river has tied itself in knots of ox-bow lakes. A blanket of thick forest - a tangle of Tamarind and albizia and palms - yields nearer the sea to mangrove. The banks are cacophonous with bird calls. Waders, storks, and eye-catching, quick-darting, deep-diving kingfishers add their song to the haunting cries of fish eagles, a feathered orchestra supplemented by the harrumphing of hippos quite at home in their sometimes salty habitat.
This surging chocolate river hosts creatures that mimic the symbiosis that trips through the bush and swims in the sea and flies in the skies above Saadani.
Egrets enjoy a free meal whilst picking irksome insects from hippos' hides; hippo provide fish with food and the fish, in return, floss the hippo's teeth. Even the river's crocodiles benefit from a mutually beneficial hippo-relationship: hippos often allow young crocodiles to use them as resting posts and hippos have been witnessed using crocodiles' skins as salt licks. The Wami River propels a plume of fresh water four kilometres into the sea at the river's mouth. This fresh water's cargo, of organic matter, together with the muddy deposits and mangrove forests in the river's estuary, create the necessary breeding ground for prawn. These, together with several species of estuarine fish that thrive in both fresh and saline waters, provide both food and an income for fishing villages at the river's mouth.
Saadani has been described as lots of things - spiritual, secretive, serendipitous. And it is all of things. But it offers something else: an enduring example of the workability and importance of symbiosis. Landscapes merge: beach, river and bush conspire, protecting and shielding one another. A diverse collection of trees, not usually witnessed as neighbours, stand shoulder to shoulder as if as sentinels, offering vantage points, shade and food for resident birds and beasts which sustain their ancient arrangements of support.
We, we the newcomers, need to observe carefully. Saadani has much to teach us.
Its residents live unperturbed by the game that surrounds and infiltrates; the warthog here are - in a Muslim community - guaranteed of peace and longevity. They lie fat and flat, outstretched in the cool shadow cast by huts and look like quite different animals than their erect-tailed, bush-trotting brothers and sisters inside the park. A fort bears testimony to the Germans war time presence; a grave to that of passing Christian missionaries and the name
- Saadani - from the mispronunciation of two Swahili words. A wealthy slaver who took up residence here long before Bagamoyo was famous as a trading post is responsible for that. The trader owned a clock which created much interest amongst the villagers who beseeched him over and over again to tell them the time until he prevailed upon them to learn how to tell the time themselves because, after all, as they could see, there was a saa ndani. It strikes one as paradoxical that the word Saa should feature in this place at all far less have become an integral part of its name; here where the sun and sky and stars tell the time with a historical precision mankind could never imitate. Marking off time seems superfluous in Saadani where beach and bush spill with a gentle seamlessness, interrupted in a way it must have millennia ago.
The Wami, with waters that ebb and flow with the tide, and rise with the fall of rain in the Eastern Arc Mountains, boasts staggering breadth . So extensive is its girth in places you wonder that it can meander ribbon-like for hundreds of miles at such languorous pace. It is as if its attentions have wandered on the way and the river has tied itself in knots of ox-bow lakes. A blanket of thick forest - a tangle of Tamarind and albizia and palms - yields nearer the sea to mangrove. The banks are cacophonous with bird calls. Waders, storks, and eye-catching, quick-darting, deep-diving kingfishers add their song to the haunting cries of fish eagles, a feathered orchestra supplemented by the harrumphing of hippos quite at home in their sometimes salty habitat.
This surging chocolate river hosts creatures that mimic the symbiosis that trips through the bush and swims in the sea and flies in the skies above Saadani.
Egrets enjoy a free meal whilst picking irksome insects from hippos' hides; hippo provide fish with food and the fish, in return, floss the hippo's teeth. Even the river's crocodiles benefit from a mutually beneficial hippo-relationship: hippos often allow young crocodiles to use them as resting posts and hippos have been witnessed using crocodiles' skins as salt licks. The Wami River propels a plume of fresh water four kilometres into the sea at the river's mouth. This fresh water's cargo, of organic matter, together with the muddy deposits and mangrove forests in the river's estuary, create the necessary breeding ground for prawn. These, together with several species of estuarine fish that thrive in both fresh and saline waters, provide both food and an income for fishing villages at the river's mouth.
Saadani has been described as lots of things - spiritual, secretive, serendipitous. And it is all of things. But it offers something else: an enduring example of the workability and importance of symbiosis. Landscapes merge: beach, river and bush conspire, protecting and shielding one another. A diverse collection of trees, not usually witnessed as neighbours, stand shoulder to shoulder as if as sentinels, offering vantage points, shade and food for resident birds and beasts which sustain their ancient arrangements of support.
We, we the newcomers, need to observe carefully. Saadani has much to teach us.
Bush
THE PALMS THAT FRINGE PORTIONS OF SAADANI'S SHORE ARE EXPECTED. THE ACACIA ARE NOT.
Acacia Zanzibarica, with their slender amber trunks and delicate foliage, gather as arboreal armies in this park, protecting one another as they shelter the insects that use them as nurseries for their young. The galls, or bulbs, which swell at the base of the tree's spines offer a safe haven for ants' offspring which, when ready to leave their nests, bore small holes through their nursery walls and in so doing create Whistling Thorns. In return for helping to sustain the insects' life cycle, the ants protect the tree by shooing away browsing herbivores and potentially damaging insects whilst comprehending the importance of pollination.
They stay away from the trees' flower which means bees have access to pollen whilst the ants keep up their vigilant patrol of other parts of the tree. This ant-guarding - one of the best known examples of a symbiotic arrangement between animals and plants - serves as a potent reminder of the mutually supportive relationships witnessed throughout this sanctuary. What began at sea - the anemone and the clown fish - is evident in the park's terrestrial flora and the fauna.
Symbiosis (from the Ancient Greek syn "with" and bisis "living") describes the close and usually long-term connectedness between quite different species. Like, for example, the warthog and the ground hornbill. Both are happy habitants of Saadani and have been witnessed in the wild benefiting from an arrangement whereby the hornbill grooms the warthog whilst enjoying a free meal of insects. Banded mongooses have also been observed picking ticks off warthogs in what scientists believe to be the only symbiotic relationship between two mammal species.
Saadani's topography isn't just startling because the beach rubs shoulders with the bush literally and suddenly. It is striking because such variation is packed so neatly in. The park's landscapes are composed of wooded hills juxtaposed with open savannah, of riverine jungle and coastal forest, of doum palms, Terminalia, Tamarind and Marula trees. The scrub is aflame with scarlet combretum and alight with the bright sunshine yellow of Grewia bicolor.
Two large forests flank the park's western borders: the Zaraninge and the Kwamsisi where shaded depths resonate with the throaty call of Colobus monkeys whose black and white capes break the dense green canopy which provides impenetrable cover to secret leopard. The woodland to the park's north is home to Greater Kudu, suni and red duiker. As trees give way to grass lands, a herd of Lichtenstein's Hartebeeste grazes. Groups of these antelope rarely number more than ten and are dominated by males who mark their territories by dropping to their knees and horning the ground while rubbing their preorobital glands on the soil. They reluctantly share a space with herds of White Bearded Wildebeeste, released into the area in the seventies when the then game reserve's zoo was closed. Other captors which were freed at the same time include zebra and eland. Waterbuck, bushbuck and giraffe (festooned with communes of oxpeckers which feed on insects plucked from the animal's coat and even court whilst in lofty transit) join the resident reedbuck to complete the tableau.
And slipping with a stealth that belies their size between the brush and the towering trees are herds of elephant. As Saadani gains a reputation as a serious wildlife sanctuary and one which, because of its tight containment and borders managed by Mother Nature herself in terms of ocean and river, so the elephants are gaining confidence in the guardianship of their sentinel. To the east of the park, south of the Mligaji River, sprawls a pair of forests dubbed Msitu wa Askari in acknowledgment of the German Soldiers who took refuge there when under attack from the British during World War II. One wonders that it now could not be renamed Msitu wa Tembo for the elephants which seek refuge in its shade during the heat of the day.
Acacia Zanzibarica, with their slender amber trunks and delicate foliage, gather as arboreal armies in this park, protecting one another as they shelter the insects that use them as nurseries for their young. The galls, or bulbs, which swell at the base of the tree's spines offer a safe haven for ants' offspring which, when ready to leave their nests, bore small holes through their nursery walls and in so doing create Whistling Thorns. In return for helping to sustain the insects' life cycle, the ants protect the tree by shooing away browsing herbivores and potentially damaging insects whilst comprehending the importance of pollination.
They stay away from the trees' flower which means bees have access to pollen whilst the ants keep up their vigilant patrol of other parts of the tree. This ant-guarding - one of the best known examples of a symbiotic arrangement between animals and plants - serves as a potent reminder of the mutually supportive relationships witnessed throughout this sanctuary. What began at sea - the anemone and the clown fish - is evident in the park's terrestrial flora and the fauna.
Symbiosis (from the Ancient Greek syn "with" and bisis "living") describes the close and usually long-term connectedness between quite different species. Like, for example, the warthog and the ground hornbill. Both are happy habitants of Saadani and have been witnessed in the wild benefiting from an arrangement whereby the hornbill grooms the warthog whilst enjoying a free meal of insects. Banded mongooses have also been observed picking ticks off warthogs in what scientists believe to be the only symbiotic relationship between two mammal species.
Saadani's topography isn't just startling because the beach rubs shoulders with the bush literally and suddenly. It is striking because such variation is packed so neatly in. The park's landscapes are composed of wooded hills juxtaposed with open savannah, of riverine jungle and coastal forest, of doum palms, Terminalia, Tamarind and Marula trees. The scrub is aflame with scarlet combretum and alight with the bright sunshine yellow of Grewia bicolor.
Two large forests flank the park's western borders: the Zaraninge and the Kwamsisi where shaded depths resonate with the throaty call of Colobus monkeys whose black and white capes break the dense green canopy which provides impenetrable cover to secret leopard. The woodland to the park's north is home to Greater Kudu, suni and red duiker. As trees give way to grass lands, a herd of Lichtenstein's Hartebeeste grazes. Groups of these antelope rarely number more than ten and are dominated by males who mark their territories by dropping to their knees and horning the ground while rubbing their preorobital glands on the soil. They reluctantly share a space with herds of White Bearded Wildebeeste, released into the area in the seventies when the then game reserve's zoo was closed. Other captors which were freed at the same time include zebra and eland. Waterbuck, bushbuck and giraffe (festooned with communes of oxpeckers which feed on insects plucked from the animal's coat and even court whilst in lofty transit) join the resident reedbuck to complete the tableau.
And slipping with a stealth that belies their size between the brush and the towering trees are herds of elephant. As Saadani gains a reputation as a serious wildlife sanctuary and one which, because of its tight containment and borders managed by Mother Nature herself in terms of ocean and river, so the elephants are gaining confidence in the guardianship of their sentinel. To the east of the park, south of the Mligaji River, sprawls a pair of forests dubbed Msitu wa Askari in acknowledgment of the German Soldiers who took refuge there when under attack from the British during World War II. One wonders that it now could not be renamed Msitu wa Tembo for the elephants which seek refuge in its shade during the heat of the day.