DR: WMA Interviews in Mswakini

I spent three days last week and part of this week collecting data for another Environmental Policy DR. This one is about Wildlife Management Areas. Unfortunately, SFS wasn’t able to a get a permit for interviewing in the area we originally were meant to interview in (elections are this year, so we were a low priority on the Manyara District’s list). This meant that we had to interview in the area that all of the other DR groups were interviewing in, Mswakini (which means toothbrush in Swahili!).

Before I continue, I’ll give a little bit of background on what a Wildlife Management Area or WMA is. Theoretically, it is a way to get local people involved in conservation. There is a fairly lengthy application process in which a group of villages requests the government to give them the rights to a certain portion of land near them. (Land ownership in Tanzania confuses me, so I’m not even going to try and explain it. It’s something like the government technically owns all of the land, so the village doesn’t own the land their on, they just get to use it… something like that). Then, the villages make a plan as to how to manage this land. They can set some of it aside for conservation, some aside for tourist lodges or hunting areas, and other areas for managed resource use. Villagers vote for the people who are responsible for running the WMA. We’ve gone to one WMA, the Burunge WMA, which seemed fairly successful. The ten villages that shared Burunge did make a fair amount of money, which was used to build schools and other community buildings. Burunge was actually where we were supposed to do interviews, and it would have been interesting to see how people viewed that WMA. The WMA in Mswakini, called the Randile WMA, is much newer than Burunge. It just started making money this year.

The first day of interviews was in the village of Mswakini Chini. It was fairly overcast, so the temperatures didn’t get overwhelming awful (it gets ridiculously hot in that area), and people were pretty nice and cooperative. It was a bit of a struggle remembering to greet and thank people in Maa instead of Iraqw. We met one women who spoke very good English, and she told us in her own words all about the problems they were facing. She actually asked us why were there and not inside Tarangire. I feel awful every time I visit that area because I am one of the wazungu who gets to enjoy Tarangire National Park while the Maasai’s livelihoods get destroyed by the wildlife. And I’m not really in a position to do anything about it, despite asking them questions all of the time. I feel like Americans and Europeans and all people who visit Africa or want to visit Africa to see the wildlife also need to be made aware of the problems the wildlife cause. Before I didn’t really realize this, but now it seems really selfish to me to think solely of creatures you can see on safari and be completely oblivious to the fact that these animals are actually super destructive. And we Americans can’t talk because we’ve devastated populations of animals that get in the way of our livelihoods, especially carnivores like wolves. Ugh, these things just make me so frustrated and disheartened!

The other village, Mswakini Ju, was also pretty nice. It has a lot more trees and vegetation than Mswakini Chini. Also, whereas MC has mostly only traditional round Maasai bomas and the people wear Maasai robes, MJ had some more "typical" (at least what a Westerner might consider more typical) houses and people wore more western clothing. We had some pretty interesting moments in MJ, though. At one boma, Maria wanted to take a picture of a group of very cute baby goats, so she asked our guide to ask the family if that would be all right. The mama responded that Maria would have to pay her, so we left without the picture. Our guide was then like, yeah, these people need their goats to make money. Apparently he told them Maria wanted to take the goat, not take a picture!

There was also an instance that didn’t really make sense until after the group discussion in MJ. There was a group of women at one boma who had told our guide that if Maria and I hadn’t been with him they would have chased us away because they thought we were coming to steal their land. At the time, this seemed a little ridiculous, but then we found out during the group discussion that when the WMA was first established, villagers held a peaceful protest against it. Their viewpoint was that the WMA officers were simply stealing their land, which was kind of true. These people don’t get direct benefits from the land they lost to WMA, and if they do, the WMA didn’t bother to educate them about it so they don’t realize if they are getting benefits. Apparently, during this protest, village leaders called the police, and the police ended up using tear gas on the villagers. This would have been useful information to know before we started walking around these villages asking all of these questions about the WMA! We knew it was disliked, but we didn’t know it had such a dark history in the village. A lot of people’s responses to, “Do you think the WMA should continue to operate?” was, “The WMA should die.”

MJ also has its fair share of wildlife issues, actually more than its fair share. It borders Tarangire, so they get all of the animals. One woman showed us the destruction elephants had done to her farm the night before. They had crushed a lot of the maize and then knocked over trees. We also met one mama who was very nice and talked a little to Maria and I in Swahili. We later learned that an elephant had killed her eldest son the year before. People always ask us, what are you going to do to help? It’s a daunting question, and one I may like to think we have solutions to (bring more awareness, bring more education to the area, give village leaders ideas to help local people), but that I have to admit are idealized.