TWO YEARS IN TANGANYIKA

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26868, 22 October 1952, Page 3

TWO YEARS IN TANGANYIKA

CHRISTCHURCH MAN DESCRIBES LIFE

PRIMITIVE SYSTEMS OF FARMING

Mr C. S. Kernahan, who is now visiting his home in Christchurch, has spent two years and a half with the Colonial Service in Tanganyika. After gaining a B.Com. degree at Canterbury University College he left New Zealand in 1948 and spent a year at Cambridge University and three months at London University before going, to Africa. In Tanganyika he has for most of the time been a district officer in the district of Songea. The town of the same name which has been his headquarters has a European population of only 35 with about 1300 Africans and 180 Indians. It has no electricity or piped water suppiy. African water boys carry the water daily from streams to replenish the water tanks. For four months each year the town, which is 400 miles from the coast, has no road access. That is during the rainy season, when the roads become quagmires. However, throughout the year a weekly air service is operated to and from Songea. The district of Songea has a native population of 155.000. Only a fraction of the district is cultivated.

The Wangoni tribe, descendants of Zulu invaders, farm on a “shift” cultivation basis. They cut out an area of bush, and till it for three or four years until the land is worked out. Then they move to another area. They take 20 or 25 years to cover the area they inhabit under this system of cultivation. Efforts are being made to educate them to the use of manure from their cattle to fertilise their land. Hill Erosion Checked

The Wamatengo people, who live on the hills, farm on a different basis. They hold land inherited from their forefathers. Their hillsides appear to be pock-marked by basins similar to shell holes. At the end of the dry season, when the grass has dried off, the natives dig out endless numbers of basins, and pile up the dead grass around them. The grass is set on fire, and subsequently seed is sown around the rims of the basins. The basins have an imoortant anti-erosion function in retarding run-off on steep hillsides. The tsetse fly abounds in the district, except hear the town. The pest is general throughout Tanganyika, and is one of" the country’s greatest problems, strictly limiting stock grazing. Mr Kernahan said in an interview that an officer was making a survey in the district with a view to checking the fly. If it was possible to control the fly, there would be distinct possibilities of grazing beef cattle. In Rhodesia and in another area the fly had been attacked by cutting out pockets of bush and trees where the flies bred. Abundant Wild Game The district in which Mr Kernahan works abounds with wild game, including elephants, lions, leopards, buffaloes, and crocodiles. For a month Mr and Mrs Kernahan cared for two lion cubs at their home. The cubs were among four thought to be the offspring of a man-eating lioness which killed 39 persons before she was herself killed. Two of the cubs are now in the Rome Zoo.

Elephants were inclined to be a menace to native crops, said Mr Kernahan, as they sometimes raided plantations just when crops were reaching maturity. African game scouts were employed to scare them away. They fired shots only to frighten the animals.

Shooting of elephants was strictly controlled, Mr Kernahan said. Ordinarily a person was allowed to shoot only two a year, the licence for the first costing about £2O and the second about £3O, but even at that price it was worth while, as most people did not shoot an animal with tusks weighing less than 451 b. The ivory was worth about £1 per lb. Coal and Iron Deposits On the edge of Lake Nyasa, Mr Kernahan said, the Colonial Development Corporation had earlier this year completed investigating coal and iron ore deposits. It was known that the coal deposits were large and workable. If it was decided to develop these resources, it would be necessary to extend the railway 250 miles from Nachingwea, the site of the groundnuts scheme, so that the coal could be taken to industry on the coast Mr Kernahan said. In the past most of East Africa’s coal had been brought by sea from South Africa. Mr Kernahan will return to Tanganyika next February.