Brings No Harm expands the existing literature in three respects. First, it pushes us to think about development over a longer timeframe. Debates about how to develop water resources, by whom and using what technologies, did not arise with colonial rule. They had preoccupied local experts for centuries, just as they preoccupied colonial scientists and engineers working for the Tanzanian state. Second, it shows that development has involved a larger toolbox than is commonly assumed. Most studies of development center on a case study, and many of these are specific projects, like dams or irrigation schemes. By focusing on developing a resource rather than a technology, this book shows that the toolbox used by development actors has included legal, scientific, and cultural interventions as well as political and technical ones. Lastly, this book shows that development struggles in the absence of social resonance and engagement with local knowledge. Community water management thrived for centuries because the diverse forms of management knowledge linked together to create a shared sense of responsibility and ownership. Though the mifongo may have become antiquated in light of alternative technologies and the changing needs of users, the social networks they engendered could have been embraced to make new technologies more effective and sustainable. Yet colonial and postcolonial development deliberately excluded local communities for decades. In recent years, the Tanzanian government and development agencies have engaged with local communities, but they have done so only in limited ways and under the assumption that local knowledge has little to offer. This book indicates that the key to successful development is not just engaging the local, but incorporating the local in meaningful ways that builds social connectivity and engages local knowledge and expertise.
THE UNIQUENESS OF KILIMANJARO
Mount Kilimanjaro is an illuminating place for this study, in part because of its physical uniqueness. It is the tallest mountain in Africa, the world’s fourth tallest in geographic prominence, the tallest of volcanic origin, and the tallest that does not lie in a range. It stretches 95 kilometers from east to west, 65 kilometers from north to south, and is separated by at least 30 kilometers from neighboring peaks.32 Two volcanic cones define the massif: Mawenzi (5,149 meters) and the glacier-capped Kibo (5,895 meters). Neighboring peaks—Mount Meru to the west, the Taita Hills to the east, and the Pare Mountains to the southeast—all lie beyond its foothills. The semiarid grasslands of the steppe surround the mountain on all sides and average about 800 meters in elevation. A sky island in a sea of aridity, the mountain features its own unique climate zones with large variations in temperature and precipitation.33 At the highest points of Kibo lie two ice fields that stretch downward from the peak. Beneath these is a region of alpine desert (4,000–5,000 meters) marked by minimal vegetation and animal life. Next is a zone of heathlands and moorlands (2,800–4,000 meters), a transition zone with minimal precipitation and various heathers and small shrubs. Beyond this point are areas of high precipitation. An alpine rainforest lies between 1,800 and 2,800 meters, featuring abundant water and a wealth of vegetation. Further downhill lies the area of focus for this study, the temperate forest, or agroforest zone. Called home by mountain peoples, it lies between 800 and 1,800 meters and features moderate temperatures, rich soils, and annual rainfall between 750 and 2,500 millimeters. Beyond this lies the lowland steppe, which averages less than 500 millimeters of rain per year and has only scrubby vegetation.
Water features define this mountain landscape. The most renowned is the ice cap at the top of Kibo. The upper reaches also receive seasonal snowfall, giving the whole of Kibo a distinctive white layer during periods of the year. The surface waters that flow from the rainforest through the agroforest zone are generated by the precipitation of two rainy seasons. Rainfall in the forests feeds dozens of rivers and streams that run in deep ravines by the time they reach the settled area. The most voluminous of the rivers are (from west to east) the Kikafu, the Weru Weru, the Karanga, the Himo, and the Lumi. All converge into the Pangani River, which flows southeast along the Pare and Usambara Mountains until it reaches the Indian Ocean. The Pangani Basin is today one of the most crucial watersheds in Tanzania, home to more than 2.3 million people and 17 percent of the country’s hydroelectric capacity. River and stream flow is seasonally dependent, with high rates of flow during and immediately after the rains and low rates of flow in the dry seasons. Though the mountain possesses ample water in contrast to the surrounding steppe, it experiences drought on average every six to eight years. Kilimanjaro’s vast water features, and their juxtaposition to the arid steppe, make the region an important place for studying conflicting knowledge about water.
A second factor is the people who for generations have called it home. The peoples now known as the Chagga first settled the lower slopes more than five hundred years ago.34 They formed small clan-based communities on the ridges of the agroforest zone, on the south and east sides. These communities shared cultural and economic similarities and spoke related languages, but they did not possess a single identity. The strongest continuity was a form of agriculture defined by the cultivation of bananas, yams, and vegetables on homesteads called vihamba. In the nineteenth century, the clans on each ridge began to consolidate politically, and chieftaincy emerged. Yet the mountain remained a diverse place. What outsiders saw as a uniform Chagga society was actually a place of many societies, with strong linguistic diversity and no sense of political unity. The twentieth century witnessed developments including the rise of coffee cultivation, further political consolidation, and the formation of a shared identity. To this day, the Chagga retain cultural pride that is linked to the mountain as a physical space.
What makes these communities unique is the nature of their engagement with water. While all communities in Africa—and the world—depend on water, the peoples of Kilimanjaro developed a unique web of knowledge about the resource that touched nearly every aspect of life. This owed partly to the uniqueness of the mountain, featuring a narrow band of highly fertile soil and ample water wedged between the rainforest and the steppe. As such, waterscapes came to define the identity of mountain peoples and their notions of inclusion and exclusion. Furthermore, the multiplicity of sources enabled many to adopt a multiple-source water economy, in which they gathered water from different locations, at different times of the year, for different purposes. The physical placement of rivers and streams shaped communities, while the importance of water to livelihood shaped social, political, and cultural institutions. Lastly, mountain people have a long history of active water management. The need to control the multiplicity of resources lent power to specialists, but the availability of alternative sources also empowered a wide range of users. As a result, community water management on the mountain was more decentralized than that of most other places.
Lastly, Kilimanjaro has long fascinated outsiders, largely because of its waterscape. The earliest known allusions to a snowcapped mountain by non-Africans date back to antiquity. In the second century CE, Greco-Egyptian geographer Claudius Ptolemy wrote of a Great Snow Mountain near the spring lake that fed the Nile River. Other classical writers, such as Herodotus, speculated about snow mountains that fed the Nile. In the fifteenth century, Spanish traveler Martin Fernández de Enciso wrote in Summa de geografía that west of Mombasa stands the “Ethiopian Mount Olympus, which is exceedingly high.” These accounts were not verified by firsthand observations until the nineteenth century, when missionary Johannes Rebmann became the first European to see the mountain. With its tremendous size, its isolation from other peaks, its seeming abundance of water amid the steppe, and, most notably, its glaciers, Kilimanjaro became the most renowned geographic feature of sub-Saharan Africa. With the emergence of colonial rule, Africa’s Olympus came to be a lucrative piece of territory and a symbol of Europe’s desire to dominate Africa. It even became a powerful literary symbol, as we see in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The mountain remains an important symbol to outsiders such as the Tanzanian state, mountain climbers, and scientists concerned with climate change.
The symbolic importance of Kilimanjaro and its waterscape to outsiders makes it a particularly good place for this study. Largely because of its allure, the mountain has attracted an unusually diverse cast of outside actors. As these outsiders have asserted power over the mountain and its people—whether for political domination, economic gain, religious conversion, nation building, alpine conquest, or other goals—the mountain communities have found themselves
