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A geographic overview of Taita Hills, Kenya
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Salminen, Hazel |
| Copyright Year | 2004 |
| Abstract | The purpose of this study is to create a general picture of the Taita Hills region in southeastern Kenya, through describing its natural environment and its historical as well as its social background. Also, the human impact on this vulnerable environment will be discussed briefly. Not much has been written on the specific area of the Taita Hills apart from scholarly articles or environmental program reports on e.g. biodiversity, so I will have to deal with the problem of limited material. The data used for this paper is not first-hand, e.g. interviews, instead all information is gathered from maps, archival material, and articles from journals or other academic resources. Most information will have to be compiled from more general books and Internet sources on Kenya. The research will be conducted in a geographic context, but the attempt is basically to create a regional overview of the Taita Hills and to touch on a few critical issues concerning the human-environment issues in the area. Kenya and Taita Hills: a physical geography Locating and defining the area of research Kenya is located on the equator in eastern Africa, adjacent to the Indian Ocean. It has five neighbouring countries: Tanzania in the south, Uganda and Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the north, and Somalia in the east (Figure 1). (World Factbook 2002) The area of research, Taita Hills (03°20'S, 38°15'E), is located in southeastern Kenya, about 150 km inland from the Indian Ocean (Figure 2). It lies in the Taita-Taveta district, close to the Tanzanian border. The hills cover around 250 km2, with a highest peak of around 2200 m (EAWLS 2001, Fleuret & Fleuret 1991:92, LAE 2003a). Defining the research area is quite straightforward in this case, because the Taita Hills area is effectively isolated from the surrounding mountainous areas by the Tsavo plains (altitude 700 m). Further, it is usually divided into three distinct isolates: Dabida, Sagalla, and Mbololo hills (LAE 2003a). Physical features of Kenya and Taita Kenya shows a great deal of variation in climate and terrain; from the low-lying, hot and humid coastal regions to the arid central highlands. Parted from these by the Rift Valley, lies the fertile plateau of western Kenya (World Factbook 2002). Most of the country has two wet seasons and two dry seasons yearly, but in general the total rainfall is quite erratic. (Kaplan et al. 1976:vii) Taita Hills form the northernmost part of the Eastern Arc Mountains, a crescent-shaped geological formation that runs through most of eastern Tanzania and ends in southeastern Kenya (Fieldmuseum 2001, LAE 2003a, Rogo & Oguge 2000:522). The term 'Eastern Arc' was established by Dr. Jon Lovett in the mid 1980's and is now widely used to describe this stretch of mountains (Schulman 1998). The range consists of crystalline block-faulted mountains, created around 290-180 million years ago and, because of their age, their isolated location, and comparatively stable climatic conditions, they harbour a unique flora and fauna and have a high level of endemic species (Rogo & Oguge 2000:522, Schulman 1998): E.g. 74 endemic vertebrates, 265 endemic invertebrates, and 66 endemic trees have been recorded (LAE 2003b). Together with the East African coastal forests, the Eastern Arc Mountains are acknowledged as one of the 25 biodiversity 'hotspots' in the world, and as the "Galapagos Islands of Africa", they have also been proposed to be added to the World Heritage list (Fieldmuseum 2001, LAE 2003b, Rogo & Oguge 2000:522). In: Pellikka, P., J. Ylhäisi & B. Clark (eds.) Taita Hills and Kenya, 2004 – seminar, reports and journal of a field excursion to Kenya. Expedition reports of the Department of Geography, University of Helsinki 40, 31-38. Helsinki 2004, ISBN 952-10-2077-6, 148 pp. Also climatic factors have affected the high biodiversity and specialization of the mountain peaks; as most of the surrounding plains are low, the mountains create the first barrier meeting the moist winds from the Indian Ocean, and thus they receive high amounts of rainfall (on average 1332 – 1910 mm/a). At the same time the air can contain more humidity as the temperatures drop with increasing elevation (EAWLS 2001). The southern and eastern slopes of the hills receive more rainfall than the western and northern slopes. The main features of the Taita Hills are presented in Figure 2. Looking more closely at the research area, the Taita Hills, too, can be roughly divided into climatic zones according to elevation. Figure 3 shows the elevation profile, where the highest zone of Iparenyi has the most fertile land, the middle hills (Msidunyi) have the more exhausted soils due to a dense population, and the plain level of Bondeni consists of less arable land (Fleuret & Fleuret 1991:92-93). The distinct communities that have adjusted to these zones of different elevations will be presented later on in the section concerning the Taita settlement, and they act as an example of how difficult it is to separate the human communities from the physical environment. As the following quote from the homepage of the Kenya Forests Working Group shows, people's well being cannot be disconnected from the well being of nature: “Forests occupy about 2-3% of Kenya's land area and yet, they are reservoirs of biological diversity (genes, species and ecosystems). These forests and the biological diversity they carry are important because, it contributes directly to the well being of Kenyans, especially those in the rural areas, and indirectly to the mainly agricultural economy. It is widely accepted that forest resources and associated lands should be managed to meet the social, economic, cultural and spiritual needs of present and future generations. In Kenya, forests provide wood and wood products to over 80% of all households.” (KFWG 2003) At the regional level of the Taita Hills, the forests are also important, because the annual rainfall there is considerably higher than on the Figure 1. The Taita Hills and Kenya. surrounding plains (Kaplan et al. 1976:61). This is reflected e.g. in the previously mentioned difference in fertility of the soils on the hills vs. on the plains. The forests are the sources of major springs and also constitute the catchment areas for several river systems, which are important for the agriculture in the region (Figure 4) (EAWLS 2001). Dimensions of human geography in Kenya and Taita The history of human settlement Eastern Africa is seen as a possible site for the first stages of human evolution, and the area of modern Kenya has been inhabited from before 0 AD. As a result the forests of the Eastern Arc have been inhabited and altered by people for thousands of years (Kaplan et al. 1976:11-12). In the Area Handbook of Kenya, Irving Kaplan (et al. 1976) and his co-authors describe the influx of different population groups into Africa. They point out that although humans have probably inhabited Africa since the dawn of In: Pellikka, P., J. Ylhäisi & B. Clark (eds.) Taita Hills and Kenya, 2004 – seminar, reports and journal of a field excursion to Kenya. Expedition reports of the Department of Geography, University of Helsinki 40, 31-38. Helsinki 2004, ISBN 952-10-2077-6, 148 pp. Figure 2. The Taita Hills rise from plains at 800 – 1000 m a.s.l. up to mountain peaks over 2000 meters. The soils in the highlands are fertile, while the lowland soils are poor in nutrients. time, some major ethnic groups only arrived a thousand years ago; like the Arab groups settling on the east coast. Europeans and Asians began settling into Africa only a little more than a century ago. Having been influenced, dominated and ruled by different ethnic groups and their culture (mainly Arab, Portuguese, and British), Kenya gained independence from the United Kingdom on December 12, 1963. Today, it is a republic with a rapidly increasing population, now at roughly 31 million (estimate of 2002). The capital, Nairobi (see Figure 1), has more than 2.5 million inhabitants and is also growing at an alarming rate. The demographic and human geographic features of Kenya will be discussed briefly in the following section (Kaplan et al. 1976, Nairobi City 2003, World Factbook 2002). In: Pellikka, P., J. Ylhäisi & B. Clark (eds.) Taita Hills and Kenya, 2004 – seminar, reports and journal of a field excursion to Kenya. Expedition reports of the Department of Geography, University of Helsinki 40, 31-38. Helsinki 2004, ISBN 952-10-2077-6, 148 pp. Figure 3. Elevations and locations of communities in Taita Hills (Fleuret & Fleuret 1991:93). The first known inhabitants to the Taita region date to around a thousand years ago, when a hunter-gatherer people of unknown origin, referred to as “Dorobo” by the Taita people of today, settled there. Another group, a people of agro-pastoralists migrated to Taita, probably from the Ethiopian highlands, building the area's first permanent dwellings and displacing the hunter-gatherers by “killing them, driving them off, and gradually absorbing them” (Bravman 1998:28). It is difficult to pinpoint the exact time of arrival for the ancestors of the present population, but it is believed that they came “in many waves, from many directions, over a long period of time”, starting in the midsixteenth century with the first immigrants most likely originating in southeast Somalia or northeast Kenya (Bravman 1998:28-29). Today, the inhabitants of the Taita Hills region are called the Taita people (or WaTaita, as Bravman (1998) refers to them as), speaking a language called “Taita” (also “Dawida”). According to Bill Bravman (1998:28), who studied the Taita communities and their social transformation between 1800 and 1950, this picture of “unity” is partly false. During his interviews and field studies he did not hear of origin stories speaking for all Taita, and rather, he sees the Taita settlement as having multiple “sub-histories”. Until the 20 century, he says, the Taita did not see themselves as |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.helsinki.fi/science/taita/reports/Salminen_Geographic_overview.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
