Population-environment internship in Ugalla Game Reserve, Tanzania:
Wild nature and the good willing men who try to protect what is left of it

Danny de Vries
UNC Chapel Hill Department of Anthropology Volume 6 No. 1 Spring 2001

The Africare Urambo District Field Officer - Mr. Massawa - and I stumbled upon Mr. Lyamuya - a Coleman & Robin Hurt hunting company big shot - in the so-called bar of the Station Master in Lumbe Station. Lumbe Station was a village of dirt roads and straw huts bordering the Ugalla Game Reserve and Mpanda line railway in Tanzania. We had just returned to Lumbe Station from the day's unsuccessful mission: delivering a locally made new type of canoe (one more stable and crocodile safe) to a fishing village on the Ugalla River deep in the Miombo woodland. This was a typical mission for Africare, the development NGO whose purpose seemed to be the introduction of "better" alternative technologies in exchange for the promise by citizens to manage the natural resources. Africare sought to subvert corrupt governments and corporate exploitation. Yet the "better" canoe had not yet been finished because no "legal" timber had been found. "The forest conservation strategy is starting to pay off," said the Urambo Fisheries Officer, who had joined us for the field trip. I could not help wondering what the economic implications of such conservation were for the many small children with swollen bellies I that had seen that day. It was the first time I had seen true hunger. On what side of the line did I stand?

Just outside the fishing village on the way back to Lumbe Station base camp, we were blocked by the platoon of heavily armed forestry officers who policed the District's forests in an old Toyota truck, and had claimed that "we are hunting the hunters." They had accompanied us on our trip to the fishing village, but now stopped on the road and prevented us from proceeding on our three-hour return trip through the woodland. "An elephant was shot," I was told, and Massawa and I went out to see its remains. The elephant had pestered the people for about a month when a seventy-five year old man had enough and shot it, against regulations, risking a minimum of fifteen years and a maximum of thirty years in jail. After the killing, the old men had walked to the village and turned himself in with the Coleman
& Robin Hurt anti-poaching team. United, the villagers had supported him, sending letters of apology to the local government, attesting he was not a poacher. Nonetheless, the sweet-natured District Forestry Officer later explained to me, he was a poacher "and in possession of an illegal gun."
 

We returned, three and a half hours later - having at one point almost been killed while driving at high speed by a tree we failed to see - to stumble across a business strategy being enacted. Coleman & Robin Hurt Company presented itself to us in the form of four young ambitious anti-poachers, armed to the teeth, who were riding in a jeep that appeared to be from a war zone, and were under the experienced guidance of Mr. Lyamuya. My week of village travels had taught me that Lyamuya was an important man. In almost every village I visited, the lofty goals of Africare's Community Conservation Project seemed of marginal importance
compared to the actual hard cash that streamed into the villages from the tourist hunting business. Where a new school or dispensary had been erected, the money had come from Coleman & Robin Hurt Company. The influence of the business was such that one man declared that "in 1990, the Ugalla became a national Game Reserve and then Coleman took it in 1993." Lyamuya told me that he actually disliked the underlying philosophy of his job because he hated these Western people who thought they could master nature by killing something as powerful and beautiful as a buffalo. Was I naive to think that Lyamuya was sincere in his conservation efforts (even when he referred to Lumbe as a "shithole" compared to Arusha)?

When Mr. Massawa and I saw the scattered elephant bones and hide, as well as the damaged bushes and crops, he shook his head. "We could have prevented this if only they had waited and informed the foresters. One shot in the air would have been enough to scare the elephant away for a long time." In his mind, the villagers did not understand. The government was corrupt and its forestry officers were overworked. The Africare team had also worked hard, but the task to be done was too great, and however honest and sincere were those in Africare's higher ranks, they were also demoralized. "Coleman & Robin Hurt Company only started to help after the new Forest policy came into effect," Massawa said. In the bar back at Lumbe Station, he did not dare to strike up a conversation with Mr. Lyamuya, while I - white, male, ignorant - could do so. A true pioneering hero of Tanzanian forest policy, lured away from his government job by the hard cash of Africare, the Urambo Africare Officer felt alone and overwhelmed.