Ukara
| Ukara | ||
|---|---|---|
| Waters | Lake Victoria | |
| Geographical location | 1 ° 50 ′ S , 33 ° 3 ′ E | |
|
||
| length | 12.7 km | |
| width | 12.1 km | |
| surface | 80 km² | |
| Residents | 13,460 (2002) 168 inhabitants / km² |
|
| main place | Bwisya | |
Ukara is an island in the south of the East African Lake Victoria near the city of Mwanza and belongs to Tanzania . The 80 square kilometer, densely populated island is eight kilometers north of the main island Ukerewe within the archipelago that forms the Ukerewe district , one of the eight districts of the Mwanza region .
Ukara is described as an African model example of a centuries-old and still intensively economic agricultural society, which at the end of the 19th century was already able to feed over 200 inhabitants per square kilometer.
administration
Four of the 24 wards (subdivisions) of the Ukerewe district are on the island of Ukara:
- Bukungu (in the west, 2787 inhabitants)
- Bwisya (in the south, 5123)
- Bukiko (in the east, 2974)
- Nyamanga (in the north, 2576)
history
According to a pan-African political myth , the origin of all African peoples lies in the heart of the continent and is located with the legendary land of Punt or the area of Lake Victoria behind the moon mountains mapped by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD . In the center of this country was the island of Ukara in Lake Nalubaale , today 's Lake Victoria. Ukara - also another earlier name of the lake - is said to have been called "Land of the Sun". African peoples who emigrated from here to the north would have become ancestors of the ancient Egyptians in the Stone Age . This reversal of the Eurocentric worldview can be found not as a myth but as a historical thesis in Cheikh Anta Diop .
The European perspective from the colonial era, on the other hand, saw light-skinned Hamites who had "darkened" under the African sun immigrate from Asia and take control of Central Africa. What remains of this theory is the view that the Lake Victoria area has been around since the 5th – 10th centuries. Century was settled by agriculture-practicing Bantu , met with the Nilotic pastoral peoples immigrated from the north . Their first wave of immigration from what is now South Sudan is in the 14th – 15th centuries. Century. From the combination of the two ways of life, subsistence farming and semi-nomadic cattle breeding, some intensively arable societies were formed in the inter-lake area. This development was of central importance for Ukara.
The slave trade in East Africa was numerically insignificant. The older of the two trade routes from the East African coast to the south shore of Lake Victoria ran through Arusha and through Maasai land, which is contaminated by tsetse flies . Because of the great distance from the coast, the area was spared from slave raids by Arab traders. There was little intra-African slave trade around Lake Victoria. He limited himself to buying up the prisoners who had been abducted by Ganda during raids, and they were often women. At the height of the slave trade around 1880, only a few hundred slaves were exported. However, due to its remote island location, Ukara is ascribed a role as a refuge at this time. Families who migrated in small groups kept the population constant, so there are no historical periods of shortages due to overpopulation.
Pre-colonial trade in general was just as small as the slave trade. There were no elephants on the island and the residents were able to provide for themselves. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that the ivory traders' advance to Lake Victoria became profitable due to the increased prices. These traders brought salt from the Tabora area . In addition, iron hoe blades had to be obtained from outside, which in East Africa, like cotton cloth, took on a function as primitive money . Sugar cane was obtained from Ukerewe.
John Hanning Speke was the first European to come to Lake Victoria and the Ukerewe Archipelago in 1858. He had joined a trade caravan on Lake Tanganyika . He wanted to prove that he had found the source of the Nile along with the lake on another expedition, during which he and James Augustus Grant reached the lake again at Mwanza in 1861 . Speke describes the island of Ukara in his book The Discovery of the Nile Sources , which appeared in 1864, the year he died. Speke did not live to see the discussion afterwards in the Royal Geographical Society . In 1870 there was discussion about an 18 × 12 mile island Ukara north of Ukerewe, the inhabitants of which would master sorcery and magical medicine, with two or four other lakes to the east. To shed more light on the lake landscape, Henry Morton Stanley was commissioned with an expedition. He circumnavigated Lake Victoria in 1875 with boats. On another trip he visited the Ukerewe Islands in September 1889.
Germany began occupying the East African coast as a colony in 1885. Around 1890 a German police post was set up in Mwanza, a station on Ukerewe was supposed to help monitor Lake Victoria to the British in the north. The system of indirect rule was aimed at consolidating traditional structures of rule, clan chiefs or kings of the previous small states (title actually Omukama ) were dubbed "Sultan" and could continue to rule relatively autonomously. German officials only came to Ukara on inspection trips.
Because of different interests, the relationship with the Catholic missionaries who came to the islands in the 1890s was not necessarily geared towards cooperation. Their aim was to weaken the reputation of the local rulers in order to create a power base for themselves, which is why the locals initially treated them with hostility. (An example of how the tradition had to be broken on Ukerewe can be found there .) In the 1880s there was an ongoing struggle for power in the Kingdom of Buganda between the four parties of king, Catholics ( White Fathers ), Anglicans and Muslims , with changing alliances between those involved and changing fortunes of war. In 1889 the Christian churches came to power through an uprising. When the bloody war for power between the two broke out in 1892, the Catholics, headed by Bishop Hirth, suffered a defeat and had to flee the country as a result. After a vacation in Europe, Hirth returned to Africa with rifles and other missionaries and began missionary work in the area around Mwanza in 1895, before settling in the still untouched Rwanda . The Catholic faith that is still prevalent on the island dates from this time. A church from German colonial times can be visited.
society
Society was divided into patrilineal clans, which were independent and whose clan elders took on religious functions. In the wider area there were small states with a complicated administrative structure and a ruling class that controlled the resources and acted partly with and partly against the individual clans. On the other hand, there was also a gradation according to different status groups on Ukara, but a central authority only for jurisdiction. Clan elders were required to reach consensus on economic decisions.
The island's population consists mainly of Kara , who form the second largest population group on the neighboring island of Ukerewe. Some also live in Mwanza and along the south-east coast of the lake. Their language belongs to the subgroup Haya-Jita of Zone J of the Bantu languages spoken in the countries around Lake Victoria .
In 1920, the population was estimated to be 23,000 according to the information 4600 huts with 5 people each. That corresponds to 291 inhabitants per square kilometer. For the Ukerewe district in 2002 at least 480 inhabitants per square kilometer are calculated. Included in the area are around 30 outer islands, only half of which are permanently inhabited. Ukara is therefore, in itself, the most densely populated rural area of Tanzania even before the island of Pemba .
geography
Ukara is ten kilometers north of Ukerewe and is approximately round with a diameter of ten kilometers. The island is formed by a granite base, the weathering products of which have created a layer of sandy, light brown soil. Two small hills are less than a hundred meters high. Washed out granite surfaces and round rocks emerge in numerous places. Instead of natural forest, there are tree plantings around houses, along paths and streams. Non-farmed areas are covered with grass and serve as grazing land. The annual average rainfall is 1200–1600 millimeters and, as usual at Lake Victoria, often falls in the form of heavy showers. Soil erosion is countered with targeted planting and light soil leveling.
economy
A constant high population for centuries was only possible in a small area on the relatively barren soils because arable farming and cattle breeding were carried out at the same time and in addition. In the East African inter-seas region, a pastoral elite ( Hima , Tutsi ) had generally risen above farmers ( Hutu ) when it came to state formation. This economic differentiation did not exist on the island. With dwindling resources to neighboring Sukuma country emigrated families abandoned their traditional forms of agriculture and took the usual there shifting cultivation .
For the example of Ukara, the theory of population development proposed by Malthus in 1798 proves to be unsuitable. Contrary to what Malthus pointed out, due to increased demand, population growth led to agricultural development. Starting from the long fallow periods of extensive shifting cultivation, which was continued in the surrounding area, permanent crops gradually developed by shortening the fallow cycles.
agriculture
In regions with high levels of rainfall, the cultivation of bananas allows higher population densities, as they can be harvested all year round. There are different types: for cooking , sweet bananas for direct consumption and others for making banana beer, pombe . The cultivation of pearl millet is also traditional, alternating with vegetables, with fertilization taking place annually during the main rainy season (March to May). In the next year, peanuts will be grown during the second rainy season (October to January) . (During the German colonial period, the cultivation of peanuts was required, which until 1912 became the most important export good from the Mwanza region.) In the third year, sorghum , cassava or sweet potato can follow. Rice is grown on small areas in the valley floors.
On average, one hectare of land is available per family. The entire island is privately owned, and all trees can be assigned to one owner. Before being processed into firewood, trees have a value as fodder for cattle because the leaves are harvested. Trees can even be leased for this purpose. Each family has three to four cattle, which are kept in stables near the houses at night. This allows the manure to be collected and brought to the fields.
Fishing
At all times, fishing has been necessary for food security. Since the catch was not equally productive all year round, fish were dried. Women were not allowed to eat some types of fish.
Popular fish species on the local market that have survived the expansion of the Nile perch from the 1980s onwards are the sardine-sized, blue-gray furu and the similarly small dagaa , both of which can be eaten in one piece, sun-dried for storage or processed into fish meal in Mwanza . Ngere ( Synodontis afrofischeri ), also called "gogogo" by fishermen, are catfish-like and are caught at depths of 20 to 40 meters. Fishermen often injure themselves on the spines of their pelvic fins. Ngs have high fat meat. In the article Ukerewe the fishing of the archipelago is described.
tourism
From Bugolora on the north coast of Ukerewe there is a connection with a ferry to the main town of Bwisya , which has simple accommodation options . If the water level of Lake Victoria remains low, landing at the port of Bwisya can be difficult. Bicycles are most suitable for getting around on the narrow driveways.
Fiction
- Aniceti Kitereza : Die Kinder der Regenmacher , published in German in 1990, about the pre-colonial society on Ukerewe, also offers an insight into the old society of the neighboring island.
- Hans Paasche : The African Lukanga Mukara's research trip into Germany. 1921. The hero left the overpopulated Ukara and went to Ukerewe before starting his research trip to Germany. Text online
Web links
- The Gallery. Mwanza Guide
Individual evidence
- ^ Heinz Dieter Ludwig: Ukara. A special case of tropical land use in the area around Lake Victoria. An economic geographic development study. Munich 1967
- ↑ Population for the 2002 census
- ^ First published by John Hanning Speke: Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. London 1863 (Reprinted 1908, pp. 201-206). Also online
- ↑ Markus Boller: Coffee, Children, Colonialism. Economic and population development in Buhaya (Tanzania) during the German colonial period. Münster, Hamburg 1994, p. 85. There sources and various figures.
- ↑ Before that, potassium salt was extracted from plant ash on Ukara, which was then floated, filtered through a clay pot with holes in the bottom and then dried.
- ↑ Athenaeum, 1870 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , namely the lakes Baringo, Okara, Kavirondo and Naivasha.
- ↑ Gudrun Honke u. a .: When the whites came. Rwanda and the Germans 1885–1919. Wuppertal 1990
- ^ Ethnologue: Linguistic Lineage for Kara.
- ↑ Details for the 24 wards (sub-districts): 2002 Population and Housing Census. ( Memento from June 22, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Holli Riebeek: Lake Victoria's Falling Waters. Earth Observatory
