The Ikoma is a Bantu-speaking ethnic group that was chased out of the world famous Serengeti National Park in northwestern Tanzania, but has since tried to compensate for the loss by invoking the protective power of a pair of elephant tusks. I have had the privilege of visiting the Ikoma a number of times in recent years, and have become fascinated with how they carve out a space for themselves amidst the challenges of the encroaching, globalized world.
People groups typically constitute and legitimize themselves by constructing narratives about how they emerged, of how they have come to claim possession of territories and resources, and of how they see themselves in relation to others. Such stories often have to be adjusted and refashioned according to the changing circumstances in order to maintain a positive sense of self.
The “original” dwellers in the Serengeti area, from as far back has historical records can take us with reasonable certainty, were the Asi (Ndorobo) hunter-and- gatherers. All other people groups, representing different continental-wide linguistic families such as the Bantu and the Nilotes, have migrated into the area in different historical waves. Land was plentiful, so the various groups only experienced minor competition and conflict in taking possession of different ecological niches and learning to adapt to various means of using the natural resources and to each other.
The Ikoma were hunters that eventually also picked up some agriculture and animal husbandry. The dominant group out on the Serengeti plains at the time was the pastoralist Datoga. The Ikoma harbour a special affinity towards the Nilotic Datoga because at one point in their history when they experienced a distressful time, they went to the Ngorongoro area to consult with a famous Datoga prophet and rain-maker. The prophet received them well, and had a solution to their afflictions. He asked for a bow and arrow, shot the arrow far into the distance, and told the Ikoma men to follow the direction of the arrow. He said it had killed an animal, which they should consider to be divine from that day on, and they should pay attention to what would happen next.
Mzee Maro Marongori, an elder in the Nyichoka village who is telling me this story, says that the men found that the arrow had killed an elephant. Upon extracting the tusks, the men realized that the pair contained a force that simply overpowered them and took them in the direction towards the Grumeti river where they came to rest at what is today known as the Robanda village. The tusks, one a little longer than the other, were conceived to be a male and a female deities that together were to be venerated as Machaba. The Ikoma lived happily in the area from Seronera, in the heart of today’s Serengeti, and towards the banks of the Grumeti. In fact, the prophet had warned that Machaba should never cross the river.
But times were changing. From the mid-19th century, the East African hinterland was getting sucked up in an early wave of globalization as the ivory and slave trade run by the Arabs from their stronghold on Zanzibar generated both instability and enmity between people and groups. Groups moved away from the trade routes, and pushed into the territory of others. The pastoralist Maasai, who were reputed in their own right to be aggressive cattle raiders, now penetrated into the Ngorongoro-Serengeti area and soon chased away the people groups traditionally living there.
The Ikoma would try to get back into Serengeti, only to be stopped by a new, formidable actor appearing unto the scene; the European colonial government, first the German, and then the British. What the Europeans discovered when they entered Serengeti was “pristine nature” teeming with wildlife and hardly any people. The area captured their imagination and sense of adventure. They transposed their European elitist notion of landscape unto their colony by separating productive, inhabited areas from “untouched” areas designated for leisure and hunting for sports. Serengeti became a popular safari destination for European hunting parties. Indigenous hunters such as the Ikoma were unwelcome because their hunting methods such as traps and pits were considered to be cruel and lacking of sportsmanship.
Ironically, while the indigenous hunters had for centuries lived in viable co-existence with the wildlife in the area, the indiscriminate European hunting for pleasure started to deplete certain species at an alarming rate raising the concerns of another set of foreigners; nature conservationists. They successfully lobbied for restrictions. Chief among them was Dr. Bernhard Grzimek of Frankfurt Zoo and Serengeti Shall Not Die fame. Serengeti was turned into a game restricted game reserve, and eventually into a national park with full and exclusive protection of nature (1952).
High up on Dr. Grzimek’s enemy list were Ikoma youth. They were now classified as “poachers” who had to be kept out of the park at all costs. Crammed into the restricted space of villages outside the park and refusing to comply with government orders of becoming fulltime agriculturalists, Ikoma men increasingly turned to hunting as a new way of obtaining some income. They sold bush meat in the markets in neighbouring towns and invested the money in livestock. Without cattle, no bridewealth, no wife, no nothing.
At Independence, international attention was nervously focused on what the new president, Julius Nyerere, would do about Serengeti. After all, he was from the area and knew only too well about the pressures and stresses that the park and the strict anti-poaching policies had inflicted on the local people; of how elephants routinely destroyed farmers’ crops etc. Nyerere sympathized with his people, but the country needed the tourist dollars too. Conservation was important too. Serengeti had become a worldwide, hugely famous attraction that generated a lot of income all across the board, and international bodies pressured for its protection.
Maro Morongori remembers that people expressed disappointment with the national government. At one point, the park administration even wanted to extend the territory of the park in order to for it to cover the whole route of the famous wildebeest migration. Now, part of the migration went through so-called “unprotected” Ikoma country, and this was considered to be too risky. Robanda, the main village and ritual center of the Ikoma, now lying just outside the park boundary, had to go. Besides, the authorities considered the Ikoma to be in illegal possession of elephant tusks! One day, the police showed up to confiscate the Machaba tusks. They took them to the the police station at Mugumu, some 20 kilometers away. This meant crossing the Grumeti. The lorry actually broke down while crossing the river and was almost washed downstream by the strong current.
That very night, a fire broke out and the police station burnt down. In the morning, the tusks were nowhere to be seen in Mugumu, but were found sitting peacefully in their sockets at the ritual site in Robanda. They had returned. Miraculously. – Of course, the police did not know that the old Datoga prophet had said that Machaba should never cross the Grumeti river, mzee Marangori adds with a wry smile on his face.
After this incident, which took place in 1974, president Nyerere decreed that Robanda should remain an Ikoma settlement. The community received a special permit to keep the tusks in their possession. The park boundary remained as it was.
Whether this narrative about the police raid, the burnt down police station, the miraculous reappearance of Machaba, and the president’s decree, is factually true is beside the point. The point is how a people construct a discourse about themselves, in which they draw legitimacy and power from a source beyond the reaches of the powerful actors of this world, and are able to turn losses into gains by telling and retelling a story that not only humiliates the authorities, but also bends the president’s will to a myhtical prophet’s decree.
The Machaba story is kept alive around the village fireplaces, stoking the self-image and confidence of a small people group surrounded by a big world.In recent years, large parts of the area in which the Ikoma live, have been, in cooperation and agreement with the local population, designated a Wildlife Management Area (WMA), meaning that the local communities receive part of the income from tourism industry. This way, people see the economic benefit of partaking in protection the wildlife. Anti-poaching is now a matter of local trust and prestige. Local poaching has dropped considerably.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the new wave of globalized poaching, in which the masters calling the shots are fat cats in the larger society and the outside world. I wonder whether Machaba will come up with a solution to that challenge.
Asle Jøssang, 2014.