Kiswahili

Gare Trappist Monastery

(4°47'36.46"S, 38°20'32.94"E, 1480 meters asl)

Introduction

During the 1890s, German Missionaries in the Usambaras founded their estates near major mountain market towns like Mlalo, Bumbuli, and Gare, all of which continue to host weekly market days. In 1896, German-speaking Trappist brethren from the Marienhill monastery in Durban, South Africa, arrived at Gare to build a monastery. Their lease from the German government included more than a thousand hectares at three sites, the first depicted in the image here and the another, the convent of the Sisters of the Precious Blood (nearby at the present-day Kifungilo School). The Trappists “owned” a third parcel, several hundred hectares of montane forest in the neighboring Mkussu drainage, a 20-30-minute walkaway. That area of forest is gone.