Kiswahili

Mlalo

Continued

Mlalo Basin Panorama, c. 1914

The image looks south and a bit east from a hill above the Umba River. It takes the buildings of the Lutheran Mission and hinterlands all the way up to Mtumbi Mountain in the background.

Mlalo Basin, Right Hand Image, Ararat

The image is the right third of the panorama and centers on the mission village of Ararat,one of Hohenfriedberg’s satellite settlements just above the mission. The original setters were Christian converts. The buildings the western style, rectangular structures of white-washed, locally made brick. In the foreground, yams grow through the mulch of a harvested maize crop, one of the few instances in these images in which this maize appears. Within a generation, maize came to dominate almost every field in the Mlalo Basin.

The large tree in the image’s lower middle section is Rauvolfia caffra, known locally as Ngweeti. The tree has many medicinal uses including treatment of hypertension.

Mlalo Basin, Central Image, Lutheran Mission at Hohenfriedberg

The mission residence and church remain standing today, solidly constructed throughout with massive hardwood timbers from nearby forests. Unlike the large land holdings at Gare and Kwai, the Lutheran mission at Mlalo sits on only 35 ha., which stretches down the hill between two streams, one of them below thep hotographer here. In 1892, chief Kinyassi sold the place to two visiting Lutheran missionaries. His choice was an abandoned settlement, attested to in part by the huge grove growing above the church. One of those ancient trees remains today.

Mature agroforestry-banana plantations cover the slopes on the image’s left-hand side and continue up slope into the depression above the mission itself. One of our informants at Mlalo praised the banana agro-forestry in this image’s center left describing it as clean, and well-kept. This image shows are covery in motion after the hard times of the 1890s. Some of the trees anchoring the banana plantations areaquite large suggesting that hillside probably had been in use for several generations.

Mlalo Basin, Left-Hand Image

The image is full of interesting sites. The center-right hand side shows three compounds immediately surrounded with banana gardens and rather immature tees in the agroforest on the hill slope to the right. The gardens extend right down to the riverbank. On the slope opposite, more banana plantations are apparent. Further afield, toward the mountains, the settled landscape thins considerably giving way to secondary forest and thicket.

The Umba River runs through the lower sections. Just above the rock face, the riverpools and feeds an irrigation off-take called Hambalawei. The irrigation furrow’s line is also visible to the left of the offtake.

Mountains above rise to more than 2200 meters als. What look to be livestock trails and pastures appear on the slopes of Mtumbi Mountain, the upper ridges are forested.