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Lowassa, often rain makers prefer land for token, not cash!
2006-09-09 09:22:25
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
In his ongoing tour of the Far East Asian countries, Prime Minister Edward Lowassa, has struck a cubbyhole in the Thai rain makers.
When visiting the newly developed Asian economy of Thailand, he was impressed by the King’s rain makers who told him that they were capable of making drizzles in the Usangu valley, which is almost turning into a desert to be filled to the brims to enable stalled hydro electric power production at Mtera dam in Iringa.
Good and at the same time fascinating news indeed. It is good and fascinating news because in the press reports we were told that the Prime Minister had immediately extended an invitation to the Kasertet Institute rain makers to Tanzania this October to fill the drying dam.
It is elating to learn also that government leaders, at the moment, feels so concerned about the power problem, which is haunting the nation to the extent of inviting foreign rain makers to assist the country have more water for power generation.
But it is bewildering to learn that the modality of addressing to the power problem in the country still hinges largely on hydroelectric power production and hence the need to invite foreign rain making investors to help fill our rivers, lakes, dams and even ponds.
Anyway, that subject is not our main preoccupation at the moment. The issue at stake is the rain making investors, how they discharge their duty and the payment preference modality many of them subscribe to.
It is true that history has had different types or categories of rain makers and hence different methods of rain making.
God or what scientists call the power of nature is the omnipotent source of rain making. This process, which has been prevalent for millions of years and remains the most popular, has been employed by the entire human civilisation for hundreds of thousands of generations.
It isn’t only the oldest; it has solely shaped the earth’s relief and created the mundane vegetation we see today.
Natural rain making has been a smooth ongoing process for most of the past period, but as human activities started to inflict serious effects on the environment, man started to borrow the aid of science for rain making.
In other words, it is until when people started to destroy the environment and abused natural endowments that rains became scarce and hence this called for the use of technological methods to have more water for human activities.
From the foregoing, it is obvious that without man’s observance of the environment, there will be nothing short of relying on artificial rain making. In other words, once the environment is disturbed, it acts accordingly so as to reflect the ecological imbalance.
Hence, the increasing incidents of environmental degradation, which are a result of man’s shoddy activity that most of the time, reflect his abuse of nature and its related processes mainly through uncontrolled transhumance—crop cultivation and livestock keeping.
Artificial rain making in itself is therefore not only an abuse of the process of natural rain making, but a result of it.
In the Southern Highlands in particular, the undertaking of massive programmes to plant water guzzling eucalyptus trees in the 1970s and the turning of the world famous Usangu high plateau basin into a desert from a swamp, are some of the major reasons why sustainable water supply for power production in the area is unattainable.
The most reliable way to sustainable water supply and to address the rights of every water user is therefore not largely to rely on artificial rain making investors—particularly the imported ones, but on conserved nature.
For artificial rain making is so complex a process and issue and is, many a time built on intrigues besides, the science associated with it.
Those who are conversant with the history of the Pare in the northern part of the country, as documented by Professor Issaria Kimambo are quite aware that during the heydays of Ugweno and Usangi chiefdoms, the chiefs in those areas ’imported’ rain makers from South Pare and Usambara to help salvage the situation during dry seasons.
This is how the Mbaga and Fanga clans found their way to Usangi and Ugweno chiefdoms respectively, where the then chiefs thought they would be useful in their dominions as rain makers.
Indeed the clans proved their worthy to the chiefs, not only in the terrains of rain making, but also in the fields of preventive diseases and sporadic warfare control.
Historians tell us that the rains became plenty and harvests increased.
It only remained the onus of the chief to pay the rain makers some token for their good work to the chiefdoms.
The rain makers were then paid in two ways—what was known as a stag of maize (Vivale vya mahemba) or in land depending on the level of performance and how the chiefs were exhilarated.
In Usangi, the Mbaga were given a promontory; just as the Fanga were allotted present day Mwanga.
It is yet to be established why the chiefdoms did pay the rain makers in land and not in ng’anga, the then money minted by the Shana in the case of the latter kingdom.
Rain makers are necessary and good, but nobody knows what are likely to be their demands after they have accomplished their good job.
Their job is taken as simple, but it is costly, just as the technological methods they use to intervene into the forces of nature.
During an interview this week local modern science experts said that there was nothing exotica about rain making in the Thai technology, which could be done by the locals.
Only what is important is the recognition and rearming of the local scientists, who already know the ’trick’.
But besides this, which might probably call for a ministry of rain making, it should also be understood that early this year there was no rain throughout the country.
Some religious organizations and individuals met at Jangwani for prayers, which brought enough rains and hence, the harvest we have today.
What the Prime Minister should do is to capitalize on these efforts by locals groups and scientists for more prayers and if any foreign input would be needed, it should come in as a way of strengthening all the above methods.
To relegate the local input to the background and put the Thai model in the forefront, even if it really deserves to be, might create antagonisms in the entire well coordinated work, which only need networking and corroboration.
But above all, the issue of hydroelectric power production and the efforts to fill the various drying reservoirs created throughout the country cannot just be taken lightly as some of the people see it.
The mother of all problems as mentioned before is the environmental destruction of the sources of water supply that normally feed the reserves.
The panacea to this is therefore not to bring the rain makers from Thailand or any other part of the world, but to look for a sustainable way of maintaining water balance to satisfy the rights of every user.
Of course the main issue still hangs in balance—the urgent need to have enough power for the nation, whose demand has greatly outstripped supply.
On this, the solution is for the nation to go for multiple sources of power generation and multiple investors in the grand national project to give way to over choked hydro electric power production.
If anything the government should now make serious efforts aimed at lighting up the entire nation.
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