Where the Wild African Violets Are
By MARY SODERSTROM
On the moss-covered rock face in front of me, three small
blue-violet flowers pushed out of a rosette of velvet green leaves.
There they were, finally: wild African violets, lovely examples of
the ancestors of one of the world's most popular houseplants. They
grow naturally only in the coastal mountains and forests of East
Africa, and I'd come a long way to see them.
''They aren't in bloom all the time,'' my guide, Abduel, was
saying. ''Some people make special trips here, and never see the
flowers. You are a lucky lady, Mama.''
For years I've struggled to keep at least one African violet in
bloom through Montreal winters, but it wasn't until I started
working on a novel about a Canadian politician and his Québécoise
wife who is passionate about African violets that I began to wonder
about the pretty little flower's origins. In French one of its names
is la violette d'Usambara, and initially I thought it referred to
Usumbura, now Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. But further reading
revealed that the flowers originally came from the East Usambara
Mountains of Tanzania. Their story intrigued me, and when I got a
chance to go to Africa last October I decided to check them out. I
first took a flight to Dar es Salaam from Nairobi, and left the next
morning by bus for Tanga, 200 miles north on the Indian Ocean coast.
Tanga is the nearest good-sized town to the Amani Nature Reserve,
a 20,000-acre preserve in the East Usambaras, home to eight wild
African violet species.
Two of them, S. confusa and S. ionantha, are thought to be the
ones from which the plants you find in any florist have been bred.
(The one I saw in bloom there was probably S. confusa.) Even though
the wild plants usually have only blue or violet flowers, the
species are so marvelously rich in genetic variations that plant
breeders have been able to tease out white, pink, dark blue, mauve,
red-violet and green varieties.
In the past there was a rail connection not far from Tanga, but
today only freight trains use the stretch of rail. Scheduled
airlines don't stop at the town either. Unless I wanted to rent a
four-wheel-drive vehicle with driver, I was going to have to take
buses. Not a good thing, several people warned me: buses weren't the
sort of transport someone like me -- white, female and 58 -- should
take by herself.
However, my contacts in Tanga and Amani assumed that I'd take the
bus, and recommended the Raha Leo line. O.K., I thought; let's try
it, I haven't come all this way to be timorous.
''No problem,'' the taxi driver in Dar es Salaam said when I gave
him the address of the bus terminal. As soon as we drove through its
gates, though, shills descended on us, shouting in Kiswahili. The
driver exchanged a few words with them, then began to roll up the
windows of the cab.
''What's happening?'' I asked, in mounting panic.
''They say that the Raha Leo bus left at 8:30, and the next one
won't go until afternoon,'' the taxi driver began.
''But,'' said a man with his head and shoulders through the back
window just inches from me, ''there is another bus which leaves in
half an hour, just as good a bus.''
I looked beseechingly at the driver. ''Do you think it would be
all right?''
''Yes,'' he said. ''Probably,'' he qualified. And after carefully
locking the taxi, he took my suitcase over to the bus, made sure it
was stowed in the luggage compartment, and saw that I boarded.
Inside, to my surprise, I found goodnatured courtesy. The bus was
the size of a North American intercity bus, but with red-flocked
velvet wallpaper. All the seats already appeared to be taken by
people dressed for a special occasion, but the conductor immediately
shooed a young man from one so I could sit near the front. After two
people made sure I found my way to the (quite clean) restrooms when
we made a rest stop halfway through the four-and-a-half-hour bus
trip, I began to think that traveling in Africa when you're a
certain age has its advantages: you get respect you don't find in
North America.
October is the start of the short rainy season in East Africa,
and it was drizzling when the bus set out. As the road turned
inland, the rain stopped. Clouds hugged the earth, as did smoke from
fires set by farmers to prepare the soil for the next crop. In
places banana palms were scorched where the flames had spread more
quickly than a farmer wished. In others women were already at work
with hoelike mattocks, getting ready to plant the small patches of
land when the rains came in earnest.
In the distance were the East Usambara Mountains, which catch
moisture-laden breezes from the Indian Ocean. Lush forests are a
result, abounding in a rich variety of plants and animals. The
Eastern Arc mountain forests, of which the East Usambaras are a
part, were recently named as one of the world's biodiversity ''hot
spots.''
The mountains were densely forested until the beginning of the
20th century when Tanganyika became the centerpiece of German
colonial aspirations in Africa. The Germans, along with the British,
systematically exploited the forests, but also established a
botanical garden at Amani, experimenting with plants from all over
the world. The scientific name of African violets -- Saintpaulia --
reflects this German colonial past. Baron Walter von Saint Paul
Illaire found the plants in 1892, when he was commissioner of Tanga
province. He sent seeds back to his father, an amateur botanist, in
Germany, and within 10 years African violets had become a
horticultural sensation throughout Europe.
Recently Saintpaulia have played a key role in safeguarding what
is left of the East Usambaras' natural splendors. Most of them grow
in damp, shady places, and when the forest is cut down, they vanish.
But commercial logging continued into the 1980's, threatening many
streams and forest glades where Saintpaulia thrived, as well as rare
species like the Swynnerton's robin and a three-horned chameleon
with eyes like Homer Simpson's. To protect all this, some 250,000
acres of the mountain forests have now been declared a U.N. Man and
Biosphere Reserve. (The Amani Reserve is an even more strictly
protected part of the biosphere region.) Conservation and village
life here are supposed to go hand in hand, and today about 100,000
people live relatively lightly on the land -- gathering no more wood
than they can carry themselves and clearing no new fields -- in
small villages within the designated area.
It rained a bit my first morning at Amani, but the sun shone most
of the four days I was there. Despite being just 5 degrees south of
the equator, days were pleasant, in the low 80's, and evenings were
cool; a blanket felt good at night in the lodge at the reserve's
headquarters where I stayed.
The cement-floor building has small, spare rooms with single beds
and mosquito nets (and screens on the windows). It sleeps about 20
in single, double and triple rooms, but I was the only guest most of
my stay, so I felt like a camper with camp all to herself. No camp
I've ever stayed at had food as good, though. The manager asked me
what I wanted for each meal, offering doughnut-like mandaazi, eggs,
toast and cereal for breakfast; curry-inspired meat dishes at lunch
and dinner. Rice, pasta or ugali (a corn porridge rather like
polenta) rounded out the meals; excellent fresh fruit was dessert
The Amani guides are all local people, chosen after competitive
exams and then trained in botany, ecology and natural lore. The
guide I got to know best, Abduel B. Kajiru, is the first in his
family to finish secondary school. He knows the scientific names,
the uses in traditional medicine and the economic importance of a
staggering number of plants.
In addition to that first, marvelous sighting of Saintpaulia in
the wild that he led me to, he took me on several long walks. We
started off with a tour of the remnants of the well-maintained old
German botanical garden (although there are no labels on the
plants), with its jacaranda-lined roads, century-old cinnamon trees
and views of tea estates in the distance.
The next morning we scrambled down into a canyon to see another
nest of Saintpaulia. On the far side of a stream, the damp rock wall
was covered with dozens of African violets. None were in bloom, but
clumps of salmon-colored impatiens, another East African native,
brightened the edges of the water course. From there we skirted a
portion of forest that hadn't been logged where we could look out on
the dense canopy of treetops. Then we climbed past patches of corn,
banana trees and other tropical staples like a kind of tuber called
cocoyam, interspersed with coffee trees laden with tiny flowers
scented like orange blossoms. In the nearby village, cardamom pods
lay drying in the sun on mats; it was Saturday, and that evening a
constant stream of people paraded by the Amani guest house on their
way to a market-day celebration miles up the road.
The last afternoon was a golden one, and our walk took us past
fish ponds and stands of sugar cane and grass grown to feed cattle.
At one tiny settlement, three children ran out to show us a
brilliant green and yellow chameleon that matched the buttery light
coming through the leaves of the palm trees. Farther on four women
invited me to help celebrate the birth of a child. And as we walked,
Abduel continually amazed me with what he knew about the plants and
animals of the region, so rich yet so very fragile.
Now that I'm back home, I have great hopes for my own
domesticated Saintpaulia. My plan is to juggle humidity and
fertilizer, watering schedules and shade to imitate conditions on
the banks of streams in the East Usambaras. Whether or not I
succeed, I hope that Abduel and his colleagues will be able to
protect the mountains' marvelous ecosystems, and that Saintpaulia
will continue to flourish at home in the wild.
Knowledgeable guides and simple quarters
Getting There
Northwest/KLM has flights from North America to Amsterdam, with
connecting flights to Dar es Salaam. British Airways and American
Airlines flights connect through London. It's a long trip -- the
shortest routing takes more than 21 hours if you don't make a
stopover.
October and November are good months to visit. Air fares are
usually lower than in July and August and the dust is settled by the
first rains. East Africa has two rainy seasons: from mid-October to
December and from mid-March to May.
If you don't rent a car and driver, bus is the only way to get to
the Amani Nature Reserve. Raha Leo and Bembea Line buses, which
leave between 6:30 and 8:30 a.m. from Dar, connect with either the
Bin Seif or Jabwebwea bus, which leave for Amani around noon every
day from Muheza, a small market town about 15 miles inland from
Tanga. Ask the driver on the bus from Dar or at the Muheza station
about connections: the trip up into the mountains takes about two
hours. Bus tickets are ridiculously cheap: from Dar to Tanga on the
Bembea line I paid about $12, at 1,030 Tanzanian shillings to $1.
The second-leg bus trip from Muheza to Amani cost $1.
Where to Stay
The Amani Nature Reserve is also a bargain. Open year round, its
rustic wood-paneled lodge sleeps 20, with simply furnished single,
double and triple rooms and shared bathrooms. Full board -- three
generous meals -- and lodging is about $10 a night. The reserve also
has cabins with private baths for the same price at Sigi, six miles
down the mountain, where there is a visitors center worth a stop.
For reservations contact the reserve conservator at (255 2627)
40313; anr@twiga.com.
The Reserve
Finnish government and European Union aid programs have been
helping Tanzanians organize both the reserve and the tourism
program. The aim is to provide income for local residents while
safeguarding the natural richness of the East Usambara Mountains.
(The European Union's contribution ended in March, and the Finnish
aid will end in December.) The Amani guides share the fees that
visitors pay ($10 a day). I invited Abduel to join me for lunch each
day at the lodge, since meals are not included in the guides' pay.
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