“Dear Guest, Welcome to the UAE. Enjoy the best network coverage and
other unmatched services only with Etisalat. Please use<+> or
<00>before the country code for international calls. For directory
services call 181, for availability of GPRS, MMS 3G roaming services
call Etisalat Travellers help line 8002300 & for inquiries on
Tourism, entertainment, shopping, etc call 7000-1-7000(Roaming rates
apply) Have a pleasant stay in the UAE.”
The above network text message leaves allot to be desired. One wonders
whether Ortello Business Corporation is a private company or is a
sovereign state within Tanzania. The question of the relationship
between the Corporation and the Tanzania Communication Regulatory
Authority (TCRA) did not stop lingering in the heads of members of the
investigation team.
In 1992 Otterlo Business Corporation Ltd - that’s not a “corporation”
but an organization managing hunting trips for royalty from the United
Arab Emirates – was given the Loliondo Game Controlled Area - the whole
of Loliondo Division - as a hunting block and since then their lease
keeps being renewed by the Government – not the Maasai landowners.
The
core hunting area of OBC is the corridor of land bordering the National
Park, but in theory they could hunt rats around the District
Commissioners office. OBC do not have any land, but only what’s
basically a hunting license. Nevertheless, OBC seem to think that they
operate in some half protected area where they control the land while
having to put up with customary landowners that they shower in
charitable projects.
When conflict flare up they get the support of the
government. For the 2009 hunting season OBC together with Tanzanian
authorities evicted people from the corridor that’s almost half the size
of the Emirate of Dubai. In this operation at least 150 bomas were
burnt to the ground, including grain stores and even some young
livestock that were burnt to death. Some 60,000 heads of cattle were
pushed into an extreme drought area and calves were left behind in the
stampede. This significantly worsened the alarming rates of cattle
deaths of the severe drought at the time. Many cases of beatings,
humiliations and sexual assault have been reported. Several children
were lost in the chaos and terror and one of them – 7-year-old Nashipai
Gume from Arash – has not been found. The evicted people eventually
moved back and many leaders “reconciled” with OBC.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Bye Bye Loliondo.....
11:04 AM
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In November 2012 a crisis broke out when people in Ololosokwan
found that Tanzania National Parks were planning to erect Serengeti NP
border beacons on the land of the village. There were major
demonstrations and the beacons were dropped back inside the National
Park.
On 27th January 2013 the Minister for Natural Resources
and Tourism held “stakeholders’” meetings in Loliondo. He did not seem
to grasp the issues and his only concrete idea was for “investors” to
work together forming an association.
Currently there are many players in the tourism industry in
Loliondo and none of them can be trusted, though occasionally some of
them play by the rules entering proper contracts with the villages. The
most destructive force among them is the Boston-based Thomson Safaris
claiming 12,617 acres of grazing land as their own “Enashiva Nature
Refuge” and harassing the pastoralists as “trespassers” while involved
in an aggressive propaganda campaign for their “community-based
project”.
The last weekend of February the Minister returned to Loliondo with
the message that the Game Controlled Area as per Wildlife Conservation
Act of 2009 was the best “solution” for Loliondo.
To media the Minister was saying that the Maasai are “landless” and
being “given” the land that they already have – except the corridor –
under the condition that they form a Wildlife Management Area that’s
presented as a way for communities to “benefit from wildlife” while in
reality it’s a recipe to increase central government control. The move
was described as “addressing historical injustices”. A historical
injustice is actually what the Government seems determined to commit.
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