Humans Lose Ground as Africa Focuses on Animals : Masai: Western conservationists evicted them from their land to create the Serengeti National Park. Now, while animals flourish, the people are suffering.

WARSAW —  “This is what we gave up!” Kasiaro ole Parmitoro said as we drove through Serengeti National Park, in northern Tanzania and one of the most spectacular wildlife ar eas in the world. He exclaimed with wonderment as the Jeep passed herds of topi and hartebeest; gazelle leaped across the road in front of us, and we saw a klipspringer perched like a ballet dancer atop a rock. “My father used to tell me the beauty of Serengeti, but I didn’t know it myself,” said Kasiaro, a Masai elder.

Kasiaro’s father and grandfather had lived in the Serengeti--the word comes from the Masai siringet, meaning “extended place”--and he had grown up on its periphery, watching minivans loaded with foreigners stir up dust as they sped past his village and into the park. But until I asked him to accompany me, he had never entered the sweeping plains that had once belonged to his ancestors. It is thought that the Masai began grazing their cattle in the Serengeti about the middle of the last century; they were evicted in the 1950s.

After several hours driving, as we crossed the Seronera River where hippos were submerged, Kasiaro, a quiet man with sparkling eyes, had an idea: “Why didn’t they give us part of this?” He laughed lightly, “Why couldn’t they divide it--give us the right side of the road, and they take the left?”

Getting the Masai out of the Serengeti was one of the first major battles Western conservationists fought in Africa. There were fewer that 50,000 Masai in an area larger than Connecticut, but the conservationists--from the United States, Britain and Germany--were convinced that the pastoralist Masai and their cattle would destroy the environment.

It escaped the Westerners that, if the Masai were such bad environmentalists, why was this land so pristine, so worthy of making into a park. Instead, the conservationists operated on the theory that parks and people should be separated--a line should be drawn, with the animals on one side and the people on the other. This is the principle that conservationists are now beginning to doubt, believing the best chance for preserving wildlife comes when the wildlife and people are integrated.

The Western conservationists put intense pressure on the British colonial government that controlled Tanganyika, and the government eventually “persuaded” the Masai elders to sign a document giving up their rights to 4,800 square miles, which became the Serengeti National Park.

“We were told to sign. It was not explained to us,” Tendemo ole Kisaka, who is thought to be one of the only surviving signers, told me. Well into his 70s now, he walks with the aid of two long poles. None of the elders knew how to read or write, he said. He grinned and added, “You white people are tough.”

In exchange for giving up the Serengeti, the Masai were allowed to remain in Ngorongoro, an eastern portion of the Serengeti ecosystem. The heart of Ngorongoro is a volcanic crater that arose out of eruptions 5 million to 10 million years ago. Its 35-mile rim is almost perfectly symmetrical, and the walls, forested with dark green lichen-draped acacia trees and tangled shrubs, slope 2,000 feet down to the crater floor, a 100-square-mile bowl. It is a natural zoo, alive with flamingos balancing in the shallow water of Lake Magadi, lions sunning, giant rhinos and elephants and tiny bat-eared foxes.

The Masai were assured their interests would be protected as much as the wildlife would be. But while the wildlife flourishes, the Masai have suffered.

First, in 1974, the government evicted the Masai living on the crater floor.

“Very early in the morning, about 5 o’clock, three trucks full of field force soldiers stopped close to the boma and told the people, ‘Bring everything out. We are going to burn the houses,’ ” recalled Tate ole Rokonga, as he stood where his village, which included 12 elders and 40 warriors, had once been. All the Masai cattle were driven out of the crater. The Masai were dumped on the crater rim.

These days, it is easier for a foreigner to enter the crater than it is for a Masai. A Masai must have a special permit, while, each year, 150,000 tourists are ferried in and out of the crater in more than 20,000 vehicles. It is hard to imagine they are not causing greater environmental damage and disturbing the wildlife far more than the fewer than 2,000 Masai ever did.

Even outside the crater, the Masai’s activities are severely restricted--in the interest of preservation and tourism. They are not allowed to build permanent structures, which means they must forever live in their dung huts. And they are forbidden to grow any crops. Special police operations enforce this prohibition, and villagers have been arrested, fined, even jailed, for planting a few vegetables.

Though pastoralists, the Masai have become more dependent on agriculture as they have “modernized,” and as their cattle herds have been depleted. The number of cattle per person today in Ngorongoro is less than half what it was in the 1960s. The major cause of the declines is tick-borne diseases. Traditionally, the Masai dealt with this disease by evacuating their cattle from the affected area for several years, burning the grass--which harbors the tick--and grazing the area with sheep and goats. Now, the Masai have fewer areas to move to--since so much of their land is protected as a park. The modern method of combatting tick diseases is to run cattle through a trough filled with water and treated with acaricide. But the chemical is prohibitively expensive for the Masai.

Kasiaro’s herd has declined from more than 300, in 1982, to 75. This is one-quarter of what he needs to support his extended family. In Masai society, those better off take care of the less fortunate, especially when they are relatives. Kasiaro’s “family” includes his three wives, as well as brothers and their wives and sisters and their husbands. They live in 14 dung-and-wattle huts within sight of the crater rim. There were 22 children, and not one looked healthy. Two were severely malnourished, with stick-thin arms and legs. All were caked with dirt, covered with flies. Flies on their lips. Flies in infected eyes. And Kasiaro is one of the better-off members of his community.

One afternoon, along the crater rim road, there was a group of about 30 Masai women and children, colorfully attired. They were beckoning to the tourists in the passing minivans, hoping the foreigners would be enticed into taking a picture--and paying for it.

“It pains me,” Kasiaro said as we drew near the group. “It is not good to get money you don’t work for. It is changing the young people just to depend on that, without working. It is destroying them. We have tried to stop them, by talking to them, telling them, ‘This is not good.’ But stopping somebody who is hungry and has nothing to eat, it is hard. It is the only way they can survive.”

One women in the group was Naloya, who had been 14 when her family was evicted from the crater floor. Her tall, statuesque figure was draped in a purple cape; long beaded strings dangled from her ears, and she wore a broad, flat band of bright-colored beads around her neck.

How did she feel about having her picture taken? “I feel that they are taking my picture because I am like a wild animal,” she explained. “It’s not good, but I need the money.”

She said on most days she got roughly 100 or 200 Tanzanian shillings. One kilogram of corn flour costs 100 shillings; it will feed her family for a day. One kilogram of sugar costs 200 shillings, that will last three days.

Before leaving the Serengeti, we stopped at Seronera Lodge. In the lobby was an appeal for wild dogs, from the Frankfurt Zoological Society. Park visitors are asked to record where and when they spotted wild dogs, and to donate to the “Serengeti Wild Dog Project.”

Kasiaro read all this slowly. He then said quietly, “They care only about the animals; they say nothing about the people. They could have said also, ‘There are people, the Masai, who were living here for many years. They don’t have water. Even they need help. Not just the wild animals.’ ”