History and neighbours

THE SAMBAA KINGDOM
Maweni lies in the heartland of the old Sambaa kingdom, between the villages of Magila and Shashui. The gravesites of the old kings in Vuga are within walking distance. In the nights you often hear the drumming from the small ridgetop hamlets in Magila. Parts of Magila village still looks much like a traditional Sambaa village, whereas the Shashui area was to be dominated by German settler farmers in the colonial time.

GERMAN EAST AFRICA
Before World War One, there were several thousand German settlers in the Usambaras. The 30-acre Maweni plot was part of a larger German-owned coffee farm. We know very little about this time. In fact, we do not even know when Maweni was built. Village elders say it was built by Karimjee in 1941, but we have come to doubt that. Dieter Czurn (of Macho Porini tour company) grew up in Soni in the sixties and sent us a picture from the thirties, in which we see legendary German WWI commander von Lettow-Vorbeck seated on the what appears to be our verandah together with members of the german settler family. Also, Dieter told us that in the seventies  there was a grave of someone in the von Prince family at Maweni. Von Prince defeated the Hehe in the 19th century and settled in the property that is now known as Sakkarani, not far from Maweni. We have located the grave, but no stone or cross with the name.

SISAL
When you travel through Tanga region you pass through vast sisal plantations. All this sisal originates from a dozen sisal plants that survived shipping from Mexico via Germany in the late 19th century. Sisal was the world's main source of fiber for inexpensive string and rope, and Tanga became a major supplier. The Karimjee family became the biggest sisal growers in Tanzania, and we know that one of these married the daughter of the german settlers, and came to live in Maweni.

ARCHITECTURE
THe Maweni residence is a fantastic building. We don't know when it was built or who the artisans were, but the materials as well as the masonry and woodwork skills that went into the building are of exquisite quality. The architectural style is elegant, modern and not pretentious as many colonial time building

DEVELOPMENT
In the 1970s, the Karimjee family donated the property to LIDEP, a cooperative rural development project owned by Lushoto farmers. The purpose was to establish a training institute for smallholder farmers. When LIDEP was dissolved, the district development corporation USADECO took over. They opened 'Maweni Motel' in the guesthouse wing, which used to be a garage, and rented the main building as residence to German development project staff for more than a decade. In year 2000 USADECO was dissolved and ownership of the property was transferred to the Lushoto District council.

MAWENI FARM LTD
The district council were to privatise all USADECO properties, but the councillors did not want to part with Maweni. That was when we – Lars and Juma – happened to pass by Maweni and the District Executive Director asked what we would do with a place like this if they would lease it to us. In 2001 our company Maweni Farm Ltd entered in a thirty-year lease contract with the District. In keeping with the original purpose of Karimjee's donation, we are investing in Maweni as a media institute, tourist hotel and local development resource centre.

NEIGHBOURS
Next to Maweni lies St Joseph seminary, which under the name of St Michaels was a boarding school for white boys until the early 1970s, and an outpost of the Montessori sisters. On the other side of the road lies the former home of legendary missionary doctor and first minister of health in Tanzania, Dr Leader Stirling. That house is now owned by the Lutheran church. On the other side of the lake lies a fruit canning factory built by LIDEP. The property has been sold to a Dar Es Salaam investor, who is currently investing heavily in water bottling and vegetable/fruit processing. Above the fruit factory is another old colonial property, a coffee farm established by the Swiss Tanner family who later moved to Mazumbai. Former Lushoto MP Shekifu established a water bottling plant there a few years ago.

FARMING
The valley is one of the most fertile coffee and vegetable growing areas in the district. But land holdings are very small, irrigation water is scarce, the market for coffee is a scandal, and the vegetable prices often crash at harvesting time. The farmers work hard just to make a living and there is considerable out-migration of young people. If you stay in Maweni, you should nevertheless spend an afternoon with one of our neighbours who will guide you round the small farms: the cardamom-coffee fields behind the hotel, the perfectly terraced vegetable plots in Shashui, the intricate irrigation systems on the mountain slopes above. Everywhere you see the fruits of the organised, determined development work of irrigation associations, youth groups, women groups. We have written a book about the German funded SECAP project, and the unprecedented rural development efforts that have been made in the district since the 1980s.

CLIMATE
Located at an altitude of 1300 meters, Maweni is never too hot and rarely unpleasantly cold. The climate in the Usambaras is cooler than one would expect at that altitude, in comparison with eg Arusha or Nairobi. This part of the Usambaras is (most years) blessed with three rainy seasons: mluati in september, vuli in nov-dec and masika in march-may. The mluati rains are gentle but unpredictable; vuli rains are erratic afternoon showers varying in intensity from year to year; masika rains can last for days and weeks. In November and December thousands of jacaranda trees blossom. The vegetation is most lush, and birdlife and flowers most intense, in December to March. April and May is rainy. June, July and August are the coolest months.