Cairo to Kisumu : $b Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya ColonyCarpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
History
Cairo to Kisumu : $b Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya Colony
Carpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Egypt -- Description and travel; Kenya -- Description and travel; Sudan -- Description and travel
In such work the men cut the wood and the women carry it on their backs
to the market. They are loaded up by their husbands, a piece of goat skin
separating the rough sticks from the woman’s bare skin, and the burden
being tied on by a rope of vines which rests on the forehead. In addition
to this goat skin on her back, the woman usually has an apron or skirt of
skin tied about the waist and reaching to the knees and sometimes below
them. A strong, lusty girl can carry as much as two hundred pounds of
wood in this way, and her husband does not scruple to pile on all she can
take.
In coming from the plains over the mountains into the Great Rift Valley
I rode for miles through the woods and had a chance to see what the
British Government is doing to save the forests.
The wooded area of Kenya extends over three thousand two hundred
square miles, of which the tropical forest covers about a hundred and
eighty-three square miles, the remainder being upland or highland,
containing valuable trees. Transportation facilities are so limited,
however, and much of the country is so little known that the British have
only made a good beginning in exploiting the timber resources and in
scientific forestry work.
Lumber is high. Leaving the Kikuyu hills, one finds that there are woods
all the way to the ridge known as the Escarpment and they extend for
some distance down the sides of the Rift Valley. Here in the valley
itself the country is mostly pasture and there is no timber of any
account. In the forest region above referred to the woods are thin, and
in many places the original growth has been cleared by the Kikuyus. The
government is now prohibiting their practice of burning the wood, and
doing all it can to save the trees remaining and to build up new wood
lands. I met at Naivasha an Australian, one of the heads of the forestry
department, who told me that the government had nurseries at Mombasa,
Nairobi, Escarpment, and Landaivi. Near Mombasa they are setting out teak
trees, while at Nairobi they have planted a large number of acacia and
eucalyptus trees, imported from Australia. The eucalyptus grows well at
Nairobi. I saw trees there seventy-five feet high although they were only
five years old.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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