Ruvuma

The Ngoni came from far to the south. Their ancestors were among the peoples scattered by the wars that went with the rise of the Zulu kingdom in the early nineteenth century; over decades of migration some crossed the Zambezi and moved north, and by the middle of the century they had settled this highland, built military states over the peoples already here, and raided widely.

In 1905 the Maji Maji war broke out against German rule. It began in the Matumbi hills of the south-east and spread across the colony, carried by the belief that a sacred water — maji — would turn German bullets to water. Ngoni fighters joined in thousands. The Germans answered with a scorched-earth campaign; the famine that followed did most of the killing, and estimates of the dead across the colony run from 75,000 to 300,000. The war was over by 1907.

On 27 February 1906 the Germans hanged the captured leaders of the resistance at the town that now carries the name of one of them, Songea Lwafu Mbano. The museum, the graves and the anniversary are described on the Songea guide, and the whole war on our page on the Maji Maji war.

The missions arrived just before the war and stayed. Benedictine monks from St Ottilien founded Peramiho in 1898; their bishop, Cassian Spiss, was killed in 1905 as the rising spread. The region remains strongly Catholic, and the abbey's hospital and schools are among its most important institutions. Much later, during Mozambique's war of independence, the border country was a restricted zone and suffered occasional Portuguese air attacks.

The region is named for the Ruvuma River, which rises on the plateau near Songea and forms most of its southern border with Mozambique on the way to the Indian Ocean. The land runs from the Matengo and Lukumburu mountains in the west, both reaching about 2,000 m, down to lowlands of barely 300 m in the east. June to August can be cold in the Matengo highlands; October and November are the hottest months.

Its peoples include the Ngoni, the Matengo of the western highlands, the Manda and Nyasa along the lake, the Yao, and the Ndendeule and Ngindo to the north and east. Much of the region's public culture — the dance, the church calendar, the annual commemoration of 1906 — comes out of that mixture.

West of Mbinga the land falls to Lake Nyasa. Mbamba Bay, in Nyasa District, is the region's port: a small town with a sand beach, clear water and a handful of guesthouses, connected by lake ferry up the Tanzanian shore. It is one of the least-visited beautiful places in the country.

North of Songea, the wild country of Nyerere National Park — the largest national park in Tanzania — reaches down into Namtumbo District. Beyond it the region has five game-controlled areas, among them Undendeule and Liparamba.