HISTORY PARK PLANNED AT OLDUVAI GORGE
Major construction can be expected at and near the prehistoric sites of Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakey family made their famous discoveries of early mankind. More recent finds some 40 odd kilometres away in Laetoli include footsteps dated back over 3.5 million years, but those have until now been kept literally under wraps, since they were discovered partly underground, to prevent destruction through the influences of weather or visitors in the absence of protective measures.
However, news reached now from Arusha that government intends to build a major new museum, or ‘a dome’ as the source put it, to make the discoveries open to visitors, including of course the building of necessary infrastructure like roads, staff housing, power plant and more.
President Kikwete on Sunday during a site visit, launching the ‘discoveries to the world’, gave the directive to implement the 30+ million US Dollars project, but reportedly avoided any questions on the controversial highway across the migration paths of the big herds of wildebeest and zebras at the northern end of the Serengeti.
In this regard an interesting titbit came out of Dar es Salaam, where a senior functionary in government was allegedly overhead saying: ‘this road will be built. Those green activists will have to learn to respect the decisions of a sovereign government and their godfathers in Kenya can forget about succeeding here. We will have our migration in the Serengeti here and are not concerned with other countries lamenting about what we do in our own country and what it might or might not do in theirs.’
