Mkomazi National Park Officially Opens

Moshi has been blessed with Tanzania’s newly improved Mkomazi national park to add on those that the country already has in an effort to improve on the amount revenue that the country gets out of tourism. There are number tourists’ attractions that the tourists can enjoy once they visit the park and they will include the night game drive, balloon safari and mountain hiking which are soon yet to be introduced among the so many others that are commonly known in most of the parks.

This Mkomazi-Umba was formerly a game Reserve and it has just been upgraded to the status of a national park recently on the 14 march 2008 following a Government order and according to Mr. Ikwabe Koroso who is the park’s tourism warden, there are also other tourists activities that will be introduced after a short while like the rhinos and wild dog conservation learning sessions. Mr. Ikwabe Koroso also added that the conservation learning activity will be slowly introduced in the park following rules which will be set up to help in monitoring and regulating movements of these animals within the park. At the moment, there are activities like the day game drives, walking safaris, camping at both public and special campsites and eco-tours in the communities close to the national park.

Mr. Koroso also mentioned that the park management has already asked the responsible bodies like the ministry of tourism to help them establish more permanent tented camps as well as lodges to provide accommodation to the tourists who will be visiting the park. it is important that more public and special campsites are setup and new game viewing tracks. Currently there are Babu’s Semi-Permanent Tented Camp in the Park and a number of hotels and guest houses in same town.

A few tracks for tourist product viewing; Zange entrance are required, Kisima airstrip and some public and special campsites. The word Mkomazi comes from two different words in some local language called the Pare ethnic language there is ’Mko’ which means a traditional wooden spoon and ‘Mazi’ which means water. Therefore Mkomazi means that there is too little water in the park to fill up a wooden spoon. In actual sense, this park’s major problem is lack of sufficient water for its animals to survive on. It is situated in the northern part of Tanzania with the largest part of it occupied by the Kilimanjaro region while Tanga region occupies 39% in two districts.