Kalenga

The fortified capital of Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe, with a small museum holding his skull.

Fifteen kilometres west of Iringa, Kalenga was the fortified capital of the Hehe under Chief Mkwawa, who led one of the longest sustained resistances to German rule in East Africa. The site of his ramparts is now a small museum and a mausoleum holding his skull (returned from Germany in 1954) and a handful of personal possessions.

The drive out is short and the museum is small, but it is one of the only places in southern Tanzania where pre-colonial African political history is told from the African side. A taxi or piki-piki from Iringa takes about thirty minutes.

things to do sight
A story
After the Germans took Kalenga by force in 1894 they cut off Mkwawa's head and shipped it to the Bremen Anthropological Museum. The Versailles Treaty in 1919 specifically required Germany to return it; they refused, claiming they couldn't identify it. The skull was finally returned to his grandson in Kalenga in 1954 and is now in a glass case in the small museum here.

Other places in Things to Do