Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/200

Human Ecosystems: Botam-Tai District 17 THE HUMAN ECOSYSTEMS: THE BOTAM-TAI DISTRICT
 * Location
 * Topography
 * Soils
 * The Natural Ecosystem
 * Natural and Viable Society
 * Modern Society
 * The Economy
 * The Environment as Seen by Local People
 * Social and Political Status
 * Addendum: Shell in Ogoni

17.1 LOCATION

The village is 27 kilometres Southwest of Port Harcourt, in the centre of Ogoni in the Lowland Equatorial Monsoon ecozone, (Map 4). The typical landscape of the ecozone area is called derived savannah or farm-bush which covers much of the old coastal terrace of the Niger Delta containing the areas of highest overall population density: generally the country through which the East-West road passes, around Ughelli, Ahoada, Elele, North of Port Harcourt, Bori and Eket (Map 3B.). Increasingly however much of the landscape is becoming dominated by urban, industrial, oil industry and plantation activities.

Ogoni can be defined by the area where the people speak the Ogoni language which is as a separate language group within the Niger-Congo family of languages, by way of the Volta-Congo sub-family and Benue-Congo branch (Professor Kay Williams, Department of Linguistics, University of Port Harcourt). The Ogoni language has several dialects including Kana (Khana), Gokana, Ogoi and Eleme; the people of Botem-Tai are said to speak Eleme, although they say it is Tai, which may be a related dialect.

Communities that ERA visited near Botam as part of its survey included Korokoro, Gbene-Ue, Ueken and Kpite. And further afield Bori, Onne, Nchia, Kono-Bo-Ue, Teeralle, Sogho, Guara, Bien-Guara and K-Dere.

17.2 TOPOGRAPHY

Botem-Tai is on the alluvial Ogoni Plain, about 30m above sea level. The plain is a very flat dome which falls almost imperceptibly in all directions, except where is joins, as a narrow waist, topographically similar country between the Bonny River system and the Imo River to the Northwest. In the North and East the plain falls to the lower Imo Valley; in the West it falls to the coastal flats of the Bonny estuary; and in the South to the swamps, creeks and islands of Andoni and Opobo. 198