Gogo Salt Lick is a
salt lick
A mineral lick (also known as a salt lick) is a place where animals can go to lick essential mineral nutrients from a deposit of salts and other minerals. Mineral licks can be naturally occurring or artificial (such as blocks of salt that farm ...
located in
Kenya
)
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History
Gogo has been known as a place of Mûnyû (salt) for hundreds of years in Embu land, since the founding of the Embu Community.
According to the Mbeere Historical Texts by Prof Mwaniki Kabeca (2005), Gogo is the place where Mwenendega, the founder of
Embu tribe, met his wife Nthara.
Kabeca narrates that Mwenendega, who lived near the current Mwenendega grove in Runyenjes, took his cattle to drink at the Gogo Salt Lick and found a girl who refused to talk to him at first. After much cajoling, she spoke with him and made him swear never to tell her negative things or abuse her, as there would be consequences.
Geography and location
Gogo Salt Lick is located in
Mukuuri
Mûkûûrî is an administrative Location and township in Runyenjes Division, in Embu County, Kenya, with a population of about 15,000 people. It lies on the green, rolling hills of the Mount Kenya slopes. It is home to four public primary school ...
, near the banks of
the Gogo River that separates
Mûkûûrî and
Gitare
Gitare is a settlement in Kenya
)
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localities at the edge of a ridge called Mürurîrî. At least five acres on the banks of the Gogo River, surrounding the salt lick, have been reserved for community use. The five-acre Gogo meadows, which surrounds the salt lick, is populated by indigenous trees.
Chemistry
The Gogo Salt Lick is an area of water puddles fed by slow seeping springs and traditionally used by
wildlife
Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...
and
livestock
Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...
. The salty water that oozes from the undergrounds empties into the Gogo River. Salt licks occur in areas of both sedimentary and volcanic bedrock. They occur rarely in granitic bedrock except where overlain by calcareous glacial till.
Well established mineral licks, like Gogo, typically appear as open muddy areas and are usually characterised by well-worn trails radiating from them. Animals from Kenya, such as buffaloes, gazelles, zebras; and domestic ones such as cattle, goats and sheep, come to such salt licks to ingest the crucial sodium and chloride minerals, which they need to survive.
[Tracy, B., & McNaughton, S. (1995). Elemental Analysis of Mineral Lick Soils from the Serengeti National Park, the Konza Prairie and Yellowstone National Park. Ecography, 18(1), 91-94. Retrieved May 16, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/3683223]
References
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Geography of Kenya
Embu County