Cultural tourism in African communities
4 Cultural tourism in African communities
4.1 The Cultural Tourism Project in Tanzania and Cultural Manyattas in Kenya
Although the development of tourism in the African continent lags far behind that in for example Asia, countries such as Kenya and Tanzania are well connected to the global flow of tourism.
Particularly communities around important tourism nodes – such as Amboseli National Park and Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya, and the Arusha region in northern Tanzania – have recently become part of the global tourism industry. These communities have taken advantage of existing transport infrastructure and communication systems, the abundance of tourists visiting adjacent wildlife parks and existing tourist agencies in the tourism nodes, as well as powerful, albeit stereotypical images of the Maasai to promote and enhance their involvement in tourism.
In conventional tourism circles, the Maasai have traditionally been represented as a unique and esoteric community that represents the essence of real Africa, namely as people who have managed to resist Western influence and to retain their exotic culture. As a consequence, overseas tour operators and travel agents often market the Maasai as one of those extraordinary, mysterious indigenous African communities that have managed to remain untouched by Western influence and other forces of modernization. These forms of touristy images are usually represented as ideal for tourists, particularly Western tourists, who are keen for exoticism and
Chapter 4 Cultural tourism in African communities
adventure in the manner of the early European explorers. In most instances, international tourists, and particularly those from North America and Europe, want to see the Africans and the African landscape in the same way as they saw it during the formative years of image-moulding, when images of Africa were usually based on information dating back to the colonial period (Wels 2002: 64). Therefore, Europeans long for pristine African landscapes dotted with picturesque huts topped by grass-thatched roofs. They also expect to hear the sound of drums the minute they arrive in Africa, and to see African natives rhythmically dancing to the ongoing cadence, representing real and quintessential Africa (Norton, 1996).
The establishment of cultural manyattas in areas adjacent to Amboseli National Park and in other parts of Maasailand is closely linked to the establishment of wildlife parks and the development of safari tourism in Eastern Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. The national parks and reserves were established in areas that were the traditional grazing lands of the Maasai pastoral community (Akama, 2002). Initially, at the start of colonial rule in Eastern Africa in 1897, the Maasai pastoralists were moved from their expansive lands in central and northern Kenya and were eventually confined in selective native reserves in southern Kenya. After this spatial relocation, the colonial government went a step further and declared the whole of southern Kenya (an area covering 27,700 sq. km) as a protected game reserve. As a consequence, the Maasai were lumped together with wildlife and were supposed to share their land with the diverse array of savannah flora and fauna. Further, in order to protect the wildlife and to promote organized safari tourism, in the 1950s the government enacted legislation for the establishment of specific wildlife parks in Maasailand, such as Maasai Mara and Amboseli. As a consequence, the establishment of the cultural manyattas was an off-shoot of the creation of the wildlife parks. Due to displacement from their grazing lands and diminishing livestock numbers, the Maasai people in various group ranches collaborated to establish cultural manyattas in areas adjacent to wildlife parks, as an alternative source of livelihood. Currently, there are several cultural manyattas adjacent to Amboseli National Park, including Olgulului, Lolavashi, Kimana, and Tikondo.
The manyattas stereotypically reproduce the image of dome-shaped mud houses encircling a cattle enclosure, where
… women plaster their roofs with dung, while the elders wait for the cattle to come home. Tourists see the herdsman leaning ‘one-legged’ on his staff. They hear the sound of tinkling cowbells and watch girls and warriors dance bedecked in red ochre and coloured beads. (Berger, 1996: 178)
As Ongaro and Ritsma (2002: 131) further explain, the procedures for receiving tourists are more or less the same among the existing Maasai cultural manyattas. Community representatives visit lodge owners or talk to local guides and drivers in order to attract tourists. Guides and/or drivers receive a commission (around 10% of the entrance fee paid by tourists) for bringing tourists to a particular cultural manyatta (Ritsma, pers. com.). Upon arrival, each tourist pays an entrance fee of around USD 10. As they enter the compound, the tourists are welcomed with songs and dances performed by Maasai women. A community representative presents the Maasai culture and the manyatta’s set-up, and takes the tourists around the manyatta. The tourists are also given demonstrations of several aspects of Maasai life, such as warriors making fire by rubbing a stick against a small log, and women making bracelets or necklaces and plastering a mud hut with cow dung. Towards the end of the visit, the warriors perform a dance; during this, the visitors
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are permitted to join in and even to take pictures of each other dancing with the warriors. In the end, the tourists are led to a designated market place within the cultural manyatta where Maasai beadwork and other handicrafts are sold to them as souvenirs (Ongaro and Ritsma, 2002).
Compared to the cultural manyattas in Kenya, the village tourism project in northern Tanzania is relatively recent. In 1994 the SNV Netherlands Development Organization and the Maasai initiated commercial activities around Amboseli. A group of young Maasai asked the SNV also to assist in developing tourism activities in the region. A pilot project in 1994 near Loliondo showed the possibilities for local people to benefit from tourism. With limited resources and inputs, an income of about USD 10,000 was generated (Leijzer, pers. com.). Based on these experiences, in 1995 the Cultural Tourism Programme (CTP) was launched. The SNV seconded an expert, took over the financing of the operating costs for the coordination office in Arusha and provided a few vehicles on loan. The concept for the CTP was developed, propagated and implemented by a six-member project team in close cooperation with the national Tanzanian Tourist Board (TTB) and the local population, until it reached the present stage, which now involves 18 projects. Every village offers a package of different visits. A half-day visit to the Ilkiding’s village, for instance, typically begins with the provision of lunch consisting of local dishes, a walk through the village, a visit to the traditional craftsman and/or the traditional medicine man, the buying of local souvenirs, sightseeing near the local waterfall and, finally, a traditional dance performed by local dancers. In 1995, the tourism projects attracted 50 visitors; just five years later, the number had increased to over 5000. In 2001, there were 7500 visitors, mainly backpackers, organized travellers and expatriates (Verburg, 2004). Although more villages and communities tried to be connected to the CTP, others had to withdraw. For example, Syikilili (2002) documents the
‘rise and fall’ of Gezaulole, one of the CTP projects. The success of the projects differs: whereas between December 2000 and May 2003 the project in Machame received only 80 visitors, the one in Longido received around 1500 (Verburg, 2004).
The SNV controlled the expenditure and ensured that the budget provided was used only for earmarked purposes. Its staff in Arusha saw to it that the quality of the product was continually assessed. Moreover, they developed contacts with local agencies in order to promote the programme, and they took pains to open up additional communities to tourism and to continuously improve the products offered. The SNV also supported the training of the guides by the Professional TourGuide School (PROTS) in Arusha and coordinated all organizational tasks related to the arrival of tourists, apart from the product-marketing component, which was coordinated by the Tanzanian Tourist Board (Adler, 1999; SNV, 1999). In 2002, the SNV handed over the projects to local coordinators.
The Tanzanian Tourism Board remained the custodian of the CTP.
A comparison of the cultural tourism projects in Kenya and Tanzania reveals similarities as well as distinct differences. In both cases, relatively well-developed transport infrastructure and communication networks already existed, thus enabling the development of the projects. Also, as from the 1960s, the use of jet planes for the efficient transportation of international visitors to Nairobi and/or Arusha and the use of relatively luxurious mini-buses to take visitors around Amboseli or Arusha, were decisive for the development of tourism in these regions. Furthermore, the recent introduction of mobile phones has enabled proactive project coordinators to link-up up with tour operators and international tourists arriving in Arusha; this in turn has enabled the projects to flourish and to attract more tourists compared to the projects that do not have this communication facility. For instance, the Gezaulole community project – which is located in a
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relatively remote area and does not have any communication facility linking it to the outside world – has tended to lag behind; only a few tourists visit it.
Moreover, most of the cultural manyattas in Kenya and the CTP in Tanzania have, in essence, tended to link-up with and/or are connected to existing nature-based/wildlife safari tourism activities. Consequently, they form part of a well-developed tourism complex that combines specific nature-based attractions (Amboseli, Serengeti, Ngorogoro Crater, Kilimanjaro and Mt Meru National Park), the existing relatively well-developed tourist facilities (lodges, campsites) and the unique Maasai cultural attractions. In this regard, the existing mega wildlife attractions, Maasai culture and the famous Kilimanjaro are icons for international tourists, ‘looking for exotism and adventure in the African wilderness’ (Akama, 2002: 43). In reality, however, the cultural manyattas in Kenya are more like museums, as most of the activities are simulated and the villages are recent reconstructions. It can therefore be argued that the cultural manyattas both fit in with and exemplify the shift from cattle-based subsistence and the transition towards a profit-oriented diversified economy that is based on new forms of land tenure and the utilization of resources (Berger, 1996).
Although similar transformation processes are taking place in the various Tanzanian villages where the CTP is being undertaken, the initiation of various tourism activities is more or less embedded in the daily life of the local people, and the activities appear to be less staged (although the degree of staging varies from village to village). Consequently, tourism activities in Tanzania are integrated into already existing socio-economic and cultural activities. Furthermore, some of the villages are inhabited not only by the Maasai, but also by people from other tribes. For instance, although the CTP is often marketed and promoted using the powerful Maasai images, the villages of Gezaulole, Machame and Mto wa Mbu are inhabited by predominantly non-Maasai people. Other tribes such as the Chagga, Juhundi and Ujaama have recently established their own settlements in many parts of northern and central Tanzania. In fact, of the 18 cultural tourism projects, only four are located in areas that can be said to be original Maasai land (Leijzer, pers. com.)
In addition, compared to the CTP, cultural manyattas in Kenya have tended to mushroom in an uncontrolled manner and, as a consequence, most settlements near parks have grown into unplanned trading centres surrounded by zones of increasingly denuded landscapes (Berger 1996: 183). In Tanzania, the initiation of various tourism activities was properly planned within the framework of the CTP. In this regard, the cultural manyattas in Kenya lack a well-coordinated marketing and tourist distribution network, whereas the Tanzania Tourist Board coordinates the marketing and also facilitates the flow to and the distribution of tourists among the various cultural tourism projects. However, the situation does not always remain static. New attempts to coordinate tourism activities in cultural manyattas are currently underway with the creation of the Association for Cultural Centres in Amboseli Ecosystem (ACCA) as a coordinating body responsible for joint marketing and promotion (Ongaro and Ritsma, 2002). Inversely, in Tanzania currently the coordination of various initiatives within the CTP appear to be weakening after the withdrawal of SNV support. For instance, in February 2003, a local daily newspaper reported that the level of cooperation between various projects was noticeably deteriorating (Arusha Times, 2003). Furthermore, recent attempts to establish a new body – the Tanzania Cultural Tourism Organization – to coordinate the activities within CTP has failed to take off due to disagreement on functions that are to be undertaken by the organization.
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4.2 Discussion: fractured communities and the development of tourism
