Curvas POC.

Stasch (2014) calls for scholars to pay equal attention to tourists and visited peoples in order to understand the underlying mechanisms of tourism imaginaries and in

underscoring the similarities both sides have in the formation processes of

imaginaries. One of the most popular imaginaries that the Maasai form about tourists is that they are all rich. Nearly all wazungu are rich. What they lack in culture they

make up for in financial wealth. Ulaya is a place of abundance, especially since ‘the cows are so big!’ according to a lodge askari who went to Denmark on a trip sponsored by the Danish development fund, DANIDA. Tourists, in turn, are often convinced that the Maasai are either wealthy or very poor, depending on what narrative the guide convinces them to adopt. As laid out in Chapter 2, the debate concerning whether the Maasai are very rich or very poor goes back to colonial times and the Maasai themselves have varying opinions on the matter.

Aside from being rich, a common stereotype is that foreigners do not have

orkwaak, culture (See also Chapter 3, specifically Francis’ argument in Chapter 3

section 3, that only the Maasai and perhaps the ‘Red Indians’ have culture). For instance, the most popular telenovela on Tanzanian TV, a show followed almost religiously by all research participants with a TV, depicts a rich girl and a poor girl in the Philippines who were accidentally swapped at birth and are re-swapped as

teenagers. The place of the show, to my research participants, was most definitely

Ulaya, not South East Asia, and gossip about the show concerned the lack of respect,

manners and culture of the rich girl. There is little distinction made between the geographic origin of foreigners. Other than the Danes having huge cows (a Danish developmental project in the NCA in the 1990’s and early 2000’s sought to ‘upgrade’ Maasai Zebu cattle), Americans being loud and that marrying them is never a good idea (I met three Maasai returnees with failed marriages to American anthropologists or biologists residing in Ngorongoro) and that Indians (East African Indians) are untrustworthy (for a broad Tanzanian stereotype of Indian businessmen, see Chapter 6), tourists form a fairly homogenous group of rich, culture-less people.

Acting upon this imaginary, in an effort to persuade tourists of its legitimacy, they use various forms of performance, ranging from ‘re’-enactments (dances, jumping performances and choirs) to cultural bomas to fake junior warriors. The imaginary of the African ‘noble savage’ is an imaginary so powerful that it drives a multi-billion dollar industry of cultural and eco- tourism (Akama et al., 2011). Many Maasai, such as the operator of the most successful warrior training camp or the increasing number of Maasai tour guides, are willing collaborators in immortalizing the perception of the Maasai as the ‘noble savage’. Maasai, such as the owner of the aforementioned training camp, have mastered the craft of selling authenticity; 22 five- star reviews (and no lower reviews than that), this online credit speaks to that fact. Iconic movies, such as the academy award-winning Out of Africa (1985) and Nowhere in Africa (2001) or the box office hit The White Maasai (2005), portray the Maasai as savage people faced with the imminent ‘threat’ of modernization and with it the end of their culture.55 _All

three movies are based on female autobiographies, the first two revealing how Westerners perceived the Maasai to be ‘on the verge of extinction’ as early as the 1930s and 1940s.

A widespread belief within Maasai culture unwittingly aids in reproducing the stereotype, apart from business-minded Maasai readily serving tourists enactments of the ‘noble savage’, and the belief that only the Maasai have culture (see Chapter 6 and the interview with Francis in Chapter 3). Since early colonial times, officials,

ethnographers and tourists have systematically portrayed Maasai culture as something static, threatened with extinction. Not only has this informed the global view and local policy on the Maasai, or (the lack of) today’s conservation efforts in incorporating the ‘stubborn’ Maasai in activities, this ongoing dialogue (or lack thereof) has influenced

Maasai culture itself. As Salazar (2009) argues, tourismified people groups, such as the Maasai, borrow from traditionalist anthropological ontology on culture (as stasis) in depicting their culture to tourists.

Hostilities from other people groups intensified in post-colonial times, such as during the Ujamaa era (1961-1985), and reinforced the idea of uniqueness through the culture that is alive in Maasailand. Ujamaa led to Maasai emphasizing their otherness in resisting to join the mainstream melting pot, pan-Africanist popular Tanzanian culture. This further cemented the idea that as a Maasai, one is a placeholder of a globally coveted good, culture. Tourism encounters only strengthen the Maasai view of themselves as safeguards of the unique (only) culture. Tourists readily confirm the Maasai’s authenticity as opposed to the moral decay of Western culture.

Maasai research participants often lament how many Maasai make ‘fools of themselves’ by partaking in staged versions of their culture. Business-minded people (often themselves Maasai) realize the dynamics at play and knowingly persuade tourists of an ‘authentic experience’ filled with dancing and jumping, colourful beadwork instead of white purist, red shukas instead of blue shukas (as red is fiercer), elders dressed as warriors and fake villages, built to look like movie sets. The coming of age experience of graduating as a warrior has been altered dramatically in

Ngorongoro, also due to constraints such as high school. Rather than living in

manyatta on their own, learning skills of survival, in the tourist season, young boys

with faces masked in white paste will walk up and down the slope leading towards Oldupai, Ndutu and the Serengeti (the main tourism route). Their experience is

reduced to photo opportunities, one dollar per photo. Boys who speak English will tell tourists, if they have too much time on their hands, about imagined acts of bravery and

try to sell them jewellery. The entire act of becoming a warrior appears to have been reduced to a photo op.

Living at a Cultural Boma usually means that your social rank and mobility are low; however, some residents are particularly motivated to enter an upwardly mobile spiral through their tourism encounters at their Cultural Boma. I interviewed one warrior at a Cultural Boma who had not been schooled, but who had taught himself English and over time had perfected his accent to sound American and progressed to the unofficial leader of the boma. Hoping to meet a Western lady, he dreamed of starting a ‘cultural’ tourism company. Cultural Bomas are run by a larger village and elders deliberate about who to send to live in the Cultural Boma. Many inhabitants are cattle-less, have sick children or battle diseases or have a handicap. Women at

Cultural Bomas are often widowed and some turn to prostitution (Maasai internal

demand; driver-guides are not allowed on the roads at night due to risk of accidents with wildlife). A distinctive feature of Maasai tourism workers is that these are either upwardly mobile, many educated beyond high school, or that they form the poorest class, often cattle-less and unable to afford schooling for their children. Both ‘classes’ of tourism workers face harsh critique for selling their culture out. That being said, the main critique Maasai hold towards tourism is not the staged nature of small-scale interactions with tourists, but what I have explored in Chapters 2 and 5; namely, how the government, the tourism industry and conservation agencies have, since the

1950’s, ‘hijacked’ Maasailand for tourism or conservation purposes, deporting Maasai off their lands and giving little revenue to the Maasai.

5.8. Concluding remarks

This chapter has explored imaginaries in relation to the research question of the dissertation: how are human mobility practices continuously constructed and (re)produced, through communication technology, in dialogue with members of a cultural group, and in its reaction to non-members? Imaginaries are tools that mediate knowledge; they are place-making, mobility-enabling and restricting, communicative tools that control and adapt to the socio-cultural environment in which they are produced and/or used. By focusing on the imaginaries of Maasai that many tourists share and re-create, the chapter has also analysed the role of ‘non-members’ in constructing and restricting mobility. This speaks to the objective of deconstructing discourses shaping a culture that is mobile/immobile.

I honed in on tourists, as opposed to non-Maasai Tanzanian citizens, for two reasons, one conceptual and one practical. Throughout the dissertation, there is an implicit and at times more explicit narrative regarding how many Maasai deal with the nation-state (and thus Tanzania and all Tanzanians), and how the nation-state deals with the Maasai. In Chapter 3, I explored the construction of place in reaction to the ‘out of place’ in terms of Ulaya, all things and concepts foreign, imported from the global sphere. Place is constructed in a complex matrix, from the body to the global (Massey, 1994). Tourists are a very concrete representation of the ‘out of place’ that is analysed in chapter 3. Their imaginaries, and the imaginaries that many Maasai share on tourists, are part of a global discourse I aimed to grasp here. The practical

reasoning behind choosing tourists was my daily exposure to tourism and Maasai- tourist interactions.

In a society organised along the axes of gender identity and age-sets, gender imaginaries are abundant and important for the (re)-creation of gender roles; as such,

they form the glue of society (Taylor, 2004). Although women ‘dominate’ the domestic space and domestic tasks, functioning as moorings to a mobile system, this chapter has shown that mobile imaginaries of both men and women have shaped and are shaping Maasailand. The female role in the pastoral economy goes well beyond the domestic space; as traders at markets, women ensure the cash-flow necessary to support the household, as herds are long term investments. Myths such as ‘the kidney’, or ‘she who gave birth to the land’, are fascinating in terms of the insights they generate into the rationales behind gender division and about gendered

mobilities. Within Maa society, Maasai women are often associated with the wild, with wild animals, and men with the domesticated; the fascinating outcome of this association, this gendered imaginary, is that women are best suited in homes, as moorings facilitating mobility, because their untamed nature would make them unsuitable to tame the wild.

The noble savage is also a gendered imaginary, he is fiercely masculine, athletic, on the move (by foot) and ‘roams’ the savannah. The stereotyping of the Maasai as intrepid warriors, as Hodgson (1999) argues, may have served to disenfranchise women from being viewed as Maasai. As argued, I partially depart from this view; Maasai ideals of beauty and warrior strength are not colonial

inventions, what has disenfranchised women to some extent, however, is land tenure policies that the colonial and nation state have forced on the Maasai. I conclude that Maasai gender imaginaries and tourist imaginaries of the ‘noble savage’ only have a limited common ground.

In this chapter, I have analysed tourists’ expectation of the ‘unspoilt indigene’ or of Maasai as noble savage. Reading Clifford (1988), I see the usage of the noble savage, as a meaning-making device, as being reflective of an unresolved challenge to

frame modernity so that it encompasses a plethora of futures. The noble savage is subject of either an immobile past or placeless nomadism. By analysing imaginaries on gender and ‘the noble savage’, I have made it clear how mobilities are discursive constructs. The discourse on the Maasai has, historically, oscillated between the native rooted in place and the nomad that has no place. Idealising mobility is as dangerous as romanticising place is, and the Maasai, to a certain extent, have found themselves torn between uneven power relations through which they have been framed as either mobile or immobile. This discourse has been set by colonial writers, policy makers, the Tanzanian and Kenyan public, the government, Maasai themselves as well as the popular imagery circulating the globe, enticing tourists to travel to Maasailand. Due to the opportunity to interview many tourists, it is mainly tourists’ understandings and imaginaries of the Maasai-as-indigene or noble savage that have been analysed in the latter part of this chapter.

In Ngorongoro, tourists are only challenged to a very low level about their preconceived Maasai stereotypes, as the interaction between tourists and Maasai are often dictated by tour guides. Still, the tourism experience is viewed positively by many Maasai and tourism encounters fuel their understanding of their cultural uniqueness and distinctiveness. This often leads to an elitism and pride in the sense that the Maasai possess a very coveted thing, which the ‘Others’, so popular an imaginary, have all lost; namely, culture itself. Given their limited space in which to present their culture, the Maasai of Ngorongoro seek to persuade tourists of what tourists already interpret as ‘authenticity’ and Maasai understand as their ‘having culture.’ The chapter that follows further analyses what it means to ‘have culture’.