Our last trip to Lake Manyara National Park was bittersweet. I really liked traveling around this park, because you could go from forest to flat grassland to woodland to marsh in the course of half of a day. And with this variation in habitat came a great variation in animals. Even though the chances of seeing a cheetah, leopard, or lion were close to none, watching all of the other animals was always really fun. There was also no pressure to rush to the "cool spot" where the big carnivores were, so you could just drive around and feel relaxed. The landscape was also breathtaking, with the gorgeous escarpment of the Great Rift Valley always a presence either on the horizon or right next to you, if you were driving alongside the edge of the park.
Wildebeest have become one of my favorite animals here. Don't they look so cool? And the noises they make. They sound like aliens!
One of my favorite parts of these three weeks was the study of cultural tourism. We got to go around and experience different tribes' tourist programs, but we were secretly undercover wanafunzi (students) collecting data on whether cultural tourism is a viable economic, ecological, and cultural tool for these tribes. We visited two tribes, the Hadzabe and the Maasai. For the Maasai, we were split into three groups and each group went to a different boma (Maasai household). The group I was with definitely had the best experience out of everyone. I was pretty skeptical at first because they dressed us up in the traditional Maasai shukahs (colorful cloths) and then, after their welcoming dance, they put a lot of their beads and necklaces on us. It felt like we were playing dress up.
We did get to watch the men dance (it's where they sing and then see who can jump the highest) and then the Maasai women and us hugged the man whom we thought jumped the highest. That was kind of weird. Then we fetched water with them, walking along the main road… dressed up like Maasai. I felt so weird. When we got the water, all of the people (they were all Tanzanian) were laughing at the mzungu (white people) Maasai and taking pictures of us. Not in a mean way, it was just obviously a very weird thing. After that, the Maasai women showed us how to patch the houses. Their houses are made out of a frame made from sticks and then a mixture of water, dirt, and cow dung spread over the sticks. We got to spread the mud and cow dung mixture over their house, which is harder than it looks!
Next, we collected firewood with the mamas (women), but this is where it started to get really cool. There were a couple of Maasai men who could speak very good English. One of them came with us to get firewood and he would jump out from behind bushes and make wild animal noises, trying to scare us in a very big brotherly way. That started to get fun, and even though the mamas couldn't speak English and we couldn't speak Maa, we all had a good time swinging machetes and laughing whenever someone's shukah got stuck in a thorny bush. After that, it felt like we were all a lot more comfortable with each other.
We got to learn about their houses, learn about their medicine and watch them brew a medicinal soup of some kind of tree root and animal meat. We bought some of the jewelry the mamas had made, and then we got to learn how to make the beaded jewelry with the mamas. We all sat under a tree on cow skins and beaded. It was great! And our "big brothers" were also there, joking and talking with us.
At the very end, they offered us some of the medicine, first without the meat. We all tried it, perhaps foolishly (the medicine had been boiled and everything), but don't worry, no one got sick. (Disclaimer: Usually we're all very careful about what we eat and where we eat it. I haven't gotten sick once. *Knocks on wood*) The medicine was blood red and tasted very bitter. Then they added the meat to it and offered it to us, but we all declined that. We also got natural toothbrushes made for us out of the acacia tree we were standing under. That was really cool!
When we were leaving, the mamas motioned us over and gave us some free bracelets that we had been working on. And then, since nobody wanted to leave, we all got into a big circle and did a spontaneous dance to a Maasai song. They wanted us to sing an American song, but we couldn't decide on one! After that, we had to leave, with many an asheneling (thank you very much in Maa). In the end, it felt like we were all friends, and I know all of us want to go back and visit these people again.
Ultimately, though, we were there for an assignment, and had to use the information we collected for discussions of cultural tourism. While the people of this boma managed to diffuse the tension and awkwardness of mzungu coming to watch them live their daily lives like it was a living museum or something, we still had to remember that this was most likely an act and that for many of the people, cultural tourism is a way to make a very meager amount of money. In most cases, tour agencies or other third parties get the majority of the money generated by cultural tourism, and the actually communities only get a few thousand shillings.
For the Hadzabe, the other tribe we visited, the differences in income for different parties was striking. The Hadzabe are the last hunter-gather tribe still living in Tanzania. They live on a game reserve where they are allowed to freely hunt. At the gate of the game reserve, we payed $100 US dollars, our guide (who wasn't even Hadzabe) got 60,000 Tanzanian Shillings (about $34) and the Hadzabe got 30,000 TSH (about $17) to split among the community. They showed us how to make fire without matches.They also showed us how to shoot their bows and arrows. It was much harder than the bows and arrows I was used to from camp. The string was much harder to pull back. They were all very good shots. Us students, not so much, but we did have an awesome time trying!
We also got to hear them play one of their musical instruments, which was a bit like a two stringed viola/violin with a small bow. You held it on your side and outwards. It worked through harmonics, which was really cool! I played it and managed to figure out a few notes. It felt so good to play a musical instrument! We also did a dance with them and then bought some of the jewelry the women had made. This experience definitely felt more "touristy" and "showy" than the Maasai experience. I think a lot of that had to do with the language barrier and having an actual guide show us around.
For my paper, I wrote about how community-based tourism, which gives communities more ownership of the land they live on, might be an alternative to cultural tourism. While I still can't say for sure if cultural tourism is bad for cultures (is it exploitation? Do they actually have a choice? Does it help preserve the culture or does it influence the culture in negative ways?), I suggested that more ownership of the land will both provide incentive for conservation and provide better sources of income. For example, communities could allow lodges to be built on their land and then get revenue from those lodges. Currently in Tanzania, locals do not actually own the land they live on and wild animals are government property. Because local people usually incur costs only from these animals, there is no incentive to protect them. There are some governmental programs that can transfer some of these land use rights to the community, including Wildlife Management Areas. WMAs are areas that the community creates management plans for, and, if it is approved by the government, essentially becomes a conservation area run by local communities. Community involvement in conservation is very important for Tanzania if their national conservation plans are going to succeed.
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