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I'm A Tourist, Becoming

In the context of "modern tourism" I started thinking of my own evolution as the "modern tourist" and how not only the activities but what I hope to get from my tourist experiences has changed.

In Erve Chambers' Native Tours he makes mention of Boorstin's theory of pseudo-events whereby tourists encourage the banal rather than genuine experience and artifact. He uses as examples the tomahawks and headresses that can be purchased at so many gift shops across North America. This started me thinking about my own cumulative experiences with tourism - as a girl I collected many things, but my major collections comprised of porcelain dolls in their ethnic costumes, coins and stamps from around the world. Being unable to travel myself it was a way for me to appropriate these distant places and people into my life. But I suppose you could say that these were in fact only superficial tokens.

In Stroma's case he indicates that he was eventually accepted as "family" and you see that frequently - the transformation of guest into host, where tourists cease being tourists. As I got older I travelled quite a bit and experienced something similar after travelling through Gaspesie. I was invited into a family home and employed on the family farm after only a few days, and while I was not declared an official member of the family which is not a custom or requirement I was included in even the most intimate family events, which other employees of the farm were not. I often ate my meals with the family. The people of the town itself quickly adopted me into their fold, and had they not been so nice I might have been nervous since they seemed to really want to keep me. This area seemed to be threatened for many reasons - the young people were going to more urban areas of Quebec, and the joke goes that the girls leave for the cities, the boys follow them and I would guess that is correct.

Maasai Tourist Experiences, The New Colonialism or East African Pastoralist Adaptation

I just finished reading Maasai on the Lawn: Tourist Realism in East Africa - it tells of the Maasai "moran" (junior warrior age-set) who performed at the Mayers Ranch in Kenya where  gives tribalism and colonialism second life bringing them back as representations of themselves in economy of performance

There are a few major themes to the paper on the Mayers Ranch and that Maasai moran that performed there for tourists that gave me the most to think about. The first is that of the colonial undertones of the experience which to some has moral implications - even I have to admit looking at this as an outsider this has a bit the appearance of a zoo. On the other hand, through their relationship with the Mayers, the Maasai that live there gain access to land and water as well as a regular income for food and cattle. This economic and social decision by these particular Maasai was likely only one aspect of their adaptation to the new Kenyan landscape and economy. With access to lands threatened during colonial and post independence rule, this would have threatened their livestock keeping abilities and possibly secure places to build the manyattas for the moran. As an alternative to going to a more urban location to make a living, the Mayers Ranch allowed them to affirm their cultural identity and subsist by their traditional modes which the Maasai have been vocal about wanting to protect. That being said, while this might have been incongruous for some tourists and the modern Kenyan government, I don't know necessarily that this can be simply perceived in terms of unequal distribution of power between the Mayers and the Maasai, at least it would not have been so by the participants. The Maasai were not servants in the home, they performed and sold their handiwork as souvenirs, retaining all profits from the sale of spears and jewellery.