In the West Masai are the new accessory for authors promoting books, travel agencies promoting their businesses and zoos wanting to attract patrons back.
First we had the spectacle last year of the San Diego Zoo flying in a group of Masai men (dubbed ‘warriors’) to live at the zoo as part of a ‘culture share’ program.
The same thing also happened at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.
Then there was last month’s New York Times ‘Style’ section light piece chronicling the spectacle of a Masai man being brought to New York City to promote a coffee table book.
Now comes the news that a group of Masai ‘warriors’ will take part in the London Marathon ‘… to raise awareness and money for their village of Elaui, where two out of three babies die of water borne diseases.’
Buried in the story of course that a UK-travel agency who wants to increase its own market share of the tourism market in East Africa, is behind the trip.
What has also not been a surprise has been how the men have been paraded around in London in ‘traditional clothes’ and resulting in all sorts of interesting ‘facts’ being reported in the British media about them:
They survive on fresh blood drained from the neck of a living cow, they often run for days and nights on end to find water and their shoes are made from car tyres cut up and strapped to their feet.
.
This latest version of Sara Baartman 2.0 here and here.
In September last year academics Char Miller (a visiting professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College, California) and Anene Ejikeme (she teaches African history at Trinity University, San Antonio) in a critique of the events at the Woodland Park Zoo, explained why ‘Masai warriors’ are in vogue now. They also reminded their readers of the historical bases of this phenomenon, in an article criticizing a ‘Masai Warrior’ exhibit at the Seattle Zoo:
… they were initially dubbed Masai warriors because no group more fully embodies the quintessential Western fantasy about darkest Africa. Their putative violent virility is code for the Other; their alleged primitivism stands in stark contrast to civilization as we know it. Can you imagine these indigenous stock figures, set within a faux savanna, quaffing a grande, no-foam, sugar-free latte from Starbucks?
Of course not, which is why the zoo’s representation of Africa is of a piece with late 19th-century European imperialism. Back then, Britain, Germany, and France appropriated Africa’s resources and people, sent avaricious “explorers” and zealous missionaries to conquer and convert, and looted ancient sites, and ensnared rare animals for their museums and zoos.
As I said before. I am tired.
[...] Africanus would like to point out that the Masai do not belong in [...]