27 months

This story came to me via Dr. Deborah John-Ross, a friend from post and former visiting Fulbright lecturer at the University of Buea.  I decided to share this since it has a personal connection with my hometown of Seattle.  You might also say that, although it seems to have garnered little attention in the local press, it’s made ripples of sorts around the globe—that is, here in Cameroon.  The controversy surrounds Seattle’s own Woodland Park Zoo (which, coincidentally, my first apartment was located a short block away from).  The zoo has a program called “Maasai Journey” that runs through September 30th and features “the magnificent wildlife that calls the savanna home” as well as an opportunity for visitors to “learn directly from the people who share their world.”  The program is connected to the zoo’s African Savannah exhibit, which is spectacular on its own.

The trouble, it seems, stems from the zoo’s use of Maasai guides (billed as “warriors” in their bios) as cultural interpreters who, ostensibly, are on hand to help visitors understand the relationship between animals and people in Africa.  Some concerned professors and students at the University of Washington pointed out in an August 8 Seattle Times article that, in addition to marketing the “exotic” and associating Africans with animals, the practice harkens back to days when zoos used people of color as accessories to exhibits.

The debate, however, began on the Internet more than a month prior at the H-Africa Discussion Network, a scholarly listserv for issues related to African history, culture and Africa studies.  Knowing that I was a Seattle native, Deborah forwarded a digest of the discussion to me in an email.  One contributor to the thread went beyond the issue of race and pointed out the cultural mishmash presented by the zoo’s exhibit:

The Zoo markets this program with the word “Masai” [sic]. But its opening day ceremonies program lists only Guinean musicians, a group of “Kenyan” acrobats from the Mombasa coast hotel circuit, a “Bantu” high school girl’s chorus, and a musical group of Zimbabweans, Guineans and Ghanaians.  All worthy in their own way.  But does this not have the effect of genericizing “Africa”?   I’m also puzzled as to why this production includes a “Swahili language guide” illustrated with photos of the Masaai “cultural interpreters,” and a program on “beading in Swahili” (which seems to be the only portion of the exhbit explicitly described as “help[ing] support the zoo’s conservation efforts in Africa”).  Since I (perhaps mistakenly) thought Maa, not Swahili, is the Masaai’s native tongue, the cynic in me wonders whether the intent is to capitalize on the common American Kwanzaa/Lion King notion of Swahili as “the” African language. 

After seeing the zoo’s exhibit, another respondent wrote:

As it is, I saw little that was essentially Masai or African with a bunch of animals laying around in their pseudo-natural environments, the same animals they’ve had laying around for the last several years.  Bluntly, there’s no real cultural exposure going on here.  That “Masai” and “authentic African” is plastered over everything seems little more than an exploitative expropriation and genericizing of the name Masai and anything African to sell more zoo tickets.

I must confess that prior to coming to Africa, if I’d seen this story in the press I might’ve dismissed it out of hand as an artifact of America’s obsession with political correctness.  After living for a year in Cameroon, however, I’ve not only gotten to know Africans from all corners of the continent but also developed an awareness of the vast differences between the various tribes and ethnic groups within the country I now call home.  So how do I respond to the Woodland Park Zoo’s “Maasai Journey”?  Call it a cop out, perhaps, but I’ll reserve judgment since I haven’t seen the exhibit myself.  If anyone at home has visited it or is planning a trip to the zoo soon, your comments are welcome.

Still, I think the zoo could do a lot worse.  To wit, here are a couple of photos I took of the “Africa Lounge” in SeaTac International airport on June 12th of 2006, the day I left for Peace Corps orientation in Philadelphia:

Note the faux weathered, rusty corrugated tin roof, zebra-patterned lampshades and ceiling fans.  The menu features an item dubbed the “Zulu Pulled Pork Platter” or some such thing, too.  Now that’s expropriation of a generic, sanitized “Africa” if I’ve ever seen it!