Tourism, Aesthetics, and Global Flows along the Swahili Coast by Sidney Kasfir

In this article, Kasfir explores the Swahili coast as a tourist destination in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He brings together the mercantilist society of the Swahili coast and the recent splurge of modernity that the area has been experiencing. Kasfir focuses his article on the Swahili furniture-making workshops in Lamu, (an island near the border of Somalia), and on the group of Maasai and Samburu warriors that encamp seasonally in Mtwapa, (a beach settlement along the north coast of Mombasa), and sell spears and beadwork to tourists.
A Maasai and Samburu bachelor warrior settlement slowly developed near the Kenya Marineland business and the resort hotels. These warriors not only sold spears and artifacts, but also provide Western tourists with a “real” representation of Swahili life. “Tourist perceptions of the warrior with his decorations and weapons as both image and artifact blur the boundaries of what is conventionally considered ‘performance’ and ‘material culture’.” Although the Maasai and Samburu warriors sell their artifacts to tourists, (sometimes engaging in affairs with the women), they remain almost totally unassimilated, and interact only when they have to.
The second industry Kasfir talks about is the furniture-making industry of Lamu Town. The carved furniture, doorposts, and lintels are the most important local forms of material culture, and tourists are rarely the ones who purchase them. Most of the furniture clientele consists of families in town that purchase pieces for their daughters’ dowries. However, there are also some nontraditional uses of this furniture. More modern hotels and resorts commission traditional styled furniture for display in their public rooms to create a particular atmosphere. “In this case, there is a reversal of expected consumption patterns: the five-star hotel as an upholder of traditional forms…(Pg.122)”
After reading about these two forms of modernism and tourism in the Swahili coast, it became evident that the West is really making little impact on the traditional cultures of the coast. In the case of the Maasai and Samburu warriors, they are the ones in control of the Western tourists, and they are the ones teaching the tourists about their life. In the furniture-making industry of Lamu, it is the hotels located on the island that promote the production of traditional pieces of furniture.