The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [214]
For the local people all this has been a very mixed blessing. A recent acerbic analysis claimed that tourist development in Goa 'in the process of creating global tourist sites, determines that (local) people's cultural and ecological space is dispensable to its requirements.' Tourism 'is predicated upon a development ideology that defines local people's space as dispensable to the needs of national and transnational capital.' The same author comments on what is called 'staged authenticity', that is the 'typical' Goan fisherman, villager, toddy tapper, who performs in hotels. 'Goa has been constructed to serve as one of the world's pleasure peripheries, a cultural space for the leisure consumption of tourists divorced from the needs and concerns of everyday life.'70
Much the same can be seen on the Swahili coast. However, the setting is rather different. The main historic population centres were the Swahili port cities that we have written about previously. In particular, the Stone Towns of Lamu and Zanzibar, even though they mostly date only from the nineteenth century and later, are considered to be heritage attractions, and distinctive enough to be preserved. Yet as tourist attractions some changes had to be made. Many of the old houses have been reconfigured to make hotels, and some unsympathetic 'development' has taken place both within the stone towns and on their edges. Lamu is, as we have already pointed out, an Islamic town which acts as a focus for Muslims all up and down the coast. Many of its women wear very all-enveloping robes. Ten years ago the only place a tourist could buy alcohol was in a rather dingy cellar attached to the hotel in the centre of the town. Now the bar has moved out onto the main street, which runs along the waterfront and is the centre of Lamu life. It even boasts a small collection of bar girls. Westerners complain that the exotic is being destroyed, but the real question is whether 'tradition' should be preserved for the benefit of foreigners. Most Swahili probably would prefer not to be living in a museum, but rather have up-to-date plumbing.
We found in the case of Goa that much of the profit from tourism does not stay in Goa. Similarly in the Swahili town of Malindi, now really an Italian resort, with a line of Italian owned hotels controlling the beach front. More generally, it has been estimated that 45 per cent of funds generated by tourism remain in the third world country concerned. Of the money spent on a beach holiday in Kenya, 70 per cent goes back to the first world; in Thailand it is 60 per cent. There is also, again as in Goa, internal colonisation in that investment in tourist spots often comes from an elite from the interior. This applies to much of the Kenyan coast.
Coasts are one thing, but islands are another: the ultimate in the tropical fantasy for westerners. This perception fits nicely with the fact that most Indian Ocean islands have fragile economies. Helped by pressure from the World Bank, many of them have found western tourists to be their best source of foreign currency earnings. This has now been recognised by people promoting islands to jaded travellers, witness a web-site come-on:
Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, far from African coast, a bunch of islands offers to its visitors a range of tastes, smells and visions at the crossroad of Asia and Africa. Whatever you are looking for – white sandy beaches, rocky mountains, luxuriant forests or plain deserts – you'll be fully satisfied. If your fascination relates to snorkelling in coral reefs, trekking, or birdwatching in a unique nature, you will enjoy what you'll discover there. Away from commercial ways, those countries: Madagascar, Seychelles, Mauritius and Reunion Island,