Violence, Tourism and Hemingway in Kenya

In the Globe and Mail, Stephanie Nolen offers alternative safari destinations for travelers scared off by the recent post-election violence in Kenya. For those of us not currently planning a wildlife-peeping trip to Africa, though, the most interesting part of the story is Nolen’s scene-setting introduction: from the normally hustling (and now abandoned) Exchange, a Nairobi bar once haunted by Hemingway himself. She writes:

Not only could I have a wingback chair, I could have had a whole sofa and a footstool. The one young man working behind the bar stared at me in disbelief before leaping to get me a gin and tonic. “Peanuts? Chips?” he asked as he put heaping bowls in front of me. “More ice? A double?”

This frenzy of hospitality, and the echoing halls the next day at the airport, where there was no sign of the sunburned hordes carrying bubble-wrapped wooden giraffes who usually jam the departures lounge, made me realize how hard the country’s tourism industry has been hit by the political crisis.

And, she goes on to note, it’s not only Kenyan tourism that’s been affected by the Kenyan violence: “For many tourists, the country and the continent are indistinguishable; the Kenyan crisis has had an impact on the whole African travel industry.”

I’ve taken whole college seminars on the uniformity of “Africa” as perceived by outsiders, but it had never occurred to me to think about the impact of those uniform images - sun, sand, safaris, and the “big five” - on the tourism industry continent-wide. Of course, I hope that travelers feel able to venture back to Kenya soon. But in the meantime it’s worth remembering, as Nolen, writes, that “there is much more to Africa than Kenya, despite what Papa Hemingway may have led you to believe.”

Photo by Paul Mannix via Flickr (Creative Commons)

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