Ethno-erotic Economies: Crafting Samburu Futures in Postcolonial Kenya

Download or read book Ethno-erotic Economies: Crafting Samburu Futures in Postcolonial Kenya written by George Paul Meiu and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines how a people long venerated and vilified for their ethnic and sexual difference use that very same difference to produce livelihoods. Since the 1980s, young men from the Samburu District of northern Kenya migrated to beach resorts to sell souvenirs and perform traditional dances for tourists. They sought to capitalize on the colonial image of the exotic Maa-speaking male "warrior" or moran, who had become a core brand of East Africa as a tourist destination. Most of them hoped to meet European women for transactional sex. As more and more women from Western Europe had relationships with Samburu men, some of these men acquired spectacular wealth in a very short time. Through gifts of money from their partners, men built houses, bought land, livestock, and cars, and opened various businesses. Many of them paid bridewealth and married one or two local wives. Some jumped across age grades by paying for an early initiation into elderhood. Others funded elections and became regional councilors. In a time when most people in Samburu District struggled to produce livelihoods in face of a declining cattle economy, rapid population growth, the alienation of land, and unemployment, the wealth of these "young big-men" became a salient object of moral contestation.