D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 5, September/October 2000, p. 19-20)

Travel agencies promise their customers an authentic encounter with the culture of the country they visit. But in reality, tourists usually move in an artificial world of postcard images. There is little of the adventure experienced by travellers in earlier times, and contacts with the local people remain restricted to those working in the tourism industry.

"If travel is a search for lost paradise, the Muslim kingdom of Morocco is large and mysterious enough to infinitely prolong the quest. From the moment you land, adventure assails you. In simple transactions, like buying a kilo of oranges, there is unexpected drama, humour and competitive gamesmanship." (From a popular tourist guide to Morocco)

Most travel books on Africa these days describe themselves as guides to the 'real' and 'genuine' features of the continent. These adjectives certainly predominate in the books I read about Morocco which is one of the main tourist destinations in Africa, with some 3.9 million tourist arrivals in 1999. One book I have recently been reading is advertised as a guide for those in search of 'authenticity'. It promises to deliver the traveller to those places where the 'genuine flavour' of the country can be tasted, its unique charm witnessed and where one can experience the people in their true and natural setting.

The book carries on its front cover an image straight out of the desert scenes we have come to associate with North Africa: an oasis of trees, a figure on a camel, veiled women moving off into the distance. Yet only a fraction of Morocco's 30 million people actually live in such an environment. The bulk of the population lives in the towns and cities where the search for employment, accommodation, and the necessities of modern life constitute the same priorities as they do for the millions of visitors who come to Morocco every year. Yet Casablanca, Mohammedia, Safi and other industrial towns hardly receive a mention on most of the tourist guides, apart from a few terse paragraphs. Perhaps the words 'genuine' and 'authentic' mean 'as far removed from reality as possible'.

For most outsiders the idea of what Africa should be is more important than what it actually is, confessed one Moroccan involved with the tourist industry. "Many come in search of the stereotype they have witnessed in exotic films about Africa or read about in the romantic books of their childhood. The tourist encounter is geared to delivering that image." For Morocco, that stereotype seems largely represented in the desert sands, palm trees and nomads frequently portrayed on the covers of travel guides and brochures. The actual reality can even be altered or improved upon so that travellers to the country can more adequately feel that they have somehow captured its essence and had the true spirit of the culture presented to them.

One of Morocco's main tourist attractions, for example, is the town of Ait Benhaddou on the edge of the Sahara. Its red mud walls and narrow, winding streets, the backdrop of the mountains behind it, the palm trees and desert landscape stretching into the distance seem to conform to a picture which is instantly recognisable. Can it be that reality and Western imagination actually meet, that there are places in the country which actually look like those we have seen in films or read about in books?

In actual fact, the town has been labelled 'Little Hollywood' for that very reason. It has provided the setting for films like 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'Jesus of Nazareth' and 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thiefs'. In front of its walls, a range of Western products requiring an exotic backdrop have been photographed more times than the local people can remember. What is even more intriguing is that parts of the town have also been rebuilt and redesigned by film directors, so as to more adequately conform to what their image of a desert town should be. This part of real Morocco, then, is partly a construct of Western imagination.

Tourists want to
confirm preconceived ideas

For the thousands of tourists who make the visit this seems to offer no apparent contradiction. Meanwhile, other towns and villages in this part of the country, perhaps because of their poverty and their lack of such stereotypical setting never see a tourist bus from one year to the next. Writing of the growth of tourism in North Africa one author claimed in 1990: "Tourists expect their visits to confirm, in concrete form, the mental images and daydreams they had prior to their departure. That is why reality is often the last thing on their agenda".

In this regard he might also have pointed out that the tourist encounter with the nomads of the Sahara, one of the prominent tourist attractions in the southern part of Morocco, is based on a similar illusion. Tourists come to see the blue men, the legendary Tuareg of the desert, claimed one hotel owner in a town in southern Morocco. He pointed out that many of the villagers are now dressed in blue robes and pretended that they were Tuareg whenever tourists arrived in the town. "But nomadism as a form of life has effectively disappeared from our country. It exists only in the wishes of our visitors."

Does this manufacture of reality confirm an increasing trend as mass tourism discovers Africa? I am reminded of the multi-million dollar tourist complex constructed under the name 'Sun City' in Bophutatswana by South African business in the early 1990s. Labelled as the 'Lost City' it translates into three dimensions all the cherished illusions and stereotypes that Europeans have nurtured of the continent for centuries. 2.5 million cubic meters of soil were removed to create a labyrinth of ravines and waterfalls, jungles and exotic animals, African villages and a lost city straight out if 'King Solomon's Mines' and other fantasies of Western imagination. "As the world becomes more homogenous, more tame, Africa is increasingly seen as the last refuge of the wild and the exotic, a place of adventure," claimed one agent who sells tours to the continent. But the fact is that the 'wild and exotic' are often a deliberate creation from which adventure in any real sense is carefully excluded.

One can readily see this in Morocco where chartered flights to the country deliver their European and American visitors from one air-conditioned environment to another. There is little attempt or chance it seems to meet the world outside this. Official guides, many of them from the host country of the visitors, ferry groups of tourists in luxury busses between selected destinations. Approved craftsmen, approved nomads in tents, approved entertainers and hotel staff form the main point of contact between visitors and the local people. Behind the walls of luxury hotels such as the Club Med in the centre of Marakkech, residents can watch the business and activities on the streets below without ever being implicated in any of its inconveniences, surprises or 'adventures'.

Poor information

In one study conducted in another North African tourist destination, Tunesia, it was shown that on average visitors spent only 2 out of every 24 hours outside their hotels. The average activity per day was 4 hours on the hotel beach, 3 hours by the pool, and 15 hours enjoying other hotel facilities. Only 10 per cent of those surveyed indicated that Tunesian civilisation, history, people, present society and development priorities were of any interest to them. Information on the host country prior to arrival consisted of brochures advertising the hotel and the beaches nearby. The study concluded that "the caricatures and stereotypes used by the travel agencies do nothing to educate tourists about their destination and leave them with narrowly limited expectations that possibly offer a key to the understanding of their behaviour."

Turning a holiday
into a cultural encounter

In conclusion, the purpose of these observations is not to ruin anyone's holiday or put them off visiting Morocco. The country is a fascinating blend of different cultures, cities, towns and landscapes, and some of them do conform to the West's more popular stereotypes. But just as people from the UK, for example, would question a visitor who claimed to have experienced the country through the medium of a guide book which excluded all mention of its industrial cities, the economic reality behind its rural communities, the other parts of its history rather than just the lives of its kings and queens, so, too, the tourist encounter with North Africa can only provide a meaningful insight it is accompanied by more comprehensive information what what is usually offered. Why not spend a few days in the towns and cities off the beaten track? Why not meet local people without the mediation of a guide or tour operator? Why not read up on the history and geography of the country prior to departure? Otherwise a visit to Africa has been a holiday but not an encounter, an experience but not an education.