Progress and Primitivism
How the Non-Western people are represented in the Print-Media ?

Heartbreak on the Seregenti, National Geographic, February 2006

I chose an article about the Maasai people living in northern Tanzania. This article, published in February 2006, recounts the story of this pastoral society and all the challenges they face, like how they survive with the wildlife, struggle with the government, try to give an education to their children and use tourism as a resource to help the community.
In this assignement, by analyzing both pictures and text and using other sources, I will try to give a representation of these people by the western world, and then will focus on progress among Maasai.

Is their world so different from the one we, as ‘modern people’, live in ?
First of all, the article mainly describes the animal life of the region, which is ‘justifiably famous’ in this part of Africa : elephants, lions, hyenas, black rhinos, zebras, wildebeests and other animals we usually only find in America in zoos. All of them cohabit in this area of national parks and reserves, on the fronteer with Kenya. As the article says, hunting is the activity that brings in more money than anything else, unfortunately it was forbidden : they now live thanks to cattles, and some of them perform illegal activities, such as poaching. We can see on page 3 a woman with her child arrested by antipoaching rangers.
Living one year out of two in hunger and drought, their resources are scarce, especially water. And yet, they have to be able to provide anything for their tourists. Indeed, tourism is an important part of their wealth. As we can see on page 6, they greet people from rich countries in impressive lodges with swimming pools and all the amenities they could never afford themselves to have (‘health spas, tennis courts, yoga room,...’). Taking care of this ‘world-class resource’ allows them to help their community: tourists coming massively to Tanzania