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Abstract
Safari holidays are now a major part of the African tourist industry and food has become an essential aspect of the adventure. In the late nineteenth century, rugged imperialist explorers shot and consumed many of the large African animals, while after the First World War, luxury safaris for the rich became the norm. First as gentlemen explorers, and then as guides on hunting safaris, ‘Great White Hunters’ and their pervasive ideology of muscular Christianity prevailed. The period from the late nineteenth through the first part of the twentieth century is looked back upon as the golden age of the safari. Today, many safari tourists are provided with ‘fine cuisine’, but with accompanying ‘nods’ to the food of this golden age. At the same time, some safari guides provide reenactments of cooking on an open fire in the bush. Safari lodges and camps have had to cater to an increasing diversity of tourists and to manage the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic. Online advertisements for Safari companies depict carefully organized meals with views across the African savannah where dangerous encounters with wild animals may be envisaged. The companies often promote subtle and nostalgic invocations of the past providing the tourists with a ‘back in time tourism’. In preparing this article, books on safari cuisine, accounts by safari guides and some individual tourists, and many safari company online websites were studied.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 ‘Heritagiziation’ means “heritage making – the creation and recreation of culture and historical meaning and identity” (https://statusprojects.net/heritagiziation).
2 Mónica Cejas reduces the period of the golden age of safaris to between 1900 and 1945 (124).
3 Robert Ruark made a well-known film, Safari Hunting, in 1953 in British East Africa, which helped to perpetuate the narrative of the ‘Great White Hunters’ and the golden age of safaris. He also wrote the best-selling book Horn of the Hunter (1954).
4 E. I Steinhart in his book Black Poachers, White Hunters A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya Steinhart (Citation2006) traces the history of hunting there in the colonial era, describing the British attempt to impose the practices and values of nineteenth-century hunts undertaken by wealthy Europeans. Eventually, conservation of the wildlife became the dominant goal and transformed the indigenous hunters into criminal poachers.
5 There is a large literature exploring why men hunt, addressing questions such as whether it is a productive way of acquiring food; a way of socializing and bonding (as with most sports) or whether men hunt to gain social attention, known as the ‘show-off’ hypothesis (See Darimont, Codding and Hawkes Citation2017; Gurven and Hill, Citation2009; Patou-Mathis, Citation2017).
6 “Requisition” is a military term meaning an official order, or request, or a ‘call’ for something.
7 Brawn is meat from a pig or calf’s head that is cooked and pressed in a pot with jelly.
8 Although a number of criticisms of Urry’s thesis have been made, and responded to in Urry and Larsen (Citation2011) The Tourist Gaze 3.0., his basic notion of the tourist gaze remains useful here.
9 Some lodges such as Giraffe manor in Nairobi offer other entertainments, at great expense, such as fossil hunting. See https://www.thesafaricollection.com/experiences/fossil-hunting-in-lake-turkana/.
10 There are many definitions of fine dining. For example, Clover, a small business resource centre has several pages setting out what to expect in a fine dining restaurant. https://blog.clover.com/what-is-fine-dining/.
11 Camel here is a mistranslation from the Afrikaans Kameeldoring, a giraffe thorn.
12 Email from Kate Phillips to author, 12 June 2022.
13 Email from Liz Wheater to author, 11 June 2022.
14 Email from Steve Mitchell to author, Angama Mara SafariLodge (Citation2023), to author, 3 January 2022.
15 Email from Cottar’s Safaris to author, 12 January 2022.
16 Email to the author from Joanne Hayes, marketing manager, Red Carnation Hotels Group (Southern Africa), 30 December 2021. Xigera is an expensive five star lodge. Local food includes baobab porridge and “dry-aged triple-A Botswana beef”.
https://xigera.com/discover/delicious-dining/xigera-s-culinary-ethos
17 Email from Susan of Roy Safaris (Citation2023), 1 September 2023 in response to request from author for details of customer origins.
18 Email to author dated 5 September 2023 in response to request from author for details of customer origins. Orbis is a destination management company based in Malawi who specialise in “sustainable, educational, philanthropic and experiential travel to Malawi” (https://www.orbis-dmc.com). Here we have the beginnings of more ethical safari tourism.