Dinner under the camel thorn trees: The safari tourist’s travel back in time

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.