The Mursi Tribe … a horrible human zoo

On the way back to Jinka we stopped to visit the Mursi tribe as they wanted me to check them out for research. The Mursi are the most visited tribe by tourists and the whole thing is quite simply horrible.

It’s like a zoo where people pick the people they want to take photos of and then pay them. The Mursi people all line up and are pretty aggressive in the whole process, trying to encourage tourists to take their pics for cash. Did not like it at all. It is the most unauthentic tourism experience I have seen. I tried to observe what was going on and I was with all the parks guys so didn’t have the normal swarm, but I could see that something has to change there! Tourism can be really great, but everything about this is wrong. Actually many of these people are coming to the park just for tourism income and are now living in there as a result. They’ve never had an formal education at all and have absolutely no understanding of using money. I understand that it isn’t possible to visit the Mursi in the afternoon because they’re all pissed from the alcohol they bought with the cash and there’s a lot of fighting going on because of it. It was highlighted that this tribe are a real problem for Mago, yet do bring the government park entry fees as they are a main attraction for the park right now. But working with the Mursi means working with them from utter scratch as no one has yet so it’s a very large project to start with. I’m hoping Big Beyond can look to this group later down the line, especially on this tourism thing, but we don’t have the capacity to tackle this, just yet.