Abstract
Since the late 1990s, there has been a boom in tourism focused on the Khushmaan Ma’aza Bedouin of Egypt's northern Eastern Desert. While entrepreneurship on the part of a Bedouin, along with growing numbers of potential visitors, has fuelled this growth, a natural drought has pushed large numbers of Bedouin into the tourist trade. Almost no rain fell over the Khushmaan homeland between 1997 and 2005. Historically, such severe droughts compelled households to settle permanently along the Nile Valley, or men to take up temporary jobs in Red Sea coastal cities. The response to this drought is unique. Bedouin have clustered not in towns or villages but in a dozen tourist mahattas (stations) in the desert, where tourists visit for a few hours. The station structures are made of reeds, and two other factors make this sedentarization “soft”. Most Bedouin say they would disperse into the desert if rains return. The capricious trade itself could evaporate due to political events in the region. But is also possible that sustained drought combined with tourism impacts could take Khushmaan culture beyond a tipping point, depriving youth of traditional pastoral education and channeling them toward a permanent settled existence.
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Notes
At Umm Ikbaash, the 32-m deep well is located precipitously close to the wadi floor, inviting destruction by a flash flood, the owner’s peers say. They point out the owner is only 35 years old and has “never seen a proper sayl (flash flood) in his life, so does not know any better.”
In many ways, the present pattern of Bedouin mahatta tourism may be described as an “unsatisfactory” experience that could be improved. Improvements have been suggested by both Bedouin and tour managers. At present there is little real interaction between tourist and Bedouin. As observed, tourists did not seem particularly interested in learning more, and the Bedouin themselves likewise expressed little curiosity about their visitors. But this pattern may be seen as a missed opportunity. The tourists come close to people who have literally thousands of years of accumulated skill and knowledge in a desert wilderness, yet learn nothing about them. Indigenous guide programs such as exist in Uluru National Park, where local aborigines educate tourists, sometimes with the aid of a ranger interpreter, provide an alternative model. Cultural centers also facilitate more learning for the visitor (see Harkin, 2003).
Bedouin geographical knowledge of foreign lands is a good indicator of the shallow depth of tourism’s impact on their society. In the early 1980s, when one of the authors worked in the region, the Khushmaan constantly asked him questions such as these: why do some people say the earth is not flat? Is it true that it can be daytime in one part of the earth and nighttime in another? It was anticipated that years of contact with outsiders would have answered questions like these, or by satisfying their questions made the Bedouin less curious about other places. This is not the case. The Khushmaan at the mahattas in 2005 asked many questions like these, which could well have been posed 20 years earlier. Is there a place where it is so cold that only birds live? What is at the ends of the earth? What countries are closest to the ends of the earth?
A pious tour manager who is a settled non-Ma’aza Bedouin attributes drought and rainfall in the Ma’aza desert to accomplishments and failures of the human spirit. He drew a direct linkage between the “accident” at Luxor in 1997 and the subsequent drought. He spoke of Sayyida Sulimaan, a “faithful” Khushmaan woman who has lived “just from sheep and camels and not for tourism” in the desert wilderness of Fatira al-Bayda and Fatira az-Zarqa. “It rained only in those areas for the three years she was there,” he said. “It was something like a miracle. I visited her sometimes. Just behind Jebel Qattar there was another person living like this and there was some rain there. But where there are mahattaas there is no rain, nothing.”
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The authors are grateful to the Bioanthropology Foundation for supporting the research leading up to the publication of this study.
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Hobbs, J.J., Tsunemi, F. Soft Sedentarization: Bedouin Tourist Stations as a Response to Drought in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. Hum Ecol 35, 209–222 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9052-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9052-y