Through the Glass: Encountering the Unexpected in Africa

Abstract

American tourists and study-abroad students go to South Africa in search of a genuine connection to the people they are visiting and expecting to learn about South Africans and the country. They are supported by organizations and institutions, whether commercial companies or their university administrations, that want them to have a life-changing experience. Chapter 3 showed how such encounters in southern Africa are framed by deep histories and contemporary media on Africa in the United States. In fact, drawing on his observation of tourists in Kenya, Ed Bruner argues that “tourism in a foreign land becomes an extension of American popular culture and of global media images” (Bruner 2001, 897). African tourism does benefit from selling back to Americans these images rooted in Americans’ imaginations of Africa and branded by National Geographic, Disney, and even CNN. But because travelers can find these images and expectations fulfilled in Africa, they struggle to discover spaces to have the “authentic” backstage encounters that they desire (MacCannell 1976). The vexed relationship between Americans and South Africans produces barriers that make it difficult for even the best-intentioned travelers to fulfill their expectations. In this chapter I explore these barriers as a variety of tourists and study-abroad students experienced them.