The art of traveling: Powerful people do not walk!, Part II

Mwezi Gisabo of Burundi on a stretcher (Photogrphy by Mayer)

I just found two other pictures in my archive, which illustrate the art of travelling in interlacustrine Africa. The first shows the King of Burundi, Gisabo, on a stretcher. He is covered by a veil. For the rulers of the region, travel was a risky undertaking. There was a certain regime of visibilty in place for them. Only few of his subjects encountered the ruler face-to-face. Because he was thought to be the embodiment of his country, his body was a political and religious symbol. The king was at the core of the most important rituals and ceremonies and surrounded by a wall of taboos. Travel was one of these taboos. It was not allowed to him to cross the borders of the country or to enter some places.

The Secretary of Colonial Affairs, Bernhard Dernburg, during his visit in the colony in 1907. 

The other  picture shows the Secretary of Colonial Affairs on the march through the colony in 1907. It was the first visit of the highest ranking colonial official in the colony. The interlacustrine part of German East Africa was one of the key place he visited. Dernburg was the first Secretary of Colonial Affairs, who came not from an aristocratic background, but from the bourgeois strata of the Empire. In the run-up of his journey to Africa, Dernburg often expressed his disgust for the dominance of aristocratic and militaristic patterns in the culture of German colonizers. On his arrival in Dar es Salaam, he demonstrated this disgust by wearing not an uniform, but a suit. This then caused a little scandal among the German public in the colony. During his journey, however, he increasingly admired the hybrid culture of the German landed aristocracy and African ways of dealing with the powerful. In a certain way he was "colonized" by the colonizers and the colonized to fit into the patterns of political representation. One way this was done was certainly the way to travel. Powerful people do not walk!