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In Pictures: Jordan tourism threatens Bedouin

With 630,000 tourists visiting Petra in 2013, local Bedouin tribes fear they are losing their traditional way of life.

Traditional rock-cut Nabatean tombs can be seen along the lower part of the ancient city of Petra.
By Nadine Ajaka
Published On 4 May 2014

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When the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated the ancient city of Petra a World Heritage Site in 1985, the Jordanian government relocated over 300 families from Petra’s caves to the neighbouring village of Umm Sayhoun.

Now, Petra is one of Jordan’s most famed tourist attractions, and thousands of visitors pay a hefty entrance fee to look at the ancient city and get a taste of traditional Bedouin life. The same is true for Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert, granted a similar UNESCO designation in 2011.

Where there once was only rock, desert and sparse pockets of Bedouin camps, there are now tour groups from every continent and a growing population of once-nomadic Bedouin whose livelihoods depend on tourism.

“We are paying the consequences of that choice until now,” said Giorgia Cesaro, project manager in UNESCO’s culture sector in Amman. “I can see a cultural threat to their traditions related to high contact with tourists and it somehow contaminating their traditions.”

Five years ago, UNESCO added the Bedouin of Petra and Wadi Rum to a running list of intangible heritages – folklore and traditions not found anywhere else in the world – that are in need of urgent safekeeping. Beyond potential cultural threats, there is a sense that the commodification of Bedouin culture for tourist purposes has devalued education among the communities that work at the sites.

“Bedouins don’t see the point of staying in school for long; it doesn’t seem relevant for them,” said John Shoup, an anthropology professor at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. “Young men are looking at people who have degrees, who are not making much more than their uneducated parents working in tourism.”

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But tourism has slowed, and a shrinking economy has brought into focus a struggling local education system and literacy rates far behind the rest of Jordan. “In 2009 and 2010 things were great,” said Ibrahim Zalabi, a Bedouin who runs a camp for tourists in Wadi Rum. “After [uprisings in] Tunisia, Libya and Egypt… that’s when it all went downhill.”

An estimated 630,000 tourists visited Petra in 2013, according to the Petra Development and Tourism Regional Authority.
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Tours in the Wadi Rum desert, located about an hour from Petra, usually cost between 15-20 Jordanian dinars ($30) per hour.
Ibrahim Zalabi, 41, raises sheep and runs a camp for tourists in Wadi Rum. He worries about tourism(***)s impact on traditional Bedouin culture. "There are young men who try and imitate tourists. They get drunk, [and] dress like them. This isn(***)t a good thing."
10-year-old Abdullah Zalabi says he enjoys his studies, but many children in Wadi Rum eventually stop going to school to work in tourism.
Rashed Zalabi, 19, says that all his friends have a phone with Internet and a Facebook account. "I don(***)t always dress like this, but foreigners like it. Kids in the village wear all kinds of brands these days," he says.
Two young Bedouin men say they want to get married, but there is no land for them to build houses in their over-populated village.
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36-year-old vendor Atallah al-Bedul says he appreciates the exposure to different cultures that tourism brings, but he wishes the government would invest more in education. "We are Bedouin from Petra. We speak seven languages, but we can(***)t read or write," he says.
Fatmeh al-Bedul, 30, has been working in Petra since she was a young girl, but she does not want the same for her children. "Our kids [in the village] all left school, but we want them to study," she says. "If they spend their whole lives in Petra, what do they learn?"
Abd al-Hawaytat, 36, operates a shop at a viewpoint above Petra(***)s monastery. "There is no space for us to grow at all," he says, of Um Sayhoun village. "If the government doesn(***)t give us land, then we will move back to the caves in Petra. If not this year, then the next."
60-year-old Salwa el-Badul was born in the caves of Petra, but moved out when it became a national park for tourism. "I wish I could return to the place where I grew up," she says.