Two West Coast zoos played host to visitors from Kenyan Maasai tribes over the summer, eliciting mixed - and at times, awkward - reactions from zoo-goers and outside observers.

In the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park - http://www.sandiegozoo.org/wap/wap_maasai.html - people wandering the paved walkways to check out lions and gazelles also saw a group of the Maasai outside a hut. Wearing brightly colored traditional garb, they demonstrated dance rituals and chatted with visitors about how they interact with animals at home in the savannas of East Africa.

At Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, an ongoing program features four Maasai guides - http://www.zoo.org/maasai_journey/ . Wearing zoo uniforms, they share their experiences with and knowledge of the animals.

For some, the zoos' efforts to provide cultural context veered too close to the denigrating human exhibits of Africans and South Americans featured at Western expositions and fairs more than a century ago. (Two years ago, a zoo in the southern German town of Augsburg drew condemnation for hosting an "African village" event on its grounds.)

Last month, students and professors at the University of Washington organized a public forum where some complained that the Seattle zoo had similarly crossed a line by mixing human culture with animals.

Femi Taiwo, director of the global African studies program at Seattle University, posited that young children may find their first exposure to African culture comes amid the animals. The zoos, he said, had "inadvertently put forth some of the ugliest stereotypes about the continent. Whatever education they might be presenting would actually be negative in its impact."

Taiwo, who grew up in Nigeria, said his criticism came in the larger context of Africa and Africans being associated in popular culture solely with nature and its rural residents - not cities, business or politics.

"It's not just about zoos," he said. "Every time you turn on the TV, on Travel Channel, it's black people dancing naked. And National Geographic magazine has built a career on that."

Since the public forum, Taiwo has continued the debate with Kakuta Ole Hamisi, a Maasai who now splits his time between Kenya and Seattle, where he works at the zoo. Hamisi said "it's ridiculous" that the program was being seen in a racial light.

The controversy flared following a stepped-up zoo publicity and marketing campaign, said Linda Farrell, the zoo's education manager. She said Hamisi had been on staff for six years.

"People living side-by-side with wildlife have a far superior knowledge," Farrell said. "We very conscientiously strove to not convey any image of exploitation or putting people on exhibit."

Hamisi said he and the other guides deliberately wear Western dress.

"We can't objectify ourselves," he said, "and we try to avoid the traditional images of the Maasai staying in the African plain with the spears and so forth.

"Education can take place anywhere," Hamisi said. "Wildlife, for us in Kenya, it's our national heritage, it's our cultural heritage. So for us, there's no shame being from a place where giraffes roam."

And there's no shame for many visitors to the zoos.

Southern California attorney Robert Miller happened across the Maasai while visiting the Wild Animal Park in San Diego with his wife and son.

"It was enjoyable to meet and mingle with tribesmen that you don't normally get to see without an expensive safari package," he said. "I thought it was tastefully done and it was well-integrated into the setting. It wasn't like they were just in one little caged area."

Likewise, Nicola Evans of Illinois was happy her 3-year-old son Kellan had the chance to see and talk to the African visitors in Southern California.

"He was crazy about their brightly colored clothing and jewelry," she wrote on her blog. "We literally had to drag him away."

But she said in an interview later that the experience also felt a bit "wrong."

"Too much like they were on exhibit," she said. "That felt very strange. You are walking through the Wild Animal Park when you suddenly stop to look at this new exhibit. Only, they were people."

Evans didn't take any photos of the Maasai because, "it didn't feel right."

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Los Angeles-based asap reporter Ryan Pearson sat inside a Maasai hut in Tanzania.