Taking as its starting point how recent social conflicts are remembered (or not) through memorials and museums in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, this essay discusses colonial continuities that shape how these countries see themselves and present themselves to foreign eyes. Drawing on the work of Michel Rolph-Trouillot, Edward Said, and Aime Césaire, among others, I argue that the way these countries present themselves to the Western gaze is largely driven by the needs and expectations of a tourism industry that reinforces imperial nostalgia and stereotypes of Africa as a land of nature and adventure, with folklore playing a side role. Traveling in East Africa is about animals and landscapes, not the history and aspirations of its inhabitants. Although this plays to Western prejudices and fantasies, there is an African complicity. The Western gaze's pervasiveness at the intersection of memory and tourism reveals the limitations of decolonization in East Africa as a whole.