This article discusses how the (post)colonial museum in Tervuren helped to create an artificial separation between East and Central Africa on both sides of Lake Tanganyika, while in reality this was and still is a zone of encounter. The exclusion of the Arab was twofold. First, East African objects were not exhibited. Second, Eastern material culture that was collected in Central Africa, became represented as imported traces of barbary, only highlighting the civilizing mission of European colonization.