I'm currently working on something interesting related to Zecora, and I figured it would be best to ask her biggest fans about matters of general opinion.
1) What does the fandom think/infer about Zecora's backstory, brithplace, and culture? According to mlp wiki, the writers gave her a lot of African influence, but she also had artifacts from Native American culture in her house, and I've seen fanfics that placed her home in a southwestern American desert style location.
2) In "Bridle Gossip," what do you think Zecora was singing about in her nursery rhyme? I'm interested to see if anyone could come up with an interesting idea for that.

Have a good one.

1045979 Personally I always see her home as Africa or some Equestrian equivalent. Zafrica maybe? After all zebras are only found in Africa

As for the nursery rhyme I have no idea

1045979 I'm thinking African in origin with hints of Native American tossed in.

As for the nursery rhyme probably something like "Mother Goose" or "Hupty Dumpty" ponyfied.

1045979
I think of her as fantasy!African, which obviously have a different history than real Africa. Of course, the African elements are a mishmash of real ones.

In one fic of mine the small hint of "Zebra" Culture (or A Zebra culture) draw inspiration from Mali and so forth, mostly because Mali is famous for having big, prosperous civilized kingdoms; I'm a bit tired of every African character in fiction having a fake "tribal" background. (The Zebra ruler is referred to as "the Mansa" after the traditional Mali title for a ruler, for instance.)

You have a good point that zebras are only in Africa. That's kind of a good reason by itself to assume an African inspired homeland.

1046940
Now THAT I find very interesting. Tribal cultures really are the stereotype, and I don't think I realized how prominent it was. I would imagine more of a big civilization in Zecora's case, too. It makes me wonder whether that culture would be like Equestria in having almost all female royalty. I should look into some zebra behavior as well.

I tend to place her as a native of a large veldt-filled nation of modern cities as well as large, tribalish bands that are likewise modern and civilized but still semi-nomadic. Very African-influenced, primarily Zulu but also with Masai and Mali influences. I never explored it much but that's typically my take.

1045979
I personally imagined that she is one of the herbalists of her tribe whos job is to travel to unknown/faraway lands to study a new plats and potions and spread their knowledge among others in the name of Balance and Order between nature and living things.
Or she might be the Ambassador from Zebra's Country.

That's another interesting idea, though if she was an ambassador, she did a pretty bad job of it in the beginning. It's hard to represent your people when you're freaking everybody out, but I guess that wasn't her bad as much as the judging masses.