I was 16 when I first saw a slum tour. I was outside my 100-square-foot house washing dishes, looking at the utensils with longing because I hadn’t eaten in two days. Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage. Before I could say anything, she had moved on.
That is Kennedy Odede, a Kenyan studying in the US, rightfully outraged about slum tourism. It’s an Op-Ed in the NY Times. This must be a pet issue of one of the editors (Helene Cooper?) for they’ve written about it regularly.
Kennedy is right, of course, but more critical than constructive. I don’t think there is anything good to be said about the worst of the slum tours, but that’s not to say development tourism can’t be respectful or beneficial.
A socially-conscious person can read this Op-Ed and be left asking: how should I travel? Readers and I have tackled the question on the blog before. Here are five posts, including the first controversial one and my response.
The evil nature of the world is such that it’s darn near impossible to do anything involving desperately poor people without making things worse.
It would be wonderful if more Africans could contribute their voices to postings like this. We need to listen to what they have to say. We need to stop speaking on behalf of them. We need to respect what they have to say. More and more Africans are utilizing social networking tools and letting their opinions and ideas be heard in the media.
I can’t believe that people continue to argue and debate with Africans who have personally experienced the boorish behavior of tourists and has had to deal with the failed policies and programs of global institutions.
Main Entry: ar·ro·gance
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
: an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions
“Understanding Africa for Dummies” is a must read for arrogant and superior-thinking people.
http://twitpic.com/2910br
Hi Chris,
I was introduced to your blog today after sharing what I call my “development angst” with a friend, who in turn recommended your website. I am glad that this post immediately linked me to a discussion surrounding development tourism, as I, too, feel very frustrated by a growing market for volunteer tourism. The voyeurism I witnessed in Rwanda frustrated me to no end. Your blog entry “Development Tourism Revisited” hits the nail on the head, as an attitude shift needs to happen in order for the true benefits of learning and self development to take place.
Anyways, that was a long-winded way of saying I am really enjoying your blog, and appreciate that you address these issues.
Claire
Here’s a very casual utilitarian model I made that would tell you whether slum tourism is “worth it” in the long run:
U(s.t.) = I + A – F
U(s.t.) = slum-dweller’s utility as a function of slum tourism,
I = Income brought in directly by slumdog tourists,
A = income brought in as a result of Awareness raised in the developed world (by slumdog tourists), and
F = feeling like “a tiger in a cage”
Two things to notice about that model. 1) Because slumdog tourists are relatively rich, and because they probably do care about the poor, I and A may be somewhat large. My girlfriend, for example, went on one of those 2-week research trips to South Africa, bought a ton of stuff from some very poor locals, and now lobbies Congress, works for ONE and MCN, is getting her master’s in public health, and plans to live/work in Africa. 2) You could get some idea of what F is by asking people in the slums what they would be willing to pay to get rid of the slum tourists.
Somehow I suspect that F would be less than I + A, and that therefore slum tourism would be worth it.
But again, this is a very casual observation, and there’s much more that would be needed to flesh it out.
Certainly Jacob’s variable F could be measured by talking to people, but more important than that is keeping it low in the first place. Development tourism could be more like (the ideal for) development itself – more participatory, more local ownership, more empowering for the communities. And I’m sure there are plenty of ways to do this, if the people involved take the time to work with communities beforehand, during, after. And probably many do this.
Start from the beginning – ‘how would you feel about a big group of foreigners stopping by for a visit? What could / shouldn’t they do / see? How can we organize it so it’s a win-win?’ …making sure it’s a choice, and a real discussion, and the community has a real role in the process. It’s harder, not perfect, but it could help set expectations for the community members.
Expectations for the visitors are important too. In Peace Corps I’ve come to appreciate the value that can come of cultural exchange & learning. But it’s easy to learn the wrong lessons when you aren’t ready to change your assumptions. Exchange isn’t just seeing a place or people – it’s having experiences WITH them.
Finally, isn’t this a two-way street? Why can’t people from communities in poor countries also come visit the west? I’ve done Habitat in the US, why not a group from Africa?
I should say I have also done the short-stint-in-Africa volunteer thing before peace corps. And I wasn’t terribly useful. It’s impossible to always avoid the pitfalls, all one can do sometimes is try to learn from them.
I’d be interested to know what Kennedy or other “hosts” think of this.
Great post by Alanna Shaikh, writer of the blog “Blood and Milk”, on the seduction of the aesthetics of poverty that I believe expands on some of the points raised by Kennedy Odede in his Op-Ed on Slum Tourism:
http://bloodandmilk.org/?p=1656
Cause and effect get muddled because people who go on slum tours are mostly predisposed to the issue of poverty.
The only person I know who has done a slum tour is my daughter. She was doing a summer of volunteer work at a school in S Africa when she was a student. As a petite young woman unfamilar with the country, an organised tour was probably the only way she would have gone into a South African slum.
Now she is graduated and working, she gives a monthly donation to a school in Tanzania… the very effective School of St Jude in Arusha. It’s a great project.
I think she’d probably be donating if she hadn’t gone on the slum tour, so maybe she didn’t need to go. But the tour helped her see more clearly the extent of the need.
Chris,
Since last week’s NYT op-ed, the whole poverty tourism debate has flared up again. I just spent the day reading through a score or so posts from the latest spate. One of the things I realized is that both bloggers and commenters end up talking past each other a lot and the conversation gets unnecessarily heated as a result. The problem in part is that there is a lack of linguistic clarity, with people tossing around “poverty safaris” and “slumdog tourism” even when they’re really talking about voluntourism or donor trips or even service-learning student exchanges! What I decided to do then, was to create a taxonomy of poverty tourism to get some typological nuance into the discussion. If Poverty Tourism (or development tourism) is the family name, then I’ve come up with 6 genera and over a dozen species. (Slumdog Tourism would be a species under the genus Slum Tours, which also includes species like Poverty Porn and Disaster Tours.) At any rate, in the course of writing this, I ended up quoting you and linking back to this site several times. (You were sort of my go-to negative guy: sorry, but that’s been your general tone on this topic.) I thought you might want to give the post a read. “Poverty Tourism: A Debate in Need of Typological Nuance.” at http://www.stayingfortea.org. The direct link is here: http://bit.ly/cNe6Hn
Keep up the great writing.