Slumtours for Millionaires

Earlier this year, I blogged about my own experiences with poverty tourism — arguing that people who visit slums generally do so with the best of intentions, and that the experience can be quite meaningful. Many of you agreed with me and shared your own experiences from visiting impoverished places — and from being visited, as well.

Now that Kennedy Odede's heated New York Times op-ed, "Slumdog Tourism," is turning heads, I had to revisit the topic.

Odede, a resident of Nairobi's Kibera slum — the largest in Africa — argues that slum tours turn poverty into entertainment. For Odede, each gaping stare and photo shot by tourists chips away a little piece of dignity from the slum's residents. He argues that most tourists will leave the slum only to return to their comfortable lives, and that will be that. In other words, they won't be moved to improve the lot of the slum dwellers, and the slum community will be as abandoned as it was before.

There is, of course, some truth in what Odede says. Most tourists probably won't take action after leaving the slum. And even if they do, would their $50 check to the recommended non-profit make much of a difference?

But if Odede's piece is compelling, it still overlooks one key point.

That is: even for tourists who don't feel the desire to rearrange their lives after exposure to a slum tour, the mere act of visiting a place can still have an intangible impact on a person. Sure, maybe visitors to Kibera won't end up volunteering their time or making monthly donations to support the slum. But they're likely to end up talking differently about Africa in conversations with their friends. And maybe when they read the news, they won't be so quick to skip over the article about the most recent famine/drought/outbreak in the developing world. The next time they vote in an election, they're more likely to consider what their representatives have to say about global poverty, too.

The fact is, most people living in the West don't know what real poverty looks like. And if you're like most people, let's be honest: sometimes it's necessary to witness "how the other half lives" firsthand in order to understand why it's so important for you to make a difference.

Photo Credit: Meredith Slater