"Slumdog Tourism:" Kennedy Odede publishes op-ed in New York Times
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-08-19 11:19
“Slums will not go away because a few dozen Americans or Europeans spent a morning walking around them. There are solutions to our problems — but they won’t come about through tours.”
Kennedy Odede, a 2010 Echoing Green Fellow, and executive director of Shining Hope for Communities speaks from the heart – and first-hand experience – in his recent op-ed in the New York Times. Born and raised in Kibera, he questions the presumed role that tour companies play in alleviating poverty. Is it just enough that you walk through a slum? Is it just enough that you take a picture and walk away?
According to some, over 60 percent of Nairobi’s population lives in slums, nearly 1 million of them residing in Kibera—making it the largest slum in Africa. With its own schools, churches, medical clinics, bus stations, and shopping markets, it is truly a city within a city. Overcrowding leaves an average of only 12 square feet of housing per person. Now, you might say, we visit neighborhoods all the time when we are traveling, so why is there even talk of impropriety when touring a slum like Kibera? Some even say that tours create social awareness—that by seeing poverty, you come to understand it better and then perhaps change your mindset. Kennedy recalls a moment when he was speaking with a filmmaker while walking through the streets of Kibera. They passed an old man defecating and the woman took out her video camera. How would you feel if that happened during a tour of your ‘hood?
Assumptions are bound to be rampant, not only by you, but by the people you are observing “as a tiger in a cage,” as Kennedy poignantly puts. Why spend valuable funds and time to “see” a community from the outside, with little personal connection? Tours create resentment, misunderstanding, and do little to actually accomplish perhaps what may be the good intentions of the participants.
What side do you fall on? Is it enough just to changes mindsets? Does that really happen on tours? And are tours really an effective way to do that?
With few words, Kennedy pushes us to think more deeply about these questions and act even more boldly when we consider our attempts to effect change. Merely observing the problem and then escaping from it demeans us and does little for those who are left behind.
Currently a junior at Wesleyan University, Kennedy is among the first people from the Kibera slum to attend a four-year university. Read the complete op-ed in the New York Times here: http://ht.ly/2rT7d and join the conversation by sharing your comments below. Bravo to Kennedy for raising such important issues in such a powerful forum!
