“Please don’t feed the animals.”

I disagree with you on point 1, though. I do not think the problem goes away if you don’t pay. Actually, PAYING, if the money is going back into the community programs (not to a tour operator or travel agent), is often the most positive part of the visit.

In Cambodia, where I live and work, I think some of the worst “poorism” is from those who don’t pay and just show up, or in the worst cases, pay a travel company but don’t support the projects or areas they visit.

There is a garbage dump, the largest in Cambodia, outside of Phnom Penh. We used to work with a program supporting education programs in the area where we would donate $5000+ per year and we would sometimes visit the dump through this program. In 2006 we stopped visiting the area because we realized that, even though we thought we were doing it “the best way possible” (visiting with an NGO we were supporting significantly), it was still poorism and the benefits of the visit were more for the travelers than the community. There was no educational interaction and little “point” to us being there besides for our own interest in the program.

There are still busloads of people who show up at the dump to take pictures. And there are tour companies where you can pay to have this included in the tour – stop the bus, get out and look at the poverty or perhaps stop and see the NGOs working in the area and move on. Funding the programs working to counter the problem, in my opinion, makes it better, but still not right, and it makes me cringe to think we used to take people there. Paying money to a tour company to see the poor people, makes me cringe too, and so does the idea of “just showing up to look” even if you didn’t pay anyone.

The difference with this project being debated seems to be, though I don’t know it personally, that the people in the community are doing the teaching. They are “inviting” people (if that is indeed the case) to learn about the work they are doing, so they become the teachers, not the recipients. The yellow flags I have, though I believe it was touched on in one of the posts, are the fees you have to pay and where the “profits” go. What percentage of the money goes back into the program and what becomes “profit”? Even if the profits are minimal, who gets them? Who has the ultimate motivation to make this a success? Who holds the final deciding card in if/how the programs are continued and how they are designed? Those are the types of questions I would want answered when doing this type of tour.

Here, in brief redux, are my three thoughts:

1. We wouldn’t be having this debate if New Dawn didn’t charge people money to visit Mayange. That is to say, if you rented a car, hired a translator, and went to Mayange alone, you wouldn’t be thought of as exploiting the village. In fact, you’d probably be considered a noble traveler, willing to get off the grid and go meet the “real” people and find out how they live. Why does paying money, in exchange for facilitating that same experience, suddenly make it exploitative?

2. It’s important to distinguish between companies that give back and companies that don’t. That point has been made by ND staff, but it is worth noting that there are several outlets determined to make these experiences happen in ways that, after extensive planning and consulting with locals and premeditation, seem ethical. (Google “poorism” then google “pro-poor tourism” and you’ll get some sense of the debate–and the extent of deliberation some people admirably go to. Not saying they always succeed…)

3. My first reaction to this very pamphlet was a similar skepticism. Then I went on the tour. This is by no means a come-to-Jesus speech–I didn’t. The tour raised some questions. It answered others. But what is true is that it’s more nuanced than it looks in a conversation based on a pamphlet. So for some thoughts from a disinterested party who had similar questions and–like everyone who is otherwise divided on this issue–concerns about how best to help without exploiting, I humbly recommend my article, only because it’s the one place you can find a disinterested take based on experience with the issue at hand.

For example, this statement “if I was poor and still in my birthplace of West Virginia, would I want tourists coming by to see how poor I was and how some project was rescuing me from my miseries?” assumes that “rich people” being in an area where “poor people” are is bad. Period. It also assumes that people who are working to improve their lives in different ways still consider themselves “in misery” and wouldn’t want others to learn about the work they are doing.

There is an organization in Cambodia called CRDT which I really respect. It was started by young Cambodians a number of years ago, is still completely locally run, and implores a variety of “applicable rural technologies” (bio-digesters, improved fish-pond designs for better water gathering/retention, mushroom growing, etc). These technologies are being taught from peers to peers and have improved livelihoods. Their “tours” to see the projects are led by and designed by the communities and allow community members to teach about the technologies they are using, the successes they have seen, and the lessons they have learned.

One of our Cambodian staff members wanted to learn about how to make a cleaner incinerator for his village, so we connected him to the CRDT tour. He, a Cambodian, learned skills from a Cambodian, which had been taught to him from other Cambodian NGO workers. Bill, what do you think about that scenario? Is that wrong? Are our ideas that the MDV tours are wrong because the people touring are rich and white? Are our ideas that the MDV tours are wrong because the people teaching the skills and driving the whole MDV project to begin with are rich and white?

I have my own issues with certain aspects of the MDV that I have been exposed to, and I certainly agree that the majority of development tourism, “poverty” tourism, and voluntourism breeds colonialist attitudes, but I certainly don’t think that we should put up walls and keep the rich people in their camps and only allow the poor people to travel around, seeing what they don’t have, and not visa versa. If done properly, it can be empowering for those in the poor camp to show that perhaps they aren’t as “poor” as others might think and to be the teachers in the relationship. On my visit, I too learned more about how to make a better incinerator, and we are now using them in our projects as well.

We had people up in arms when we proposed bringing some students/teachers to the US to a camp they had been invited to. “How will the poor people survive returning home to their poor villages once they have seen the wealth of the US?” were some reactions. So, we westerners can travel and deal with our share of culture shock when we return home to our opulent and over-using societies, but “poor” people can’t deal with such transitions?

In my opinion, it’s not implicitly bad to have the rich and poor mix. It can lead to very negative impacts on both sides, if it is not designed properly. Rather than discussing if this is right or wrong, let’s talk about how we can design these facilitated interactions better so that both sides can learn, share, and improve the greater global society.

In my view, people who are defending the poor here are practicing the patronization than the people they are accusing to do so… How dare them thinking on poor’s behalf, describing how if feels like being visited by RICH when you are POOR…something that has never happened to them? They built their arguments on “ifs” and some work they did in aids agencies, short travel experience in Africa, research papers etc. They are in their rich world, barely know how it feels like watching your child dying of malaria or hunger, have no idea how it feels fleeing your own home, being hunted, owning a small piece of land that doesn’t help you feed your family…because it has never happened to them and will never. But they stand up there and discuss and fight among themselves about who is right or wrong regarding extreme poverty reduction, if not eradication fight. And some of them choose to represent the poor and brand conclusions like “poverty tourism” in Africa-those who spend money to visit villages are motivated by a pornographic desire to gape at human suffering-de-humanizing aspect of such an endeavor and so on. When somebody like Donald Ndahiro gives his point of view, they still find ways to formulate their arguments, and when Michael Grosspietsch gives tangible results of his work, they still go on and on.

What amazes me here in all this in the way rich people, intellectuals and who ever fall in the category of the quoted “better or ideal” look at the diversity of the world’s challenges!

If I come to my point quickly, I would say that I am a village girl, who got to know how life is like in urban area, and I know a lot of people like me, who would like their children to visit if not spend their holidays, in the villages they came from in order to learn that life is not always easy for everybody in this world, of course they would learn more things like milking a cow, collecting water from a river, carrying heavy stuff on their head, making mats with papyrus (I wish my grand mum was still alive), cooking in clay pots, gathering fire woods, banana beer brewing…and nobody would blame me, because I feel like it is a duty. However, I would have no right to influence their conclusion, back to town. What I don’t get in Easterly/Wade’s points and many commentators, is if the mistakes in the tours that I guide, as a New Dawn Associates employee, and as a Rwandan, are that I am taking people who have no roots in Mayange, are from a different continent, or don’t share the same values as the people they are visiting… I simply don’t get it. I even tend to agree with somebody who said that maybe the mistake here is going there as tourist, because people will quote you as a voyeur, and that the best is going there as an adventurer! After treating visitors (whose motivation of visiting the village they don’t know!) as voyeurs, they treat people who are being visited as animals “zoos”. In my view I can’t imagine worse dehumanization and I can’t believe people can preach extremism this openly: Michael Kirkpatrick “For this project to be about empowerment and grassroots sustainability there must be willingness for the non-Africans to walk away from the project at some point” Why do some people spend more time talking about how different they can be instead of look at each other as citizens of the world! Black and White, Poor and Rich…

On a different note, I would like to encourage constructive criticism. I love my job, I feel proud of my country and would like to show to the whole world, not only Mayange, but also every corner of my Thousand Hills beloved country. And what some commentators don’t know is that, in my experience as a tour guide, the people who are being visited are learning a lot about their visitors, and I would say, if we forget about the fact that these visitors are rich and the visited are poor, intercultural exchange is being celebrated! You need to have been on more than one of our excursions to understand that. Not long than a month ago I took an American family to Nyamirambo, and the beginning of the “learning from and about each other” started right during the introduction, when the ladies heard that the “family” was made of a divorced man, who had been dating a divorced women for 14 years, was traveling with a soon 21 years women’s daughter! The Nyamirambo ladies had questions about how can you date for such a long time, and are not married yet? Why did you divorce? What was more difficult for you? How do single mothers differ from divorced women etc!

Where is the Disney land, the poverty porn etc represented here?

I would end my own “maybe ready to be criticized comment” by saying what I think that we should rather do: Don’t assume anything, just learn to know others better and together, see what can be done instead of criticizing people who are doing something, maybe little, but still something.

MEDIA RELEASE

April 27, 2009

OUR MISSION IS TO PROMOTE THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA TO THE CANADIAN AND AMERICAN MARKET

Toronto, ON – The African Travel & Real Estate Expo will take place at the Sheraton Hotel in Toronto, Canada on September 1 – 3, 2009 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm each day. The Expo will feature exhibitors promoting travel, tourism and real estate products from Africa.

The three day expo expects over 100 exhibitors and 5,000 visitors. Exhibitors will include members from travel and tourism, real estate, government and corporate sectors. “The purpose of the show is to promote tourism and real estate in Africa by bringing together African-based businesses and tourism officials with Canadian and American consumers. Africa, to a large extent, has bucked the global slowdown and has shown growth in travel, branding opportunities and investment” says Patience Chirisa, event organizer and president of African Travel and Real Estate Expo.

Sponsors for the show include South African Airways, Fedex and CTV and many others. The Expo will effectively market to consumers by offering complimentary seminars on African travel and real estate products. A cocktail evening is planned for exhibitors, media and government officials on the first night of the expo to promote networking opportunities. Admission to the expo is free and numerous prizes will be awarded including 2 round-trip tickets to South Africa.

Please visit our site: http://www.africantravelexpo.com

For further information, please contact:

Michael Kirkpatrick

African Travel Expo

Manager, Marketing and Communication

972-965-8251

michael@africantravelexpo.com

http://www.africantravelexpo.com

After interacting with a lot of wide-eyed undergrads eager to save the world via the Millennium Villages Project, I’d think their money would be well spent seeing what exactly the MVP does before plunging in head first.

There’s a demand to see poor people in Africa. Though I’m not a fan of this kind of voyeurism, shutting down such tours would most certainly not put an end to it… and, given Michael’s response, I think they’re doing a much better job than most would in their industry.