Slum "Tourism" - Kenya

Slum tourism" stirs controversy in Kenya By Andrew Cawthorne
Fri Feb 9, 7:51 AM ET

more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070209/lf_nm/kenya_slum_dc_2

NAIROBI (Reuters) - It's the de rigueur stop off for caring foreign dignitaries. It reached a worldwide audience as a backdrop to the British blockbuster "The Constant Gardener."


Any journalist wanting a quick Africa poverty story can find it there in half an hour. And now at least one travel agency offers tours round Kenya's Kibera slum, one of Africa's largest.

"People are getting tired of the Maasai Mara and wildlife. No one is enlightening us about other issues. So I've come up with a new thing -- slum tours," enthused James Asudi, general manager of Kenyan-based Victoria Safaris.

But not everyone in Kenya is waxing so lyrical about the trail of one-day visitors treading the rubbish-strewn paths, sampling the sewage smell, and photographing the tin-roof shacks that house 800,000 of the nation's poorest in a Nairobi valley.

knowing that it was real and not a set, or a CGI creation, seeing that it stretches on and on for miles beyond the frame. I would have no desire to see it in person, unless as some kind of final goad to suicide. I guess it takes all kinds though...