posted by Tanya Schwarz
A few weeks ago, an advertisement came across our desk for a “slum tour” of the Old Fadama district of Accra, Ghana. The description says:
“Meet your local guide and head off on foot to Accra’s Old Fadama area. As the capital city of Ghana, Accra attracts high numbers of people in search of a better way of life. Many are drawn here from rural areas across the country in the hope of improved living conditions, and this puts a strain on the city’s resources. During your tour, learn how Accra has expanded and grown to accommodate the influx, and meet some of its residents.
Stroll through Old Fadama and observe people going about their daily lives. Life isn’t particularly easy in a slum such as this, yet many of the residents maintain a positive outlook in the face of challenging circumstances.
Hear all about it from your guide, and see locals hard at work salvaging discarded appliances and machinery. Learn how unwanted items are turned from waste into profit, to earn money for the families and help to keep landfill sites clear. From old computers, fridges and fans to broken microwaves, televisions, radios and industrial machinery, nothing escapes the eye of these resourceful, hard-working people.
With your guide to translate if necessary, take time to talk to the people you meet throughout your tour, and perhaps share stories of mutual interest from your part of the world. After exploring the area and learning more about Old Fadama’s working community, return to the start point where your tour finishes.”
Below, two of our editors exchange some brief thoughts on this example of poverty tourism and the implications for humanitarianism in Africa.
R. Simangaliso Kumalo: The story of Old Fadama, is a growing phenomenon in Africa. There are a few sites like this one even in South Africa where poor people live with waste and are forced to irk a living out of toxic and dangerous materials. That should not be celebrated as a place of industriousness. Whilst one appreciates the creativity of the poor but as the martyred Bishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero once observed “it is a mortal sin to take the bread of the poor and give it to the rich.” We all know that the plight of the poor is directly linked to the gluttony of the rich. As one of my lecturers once said almost twenty years ago, “ The problem is not that we do not have enough food in this world to feed everyone, but rather the problem is that whilst the minority is dying of overfeeding the majority then has to die of malnutrition.” There are a number of people who should be making redemptive interventions e.g yes our politicians who are the usual suspects, the companies that dump waste in poor communities, but also one wonders where are the religious communities and leaders, the so-called bearers of good news to the poor and oppressed. Where are the humanitarian organizations, development agencies and NGOs? Why are they not mobilizing the people to rise up against this glaring injustice. I am not sure what to think of the tour guide companies who obviously are making a living out of the plight of the poor. Or should they be understood with sympathy that at least they are telling the stories of the people Old Fadama to the world? May be something can come out of that. I am encouraged by the fact that the blog is discussing such issues. A friend of mine, Mr Sithembiso Mdlala, a poet, reflected on the communities of the poor in Durban, South Africa and wrote :
“The foundation a potential sinkhole
Vegetation tired heap of dust
The big tall dry tree stands aloof and erect
Ruling over this dejected human dumpsite
However, people live here,
People strive here,
People die hereWhen the nation pilgrimage to the mountain
To pray for rain,
Here like scavengers they move up
And down the garbage reserves.
Undisturbed by the clarion flower smell:
Searching for trash to cover their rooftops,
Come rain, come shine, come pain,
In spite of all these showers of shame,
People still live here,
People strive here
People die here.”– Sithembiso Madlala, 2006, Fountains of Fear. (Durban: Virtual Skills), 26.
It is not yet Uhuru for the majority of Africans and indeed mother Africa is mourning.
Cilas Kemedjio: The story of Old Fadama is also the story of suffering, or rather the story of the meaning and the purpose of suffering. I remember Richard Wright saying to Kwame Nkrumah that he (Nkrumah that is) should make the suffering of his people meaningful. The suffering of Old Fadama is being cannibalized by tourists who, not content of being complicit (actively or passively) with the production of this misery, engage in the pornographic sightseeing. It is also the story of humanitarianism. And I want to touch on the point raised by Simanga. Humanitarians, at least in their current reincarnation, are out to showcase suffering. It is their raison d’être (pardon the French). Therefore I do not see how they can be part of the solution: their business model depends on this very pornography of poverty to exist and to be sustained. It is therefore, ultimately, the story of not only being able to escape the waste, but also being the target of this cannibalization. The poor cannot even hide her/his suffering, his/her body which is there for the tourist to see. It’s shocking, for those who are innocent enough or naive enough to be ignorant about the misery of the world (to borrow from Bourdieu’s title). This suffering is meaningful, for the modern-day cannibals that we call tourists.
I was once on a bus of academics who were taken to a neighborhood in a slum in San Salvador to see how people had been provided with plumbing by a European NGO. It was not billed as a “slum tour” but it felt similarly voyeuristic. This particular neighborhood was clearly used to people coming in and out, but it was very unclear what any of us — the “bus people” or the people of the neighborhood — were supposed to get out of such a staged interaction. Here the voyeurism is also staged, but is it really necessary to observe people having to salvage harmful electronic waste to see them as “hard-working” and worthy of “our” admiration? Who are we to give such an assessment?