How Slum Tourism Can Change Your Life
by Andrea Gross; photos by Irv Green
I'm standing in Stung Meanchy, Cambodia's largest garbage dump. The stench is overwhelming, the grit from burned ash covers every inch of my body, and I'm wondering if I made a mistake by forcing everyone in our group to come here.
After all, we'd seen plenty of poverty just driving around the streets of Phnom Penh. We'd even visited the killing fields, where we saw a stupa filled with skulls, a reminder of the more than 200,000 people who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge just thirty years ago. We knew the country was desperately poor, that the people were still too traumatized to rebuild their society.
Did we really need to tour a slum?
But I persisted. Why? Because friends of mine had started a project to rescue children from these slums. I’d seen their photos of Stung Meanchy, and I’d had a hard time believing the horror they depicted.
Now I realize that photographs can’t possibly convey the reality before me. They can’t reproduce the smell of rotting garbage and dead animals; they can’t convey feel of the gravelly particles that swirl around me, making their way, with every breath I take, into my nose, my mouth, my lungs.
Our bus driver hands me a mask. In theory, this will protect me from... from what? I'm afraid to ask. And as I look at the people around me — maskless in the putrid air — I'm embarrassed to put it on.
Men and women — most of whom look very old, although they're probably not — are sorting through the rubble in hopes of finding pieces of plastic or metal that they can sell. On a good day, they earn the equivalent of 50 cents. There aren't a lot of good days.
I take a few tentative steps and see a pile of discarded needles. I pray I won't step on one, pray that the barefoot children who are staring at me won't step on one either. But of course they will. If not today, tomorrow or the next day. This is, after all, the place where used hypodermics come to rest.
;)
A garbage truck rumbles up, and the mood in the dump changes, becomes electric. Like a cresting wave, the adults run, limp or hobble towards the truck, where they wait with thin arms outstretched to catch the latest batch of spoiled food and discarded goods. Maybe, just maybe, they'll find a treasure — or at least a tattered T-shirt that will offer protection from the sun.
One child points to my camera and then to himself. I take a picture, then show it to him, and a grin spreads across his thin face. Other children crowd around. I snap and show as they laugh, begging for more. Good. At least I'm a distraction in a day filled with precious little entertainment.
The practice of visiting slums — sometimes called "slum tourism" — is a matter of contention in some circles, but really, don’t waste your time worrying about it. Yes, gawking — especially gawking at those less fortunate than yourself — is rude. No, I don’t want strangers snapping pictures of me digging in my garden, much less foraging in someone else’s garbage.
But, if I felt forgotten, if I were starving and felt that no one cared, I'd welcome a chance to be seen. I'd welcome the opportunity to let people know that I exist and that I need help.
So — although I know you didn't ask — I urge you to go to a slum the next time you're in a country that's home to the poorest of the poor. Gawk. Take photos. When you go home, hang them on your mirror so that you'll see them first thing in the morning, last thing at night.
And then, if you're so moved, do something that will help you make sense of what you've seen. Do something that will make a difference.
That's what my friends, Bill and Lauren Smith, did when they visited Stung Meanchey in 2002. Bill, the team photographer for the Chicago Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks, and Lauren, an accomplished fashion designer, “adopted” three girls. They found a small house where the girls and their mother could live, enrolled the children in school and gave the mother a small budget for necessities.
Once a day Bill picks up the phone in his Chicago apartment and calls his "daughters" in Cambodia, where it's 12 hours later. "How's school? How did you do on your math test?" he asks. The answer: the girls are doing fine. In fact, they’re doing better than fine. One is studying to become a doctor.
As friends heard about their Cambodian children, they gave Bill and Lauren money to expand their family, and soon the Smiths were overseeing the care of eight, then ten, twelve, twenty children. In 2006 the Chicago Tribune ran a story and donations poured in. The Smiths founded "A New Day Cambodia", a non-profit organization that now cares for more than 100 children. But, as the Smiths will tell you, for every child they are able to rescue, there are hundreds more who are left to scavenge. [www.anewdaycambodia.org]
Scott Neeson is also making a difference. Scott, who used to be president of 20th Century Fox International, was a go-getter who oversaw the release of films such as Titanic, Star Wars and Independence Day. Then, in 2003, he went on holiday to Cambodia and came across Stung Meanchey.
The following year he left his job, sold his Porsche, boat and flashy home. Now he lives in Phnom Penh, where his Cambodian Children's Fund provides a safe home for nearly 300 children. [www.cambodianchildrensfund.org]
Before we leave Cambodia, my husband and I visit one of Scott's three facilities, where we see bright-eyed youngsters laughing, playing and working with computers. Because we're part of a group of volunteer teachers, the children perform a show in our honor.
A group of seven- and eight-year-olds show us a graceful Khmer dance. A class of nine- and ten-year-olds sings traditional Khmer songs. And then the eleven- and twelve-year-olds get up to present a skit they've written themselves. It is based, says the announcer, on their own experiences.
The children’s English is hard to understand, and at first my attention wanders. Then it hits me. The story is about a man who has sold his youngest daughter into prostitution in order to feed the rest of his family. Like the announcer said, these kids are just telling the story of their own experiences.
As much as I wish otherwise, I'm not a Bill or Lauren Smith or a Scott Neeson. I’m unlikely to do something that will save the lives of hundreds of children. But as I look at the photograph of the scavenger kids that’s posted on my mirror, I’m reminded that I can still do something to help children in need — if not in Cambodia, in my hometown of Denver. I can be a Big Sister, give clothes to a shelter, volunteer in the local school.
Deep down I know that the children in Stung Meanchey changed my life more than I’ll ever be able to change theirs.
Andrea (Andy) Gross and her husband, Irv Green, are long-time photojournalists whose travel articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States as well as in several foreign countries. www.andreagross.com
10 Comments
Reader Comments (10)
Hi Andrea,
Great and insightful article - thank you for taking on this subject, especially in explaining so eloquently why you wanted to make such a visit. I think that "slum tourism" gets a really bad name sometimes, and to be sure there are more exploitative tour operators and visitors. But I, like you, have visited such slums in India for the very same reasons - to see where the children had come from, to witness with my own two eyes (and nose and ears and skin) the conditions that people really do live in. It's far to easy for most people to look away and not see.
In fact, I wrote as well about my experience at http://wp.me/p2TVE-2h. You also might want to check out my friend Mariellen Ward's excellent article about Slum Tourism, sort of the pros and cons. http://this.org/magazine/2010/01/28/slum-tourism/
Thanks again!
What a brave and insightful piece! And you have indeed made a difference by spreading word of your experiences and the efforts of your friends and others to help these precious souls. It is all too easy to look away and keep eyes averted.
When we were on our Panama Canal cruise, our ship's first destination was Port Antonio, Jamaica. We expected something similar to Ocho Rios or Montego Bay, but what we saw - barely concealed by our tour guide - was rampant poverty. Our ship was one of the few which stopped there so the dock was lined with excited people as we arrived, happily welcoming tourists with money.
However, the poverty we saw does not compare with what you viewed, smelled and felt at that Cambodian dump. That exposure had to be an authentic gut check.
Most of us can't change the world for children locked in an environment of filth and grief so far away. But an experience like that can really refocus us on what matters and what doesn't. And, as you say, you and I can help someone in our town or city who needs clean clothes, food, medical help and/or a hand to hold.
Thoughtful piece.
Beautifully written. What you are showing us is how these people actually life in a war zone except no one is hooting at them but they are in a battle to stay alive.
This is the way in which each and everyone of us should behave: to "go to a slum the next time you're in a country that's home to the poorest of the poor. Gawk. Take photos. When you go home, hang them on your mirror so that you'll see them first thing in the morning, last thing at night." I think that this is the first time I've read this type of a perspective on what turism and travelling should be. It's not just all about having fun, it's about understaning how others live, it's a form of multiculturalism, that should also turn into giving help to those in need. Great article!
You've given me a whole new perspective on visiting poor areas. When we were in Johannesburg, we decided to pass up the opportunity to take a "tour" of Soweto. I felt, as did my husband and my grown son, that we'd just be three white folks gawking at the poor people. Now I'm sorry I didn't do it. I missed out on the opportunity to get a view of how people live in that setting and might not have been as uncomfortable as I thought I would be. Maybe I would have been changed in some way by the experience. Next time I will do things differently. And meanwhile, I'll keep contributing to the food pantry and go purge some more clothes from my closet to help those here at home who are in need. Thanks for your insightful article.
This is a very good treatment of a tricky subject. You captured the sense of approach-avoidance that inevitably comes with painful realities. Thanks for taking an honest look.
Virginia
As many have said, you deserve praise for tackling a difficult subject. My concern is with how many people will act on what they saw. Coming and "gawking" may shock some people into action,which hopefully is helpful. Staying longer and actually getting the stories of the people who live there, and helping them built whatever kind of life they want to, as the New Day creators did is really helpful. Truly making sacrifices in your own life and going to live there as Neeson did is the ultimate way to be involved. But telling the story as you have, and perhaps raising consciousnesses so that people will donate to the work of others, having "toured the slum" through your story, is an enormous good work. Congratulations.
Such a touching post - hits home that as bad as things seem sometimes, there's always someone who hass it worse & we should always be thankful.
is a terrible situation that people have to live and eat in a dump, eating garbage, sleeping over garbage, vitually living as a social dispossession, many of this people use Sildenafil to get a extra vitamin and some others feed supplements.