"Slum tourism" stirs controversy in Kenya
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070209/lf_nm/kenya_slum_dc_2

...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.

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.

"More to the point, how do Kenyans themselves feel about this back-handed compliment as the custodians of backwardness, filth, misery and absolute deprivation?"

Answer: Not a lot, at least according to an informal, random survey by this correspondent in Kibera itself.