Visiting strife-ravaged destinations may produce
lots of interesting stories, but claims that it benefits local people
may be exaggerated
After bumping about the lower end of the human development
index for a few years, Sierra Leone again arrived at the bottom in November:
177th out of 177. Introducing its latest figures, the UN Development Programme
explained how a combination of factors, including life expectancy, education and
standard of living, helps establish whether a country provides "an environment
in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative
lives in accord with their needs and interests." Life expectancy in Sierra Leone
is 40.
On the plus side, Sierra Leone has kilometers of fantastic beaches, which
score highly for all key seaside indicators, among them white sand, crystalline
water and the all-important relaxation factor. "With some of the most perfect
palm-lined sands on the continent," the Lonely Planet guide to Africa confirms,
"it won't be long before Sierra Leone takes its place in Europe's packaged
beach-holiday scene."
To this end, airline BMI has announced that an increased number of flights
between London and Freetown will start in May, with its CEO Nigel Turner
assuring the newcomers to the resort (recently likened by one writer to a
"stinking refugee camp"): "One always needs to be careful, but you need to be
careful in (some parts of south London), frankly."
You certainly do and if it's early days to make south London a separate entry
in the human development index, it is surely time the government in London began
issuing guidance reminding visitors to the region to exercise caution. Or they
could avoid the area altogether. As the Lonely Planet guide reminds visitors to
Freetown, with its traffic jams, rubbish and power cuts, "if you spend all your
time in the tourist-focused areas, you'll rarely encounter those problems."
There can be no guarantee, however, that the visitor will not, from time to
time, be confronted by potentially distressing evidence of human suffering, even
if most of Freetown can be successfully shunned. Some 6,000 of those who
survived the civil war are terribly mutilated; their limbs hacked off by
Revolutionary United Front gangs. Are such sights consonant with two weeks of
blissful rest? The Lonely Planet guide is soothing: "Most locals hang on to
their optimism." Then again, that might have been written when Sierra Leone was
still number 176.
But such fortitude in the face of adversity will be familiar to more
experienced travelers, whose reports from ill-starred, faraway places invariably
stress the tremendous good cheer of people who have, on the face of it, little
to look forward to beyond privation, illness and death. Even in south London,
they report, it is common to see the most deprived children laughing happily as
they enjoy a refreshing fag or sip from a cooling alcopop.
As for the travelers: one can only marvel at their resolute commitment to
their holidays, undiminished by boycotts, wars, climate change and anything else
that consistency, decency and good taste can throw at them. Few of us, for
instance, may want to visit Sudan just now, but a quick Internet shop brings up
a variety of leisured challenges to genocide, from a Sudan camel trek to
Responsible Travel's Nuba People and Villages. "Sudan is an emerging destination
for adventurous travelers," says the company, which prides itself on low carbon
footprints and a principled approach: "The tribes we meet have no idea of
tourism and we have a huge responsibility when exposing them to a different
culture."
If somebody is going to introduce Nuban tribes people to the benefits of
Rohan's Dynamic Moisture Control, we should perhaps be grateful that the
emissaries supplied by Responsible Travel are likely to be ever so ethical, long
accustomed to weighing up the arguments for and against their foreign trips
before they decide to go on them anyway.
Since Aung San Suu Kyi declared, in 1996, that to visit Myanmar under the
junta was to condone its regime, informed tourists have hardly been able to
avoid wondering if the benefits of their own presence, complete with a copy of
Ian McEwan's Saturday and lots of money, can really compensate for endorsing
tyrants, in Myanmar or anywhere else. For the confused, Lonely Planet's guide to
Myanmar still offers a summary of this "debate," along with the conclusion that
tourists do the oppressed a favor, by offering "outside contact."
Inevitably, the success of this outreach work is hard to evaluate. Is it even
necessary? In North Korea, where Amnesty International reports continued
"systematic violations of human rights," a tour operator tells customers: "Far
from being downtrodden and disconsolate, you will be welcomed by our guide
amongst the merry faces untroubled by worries of money and crime."
Equally, should we introduce Western values to the citizens of Belarus and
risk damaging what another operator depicts as perfectly preserved Soviet charm?
"If you are interested in experiencing what is one of the last remaining havens
of the "good old days" when the Iron Curtain separated Europe into two camps,
then Belarus can provide it in spades."
For the truly concerned traveler, interested in experiencing authentic
communism, dictatorship or abject poverty, it's clearly far better to emulate a
visitor getting close to a turtle in the Galapagos Islands: respectfully
approaching the different form of life without upsetting nature's delicate
balance in any way. As Krishna Pujari, who first encouraged poorists to view the
Mumbai slums, once put it: "We want to show tourists the reality of Dharavi and
change any negative ideas they might have about this slum. We respect the
privacy of the residents of Dharavi and ensure that the tour does not disturb
them in any way."
With human rights out of the way, resourceful tourists are now proving that
ecological objections, which had not even surfaced in 1996, are equally unlikely
to threaten their right to travel now. Just as arguments about cruel regimes
encouraged some tourists to portray themselves as liberators in shorts,
complaints about carbon emissions have merely prompted a new generation to
reinvent themselves as the most self-righteous trippers in history.
"Does anyone have any ideas about the best way to dispose of
recyclables/other rubbish over there?" queries a contributor to Lonely Planet's
Thorn Tree travel forum, anxious about garbage arrangements in Dharamsala.
Posting on another forum, a traveler offers tips for saving plastic: "When
flying, bring an empty plastic bottle."
So perhaps that famous Sierra Leonean optimism is well placed. So long as
greener travelers do not boycott its shoddy recycling system, there is no reason
why the white sands beyond Freetown should not, as predicted, soon be darkened
by tides of ethical sunbathers. Assuming, of course, the beaches can survive the
inundation expected from climate change. But even then, all is not lost. As any
ethical tour operator can tell you, these days tsunamis and melting icecaps are
seen not so much as unalleviated catastrophes as sustainable holidays you
haven't yet taken.
Taipei
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