In African civilisations, a guest is a blessing. You count your guest before you count wealth, children and other blessings.
A guest is therefore treated in a manner beyond one's means during their entire stay until their departure.
This has been the case in Kibera, Africa's largest slum, several years now.
Foreign tourists stream the dusty streets in droves with a single objective: to see how poor humans live in the 'terrible' habitat they call home.
The tourists come around wielding the most powerful cameras to take home the evidence and memories of poverty and suffering.
To their aid, they have a tour guide on their side and youth gangs give them security so that they do not fall into the hands of other criminal gangs who will do anything to wipe away their poverty.
However, the case is now changing.
Residents are now beginning to have second thoughts about their guests.
According to the locals, it is dehumanising for wealthy visitors to take them as items of tourism while their local brothers mortgage their honor as tourist attractions.
Mama Sylestine Awino, a resident, narrates her frustrations after she moved to Kibera from Mombasa hoping that life would change only to meet another version of tourists.
"This was strange. I used to see families from Europe and the United States flying to Mombasa to enjoy our oceans and beaches. Seeing the same tourists maneuvering this dusty neighborhood to see how we survive was shocking," she adds.
She says that at a point she felt used as an object when a group of tourists recently approached her to take photos.
"I felt like an object. I wanted to yell at them, but I was afraid of the tour guides accompanying them".
The trade has been gaining negative sentiments from more locals who now want authorities to intervene and protect them from the trade which they perceive as morally wrong.
Residents say that the Kenyan companies providing tour-guide services should be put in-check for cashing in on their state of abject deprivation.
For decades, Kibera has struggled with severe cases of poor sanitation, high levels of unemployment, poor housing, malnourishment, and other social issues that come with severe poverty.
Another resident Mzee Musa Hussein (67) feels angry that people should use their suffering to make cash. His blame is on the Kenyan 'accomplices'.
"Kibera is not a national park and we are not wildlife," says the born-and-bred resident. "The only reason why these tours exist is that [a] few people are making money out of it," he adds.
Every weekend sees tourists escorted in the narrow streets by guides, mostly from local company Kibera Tours which handles hundreds of tourists every year.
For a single guide, the company charges Sh3,000 or more depending on the extra services demanded by the visitors.
Although the tour guides argue that their trade is good for the local economy, Ms Awino maintains that it is still morally wrong and should stop.
"Think of the vice versa. What would happen to an African like me in Europe or America, touring and taking photos of their poor citizens?"
The future is uncertain for the industry.
Everything now remains on how the local guide companies will convince the masses that their trade is for the general good of them all.
Will the locals finally throw away their innate hospitality and culture of treating guests as guests?
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