Poverty: your honeymoon dream

I was visiting some family friends in Italy and struck up a conversation with some newlyweds. I asked them where they went for their honeymoon and they told me that they went on a cruise through Spain, Greece and Morocco. When I asked the bride which country she liked the most she told me she liked Morocco and said: "the poverty just fascinated me..I loved it."

I was dumbstruck. I mean I didn't know that poverty was now being included in cruise packages. Wow! So I guess we can all start looking forward to 'camel rides' in the Arab world, 'exotic' jewelry and henna and last but certainly not least: poverty as part of our honeymoon experience. She was dead serious too when she said it. It was just like "Oh poverty, its great! I just love it!"

Her statement got me thinking some more about what poverty meant to her-a wealthy European white womyn living in the First World. For her, poverty was not only distant but part of constructing Morocco, an Arab country as the other. However it wasn't done in the typical racist way, instead, just like the other things consumed on a honeymoon trip, poverty becomes just another commodity, an exotic item to be looked at in wonder, to never be conceived as a reality.

But even more importantly, it continues to mask the systemic problem that traces Europe's historical exploitation and imperialism to the underdevelopment of many Third World nations. As long as poverty is constructed as exotic, then Morocco, like the rest of the Arab world can continued to be constructed as "different", "far away", and not Europe- read the 'norm' or 'standard' for development.

When she finished telling me about the rest of the honeymoon, I hadn't heard a word she had said because I was still thinking: "Oh the privilege of the rich first world, I tell you, it never ceases to amaze me."