Sunday, September 26, 2010

essay #1

          When I think about tourism, I think about traveling, vacation and having fun. It wasen't until I read the story A small place by Jamaica Kincaid and watch the film life in debt that my perception about tourism started to change. My perspective change as I started to realize that tourism is much more than just having fun is more about learning new cultures and new life styles. People can have different opinions about tourism and what it consists of. Some people can view it as having fun and scaping from the same routine they have daily. Others can view it as having the opportunity to know new places and learn new cultures and traditions.
           Tourism can transform into a more complex topic when you start to think what the native people think about the tourist that is visiting their country. In the story A small place the author is able to describe the dislike that natives have towards tourists."your bags are not searched". This statement shows that tourists have a more easier way of traveling this makes natives upset in the sense that they feel more search when they are coming to their own country.
          What is also shown in the story is that tourists only see what they want to see and they fail to see the reality of the situation. "you pass a building sitting in a sea of dust as you think is some latrines, but when you look again is a school". "How wrong you are not to think about this, thought you are a tourist on your holiday". This two sentences are able to describe how tourists don't really pay attention to things that really affect the people of the country. Jamaica is a poor country and that's the reality and is not able to provide it's citizens with good schools, hospitals and libraries, but tourists only care about them about their distraction of having fun that they fail to see what's around them.
        Tourists can be describe as selfish in the way that they come to visit a country in which they don't belong and don't interact with the natives of the country. They only care about them the things they could get out of the country that will give them the pleasure they want to feel satisfaction. "How awful it is to go unnoticed". This shows the discontent that natives feel because they feel ignore from the tourist, this shows discourtesy and make the natives dislike more  the tourists.
           "the natives see the, tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself". This description perfectly shows the feeling the natives feels toward the tourist the impotence a native feels when they see an outsider which can be portrayed as the tourist that can enjoy the things the natives can't in their own country. Even thought tourists can have a negative impact among natives it cannot be forgotten that tourists contributes a lot to the local economy. As describe in the article Slum dog Tourism by Kennedy Odede, "It's good money which helps the local economy. This statement could be true tourists for the most part have a lot of money in which they spend in hotels, restaurants, clubs and expensive places that they go to distract themselves.
           The other question that can be made is where does this money goes. As the movie Life in Debt shows that Jamaica have a lot of tourism, but that doesn't necessarily benefit the economy a lot. As the movie shows the money that is being obtain by tourists is being put back into their own benefit. Meaning that the money that tourists spend are used to pay back the workers that work for the tourist. The money spend by the tourist has to be use back to buy hotel supplies, food and things that tourists use.
           "Slum tourism turns poverty into entertaiment and then go back to their lives and leave me, my family and my community right where we were before". This is a good example to show how tourism  dont really impact the economy of countries, such as Jamaica.
           But in the contrary it leaves the natives with a feeling of envy and dissapointment because they can't enjoy in their own country. Eventhought tourists are view as rude and selfish persons by natives it has to be recognize that they are also natives from their countries of origin. I'm pretty sure that tourists in one point in their life have feel the feeling of being a native sorrounded by tourists. They probably felt the same as the jamaican natives that are being describe in the story A small place. They probably have felt ignore and exclude from their own country.
         If this will be the case then why tourists are disrespectful when they go to other countries to visit. It should be consider that not all the tourists should be consider a meaningful person. It could be that scaping from the same routine and the desire to feel relax could make the tourist forget that in their real life, the life they are scaping from they are natives as well. What is real is that tourism is a big market around the world that can be view as good or bad for others. Opinions are diverse and every person would have their own experience about tourism. Maybe as a tourist that have enjoy the beauties of a new country or as a native that have experience the new coming of a tourist into their country.
    

1 comment:

  1. Hi Miriam - You have a great start to work with here -you do a good job bringing your different texts into conversation and exploring a range of ideas. Work on the sentence by sentence transitions, especially when using quotes - look at chapter 3 of They Say for guidelines on weaving these into your own writing. Think more also about the connections to the "Slumdog" article - is his argument that tourism aids these countries?

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