"Slum tourism" stirs controversy in Kenya

And if you'll look to your right you'll see a dead body. And on our left is, well, that's another dead body. Now if we'll all gather up we'll be going over to have a look at where everybody shits.

Any journalist wanting a quick Africa poverty story can find it there in half an hour. And now at least one travel agency offers tours round Kenya's Kibera slum, one of Africa's largest.

You know, I just don't think another vacation on the ocean is what I'm looking for this year. I really kind of just want to watch the horrors of poverty up close, you know, watch the starvation go down.

"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.

Wildlife, smilelife, I want to see people kill each other for a dollar.

But 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.

Being poor sucks. Being poor in Africa sucks worse. Being poor in Africa while some rich tourist snaps a photo of your children right before they die of starvation should make murder legal.