A hero’s welcome awaits each voluntourist who walks through the gates of the school for orphans in Mombasa, Kenya, where I volunteer. At the first glimpse of white skin, toddling children descend from all directions, gleefully exclaiming ‘Mzungu! ’, the Swahili term for anyone of visibly European descent. The children wrestle each other for the right to cling to one of the mzungu’s prized fingers, until five on either side have staked their claim to any dangling appendages. Laughing and cheering, the others huddle around in a jostling group – something akin to a rugby maul – with the voluntourist sticking out in the middle like a maypole.
The first time I walked through the gates of the school, I was delighted by this welcome. Never before had so many beaming, smiling faces been directed at me. It’s an infectious joy. Having since witnessed this spectacle umpteen times – there are always at least a few voluntourists at the school – it has started to seem less the spontaneous display of childhood joy and more the standardized ritual of a Walmart greeter. After a year at the school, I have seen the bigger picture: that this welcome is bestowed only upon the voluntourists, and that most of the voluntourists have paid a couple of thousand pounds to a British-based voluntourism agency for exactly this kind of authentic ‘African’ experience. Even the children, it seems, are intuitively responding to the invisible hand of market demands.
