ABSTRACT
Young people engaging in forms of travel that link touristic adventures with volunteering in contexts of poverty has become increasingly popular. Volunteering in the forms of conservation, environmental and development tourism has a long history. The human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic in Africa has led to a flurry of volunteering with orphans that is little studied. This project adds to the newly emerging literature on orphan tourism. In-depth, open-ended interviews and participant observations were conducted over a three-month period with American travelers to a Malawian orphanage between 2009 and 2010. These data suggest that volunteers’ experiences and perceptions were shaped by misrepresentations of a generic Africa that both biased and perpetuated misunderstandings of poverty. In addition, a racialized, needy other was understood as needing the benevolent had of the west. Voluntourists often leave with superficial understandings of poverty and culture. In addition, many volunteers expressed new antagonistic perspectives on US poverty, which they felt was not the same caliber as developing world poverty. This re-thinking led many volunteers to miss shared systems of inequality that inhibit the livelihoods of all people living in poverty regardless of geography. The long-term impact on orphans is unclear, but it seems children develop unrealistic expectations about their futures.