Poverty stricken third world countries may be interesting places to visit but few of us would choose to live there. Imagine, however, if that's where you were born. Further imagine that you aspired to make a better life for you and your family but were told by the United Nations that it would be a crime to turn your hovel into a modern home by installing a shower, a window, a screen door, an extra room, or even tile over your dirt floor.

Welcome to the consequences, unintended or otherwise, of the UN World Heritage Site program.

Poverty tourism is a complex emotional subject. The words raise hackles across the political spectrum. I've always found the impulse to tour the world's slums and primitive backwaters a bit discomfiting, especially when combined with naïve peans to the simple life. Yes, some ancient ways are disappearing as more of the world's desperately poor join the global economy. But as they lift themselves by their bootstraps, earning those basic material things that you and I take for granted, isn't this a cause for celebration?

Apparently not for those who romanticize the "authenticity" of primitive destitution.

Turning neighborhoods into human zoos for the amusement and education of the rich may make short term economic sense in that tourism pumps badly needed cash into the economies of impoverished countries. Who knows, it might even bring some healthy perspective to income inequality activists. More of them should take a good hard look at absolute privation so they can see how it differs from the highly subsidized and comparatively lavish forms of relative poverty enjoyed in the US where obesity stalks the poor. It might temper their calls to tear down the free market system that has done more to improve living standards than any other.

Yet progress has its costs. In the life of any developing country the past must selectively be left behind. Colorful native garb that takes weeks of hand labor to make gets replaced by the same inexpensive machine-made clothes you and I buy at Costco. Meanwhile cottage industries emerge to export those native costumes to rich foreigners seeking self actualization. Self sufficiency gives way to trade as each person, each village, each country, discovers where its comparative advantage lies. Living standards rise, delivering a more varied diet, dress, and an education that goes beyond memorizing holy books. Grass and mud huts get torn down to be replaced by modern, comfortable, sanitary structures with electricity, running water and flush toilets.

But not for the people of Djenne' in Mali, whose lives have been frozen in amber by UN bureaucrats. This sister city of legendary Timbuktu has the misfortune of being home to the largest mud-brick structure in the world, designated a UN World Heritage site. A Grand Mosque located at this one-time crossroads of the trans-Saharan slave trade was first built in the 13th century when Islam conquered the continent. A replica was rebuilt upon its ruins in 1907 by French colonials using forced labor.

The mosque is surrounded by 2000 primitive mud homes where 12,000 residents live in regulation-enforced squalor. Raw sewage spills across unpaved streets as livestock mingles with barefoot children. Plastic garbage bags substitute for natural building materials. Forbidden to change the appearance or character of their homes by rigidly enforced architectural guidelines, the only real choice for those wanting to join the modern world is to leave.

Despite the UN's protection, the mud facades need to be regularly replastered after they are washed each rainy season. Apparently, there have been shortages of the rice husks used to fortify the mud because hungry residents were eating it. The Grand Mosque was falling apart in 2006 when it was saved by a $900,000 gift from His Highness the Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili sect. The restoration set off a riot by angry youths upset that the mosque imam was pocketing all the money from the tourist trade while they were left slinging mud. Along with damaging the mosque, the Cultural Mission, and the mayor's house the mob burned three of the imam's cars. Three cars? I wonder if any of them had mud flaps.

Spend a moment watching the picturesque video at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/116/video and listen to the description of this "enchanting" town. I bet it would make a swell day trip. Then imagine raising your kids there, trying to explain to them why their future has to be sacrificed to preserve someone else's gauzy vision of the past.