For Mom, Love Steve

Okay, my stuff has been kind of lackluster. Well, to mix it up, my buddy Juan Canete(Argentina) whom I traveled with in Ethiopia e-mailed me a while back to let me know that he has finally posted photos of his round the world trip. We met in South Ethiopia in the Omo River valley. That is where you can still go to see National Geographic style stuff (tribal people circa 2000+ years ago). He was another professional traveler/photographer shooting b/w film. I forgot how many years he was gone but it was a trip similar to mine. He did have a case of bad luck when on a bus trip he made the rookie move of storing his camera gear in the upper storage compartment and then fell asleep. When he woke, his bag was gone with his camera and all his film.

I meet a lot of people. A lot. Most come and go, but some occasionally teach me as much as visiting these extraordinary places. My takeaway traveling with Juan is about the different theories of helping. There is always debate about tourists and giving to the locals. The dilemma is about should we as tourists (those with) give to the poor (those without). On face value, it seems easy, we should help those in need. Well, the distortion occurs because there is the belief that giving also carries the negative of creating a welfare/beggars mentality. An example is that a tourist sees a child that looks poor. Without knowing anything more, the tourist gives the child a dollar/food/pen. The child thinks, hey this is great, and soon the child is looking for tourists to beg for aforementioned reward and drops out of school to further their career as beggar. Now, there are varying degrees of these examples going as far as cripples being bought from poor villagers and then brought to cities to beg on the streets for their new owners. The hard part of the dilemma on the flip side is a person needing help and you having the ability to do something. What to do?

In my early days of traveling I was pretty much a hardliner on not giving. My belief, having dealt with so many scammers was that unless I could know all the specific circumstances most of the time the negatives would end up outweighing the positives. Now, not so that I am thought of as a cold heartless bastard, I chose to offset the no giving by at least acknowledging the person, smiling, to even playing with the kids instead of the financial reward. Some places can be more difficult to deal with than others. In Sub-Saharan Africa where I believe true poverty is endemic, it is very easy to tell that most are not trying to scam you or to benefit outside of immediate important need. Some would say a place like India should stand out, the difference I perceive though is that in India there is although not a formal organization or policy, a societal belief albeit religiously founded that one should help others. In Africa, in some of the more deprived areas, there is not that mentality. There is nothing for those in need and so it becomes very hard even for those hardened like me. Still, I felt it was easier to be rigid on my ideals rather than to try and sort out every person’s motive that I met. Juan on the other hand ran on a different set of principles. He didn’t toil over the overall challenges of the beggar’s dilemma. We head out walking around and run into some street kids, he buys them all some snacks. A handicap person lies on the street begging for money, he gives all his change. A mother with a baby asks for money, he talks to her a while and then helps her out. Of all the negatives that could occur, in general at that moment standing there watching, it did not seem beneficial to worry about. From then on my mentality did shift. Oh, that and being sick and not eating for six days with the accompanying draining of life and strength helped me to understand that not eating really limits your ability to do well, anything.

So in the end, I have adjusted my traveling beliefs about our duty as responsible tourists. Moderation I guess is a key as well as being educated about what you are doing. Unfortunately when it comes to those that search you out, most are not going to benefit by you giving them handout, but the biggest thing I can stress is that there are those out there truly in need and if you do run into someone who is, help them out.

Food for thought:

Is giving children a pen bad?

Here’s a story I tell people when this debate comes up. I was in Uganda and moved into a gated community in Kigali the capital. I lived in one of the “rich white people/NGO” houses, the one surrounded by a ten foot wall with barbed wire around the top and a huge metal gate out front. Next to the gate was the normal door entry. There was a small camera that focused on the entry way so you could see who was asking to enter the complex. Just above the door was a small light just bright enough to illuminate a persons face so you could see it through the camera. One night as I was walking past the monitor, I noticed a little local boy sitting on the ground under the light reading his school books. Apparently this little boy lived in one of the shacks in the neighboring poor village. Since they did not have electricity and candles were too expensive to waste on reading at night, the little boy would come up to the gate and do his homework there. So, that night as I was walking by the monitor I saw the little boy and I switched off the light.

A further option which is an option but doesn’t come up very much is that we should give so many pens that none of the kids want anymore.

Okay, lecture over, if you made it past all the prior, check out Juan’s site that he just put up with some of his pictures. Originally, I think he was going to try and sell some of his photos and possibly do some shows but according to his e-mail while traveling in the Middle East (Turkey), he met a girl and they got married (I think, my Spanish is a bit rusty) and he is contemplating moving to Turkey. He visited a lot of the same places as me so if can correlate my travels/blog with his photos I would be most appreciative and you will probably think more highly of my blog.

Here is his website:
http://www.juancanete.com.ar/

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 5:29 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.