How much should you give a guide?
One party decided to give a guide who had devoted a few hours of his time to showing them round Harar 100 birr each. Total: 700 birr. "It's not much to us," one person said. "Less than four bucks."
That's a fair statement. However, let's look at the other side of that equation. What's 700 birr to the guide?
Some ideas of Ethiopian salaries come in handy. Systems administrator in a major bank: 5,000 birr a month ($173). So that tip equates to about two days' work for a qualified and expert worker. A factory worker might only make $45 a month; a teacher, just $38 a month. Bus drivers make even less.
So it would only take someone seven or eight days of reasonably generous tourists to equal or surpass a teacher's salary. They can do even better if they manage to get commissions from steering those tourists to particular guest houses, taxi drivers or shops.
And this is a problem. Why would you bother with a job, when you can do better by becoming a tour guide? There's no entry qualification, no licence, and you can get started just by hassling a tourist until they think it's easier to let you accompany them than to keep insisting they want to be left alone.
That is a huge problem for the Ethiopian economy. If tourists are too open-handed, they can end up destroying the underpinnings of the local economy. You're helping to create a situation in which no one wants to open a shop, run public transport, bake bread, be a butcher, work in an office - because that's not where the money is. You're also creating an unpleasant hothouse environment for tourism - but that's by the by.
On the other hand, when I stayed in a local hotel in Dire Dawa, I knew my money was going into the local economy. When I bought a basic meal in a cafe in Gondar, or took a local bus, my payments went to businesses that were there, 90% of the time, for other Ethiopians. Giving a beer or a cigarette to someone, or buying them a coffee, is the way to return small favours - not dumping a load of cash.
Always, always, check the average salary before you head for a country. Always, always, try to understand something about the local economy; because like it or not, your decisions and your flow of payments will have an impact on it.
One party decided to give a guide who had devoted a few hours of his time to showing them round Harar 100 birr each. Total: 700 birr. "It's not much to us," one person said. "Less than four bucks."
That's a fair statement. However, let's look at the other side of that equation. What's 700 birr to the guide?
Some ideas of Ethiopian salaries come in handy. Systems administrator in a major bank: 5,000 birr a month ($173). So that tip equates to about two days' work for a qualified and expert worker. A factory worker might only make $45 a month; a teacher, just $38 a month. Bus drivers make even less.
So it would only take someone seven or eight days of reasonably generous tourists to equal or surpass a teacher's salary. They can do even better if they manage to get commissions from steering those tourists to particular guest houses, taxi drivers or shops.
And this is a problem. Why would you bother with a job, when you can do better by becoming a tour guide? There's no entry qualification, no licence, and you can get started just by hassling a tourist until they think it's easier to let you accompany them than to keep insisting they want to be left alone.
That is a huge problem for the Ethiopian economy. If tourists are too open-handed, they can end up destroying the underpinnings of the local economy. You're helping to create a situation in which no one wants to open a shop, run public transport, bake bread, be a butcher, work in an office - because that's not where the money is. You're also creating an unpleasant hothouse environment for tourism - but that's by the by.
On the other hand, when I stayed in a local hotel in Dire Dawa, I knew my money was going into the local economy. When I bought a basic meal in a cafe in Gondar, or took a local bus, my payments went to businesses that were there, 90% of the time, for other Ethiopians. Giving a beer or a cigarette to someone, or buying them a coffee, is the way to return small favours - not dumping a load of cash.
Always, always, check the average salary before you head for a country. Always, always, try to understand something about the local economy; because like it or not, your decisions and your flow of payments will have an impact on it.
