Tanzania, "Gimme" Culture: Why Giving Handouts is not the Way Forward

The next day I had a customer write to me thanking me for my help to plan your safari, it was an amazing experience. "But," she wrote: "I loved it was reported that all the children that I saw on the way pencils and candy ... I felt bad, I did not have much to give to children." I cringed. Hmmm ... I wondered. As I am going to solve this one? It seemed that she, like many others were well-meaning tourists hit "gimme" culture.

"Gimme" is short for "give me" and if you are a visitor to Tanzania, you will hear this phrase is shortened a lot. It is usually followed - pipi candy), pencil crayon), penis (PEN) or my personal favorite: my money (as in "gimme my money"). If you are a tourist, it is very, very easy to fall. For the first trip to Africa is an incredibly impressive and sometimes heart wrenching experience. Imagine the scene: you are driving into the vast unknown route path of the Serengeti. All around you is a wonderful panorama dotted with tiny Maasai villages along the way, wide open spaces. You stop to take pictures. Shoe less ashen with threadbare children's clothing out of their abandoned homesteads running excitedly beaming smile on the road, their arms outreached. Baby ball, rolling as fast as she could to her, shabby little party dress, snot running out of her face ... it is the cutest little thing you ever saw. This is when they give you. Their spindly little arms to reach into the car, looking for something, anything ... and a little chorus "gimme" echoes around you. You pity desperate search for his wallet and found two pens, gum packet, and when all the coins you are incredibly happy to pass the children. Sigh. You wonder to yourself how they might live like this with so little. You drive with a satisfaction that is the good Samaritan.

You are not. People like me who actually live here, there are only adding fuel to the fire that burns and to promote the control of nation-wide epidemic. What you do not see it happening every day, day in and day out, every tourist - and they get almost every time. Tanzania is definitely a "developing country", that requires a lot of it, it becomes obvious that everything that falls. When you are on a safari a couple of weeks, a few pens in hand and a couple of shillings here and there appears to be innocuous gesture that easily fit in and seems to make a difference. When you live here, however, you begin to see a different picture all together.

It's just life here that you have a unique opportunity to see authentic Africa and is proof that people are facing real challenges. You see the corrupt police officers each day to pull you because of your skin color. They eyeball your vehicle and then you obviously do not have to rush requests a bribe. Children are taught by their parents, that white skin is equal to the free meal or a stumbling block), so almost every kid in the street takes you ask an open one.