One schoolpen?

By Kate | Permalink | No Comments | February 12th, 2007 | Trackback

If you’ve traveled outside of western Europe, you have more than likely been asked for one schoolpen or ten rupees or one chocolate or photo baksheesh from local kids. What’s up with that? Should you give in and hand over your bic?

My theory is that kids everywhere like free stuff, whatever it is (hey, so do I!). Some well-intentioned westerners started giving out chocolates or candies as a nice gift, then decided to give pens “for school” because candy isn’t healthy. Kids continue asking because sometimes they get stuff and that’s fun. Perhaps some are exploited by adults who collect the money (or pens?!).

My theory is that you shoudn’t do it.

There’s the obvious explanation that this acclimates kids to begging and avoiding school, but one less obvious insight is that it leads to a warped relationship between foreigners and locals. It creates to a situation where westerners are the ones with “something valuable” to give to the “poor locals” when in fact the locals have something much more valuable to share – their culture and way of life. Kids start to see foreigners as people to get stuff from instead of people to interact with on a level playing field.

If a child asks for a pen, I say no. Maybe they can teach me a game or some words of their language (pictures of animals in guidebooks are good for this) or a secret handshake. I don’t think you’re being stingy by refraining, you’re helping avoid an unbalanced relationship.

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