Many times at home we talk about how great it would be to spend some time in Ethiopia with the children so they can learn the Amharic language and have a chance to immerse in their native culture.
It’s almost impossible now to do that. Work, school, money and everyday life keep us firmly in place here where we live, but we hope that some day, hopefully not so far away in time, we would be able to go back and enjoy the country.
I know from my own personal experience that the best way to learn about a culture is to live in it. Tourism is great as recreation, but barely scratches the surface of what a culture has to offer.
Among the new trends in tourism, there is something called “voluntourism” which is supposed to be a cross between tourism and doing volunteer work. In voluntourism, you “pay” to volunteer, to have a chance to live the “real” life of the locals and do some good. It sounds good, right?
Well, I feel that there is something “fake” about it, I still don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t make me feel good.
I guess it is because I think it has been created to make the privileged people of the world feel less guilty about how most of the rest of the world lives. It’s cleverly marketed as if the money spending tourist “makes a difference”. Maybe in some way it is that way, I don’t know, because tourists can see with their own eyes how the less fortunate live and supposedly that will change the way they see other cultures.
Mmm, no, still doesn’t feel good…
I can’t stop picturing in my mind those white overweight tourists once they get back home to their upscale neighborhoods and tell their friends how hungry, dirty, and ignorant those “poor third world people” are. They paid good money to have the chance to witness the misery of others.
I don’t know, maybe it is just me… but it feels like exploitation instead of really making a difference.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been on the other side of the equation. Even when my life was never really bad when I was in Argentina, I’ve seen people coming from other parts of the world to “help” us, poor little savages. How they would spend a couple of weeks teaching English and be able to see up close how we, the “uneducated” ones live, to then run back home to seat in front of their huge TV screens and feel good about themselves.
I’m on the other side now, I have the big TV and the privilege, but I don’t want to wash my guilt doing “voluntourism”. 
I’m not against volunteer work and I’ve done it many times, but to do tourism and disguising it as volunteer work sounds a bit phony, specially when you go to a country from which you don’t even know the language.
If I ever have the chance to travel to Ethiopia again, I think I would prefer to do some kind of community tourism, something like the TESFA project. A kind of tourism run by locals, that gives work to Ethiopians, helps them manage and protect their environment and resources and also empowers them to make a change in their country.
Or if I really want to experience the real life, maybe the answer is to go and work there, real work. I mean to live there and work side by side with the Ethiopians like one of them and not from a position of privilege. Maybe that’s something that my children would like to do in the future, I hope they do. That feels more real…

Links:
Voluntourism.org
Volunteerlogue.com
Voluntourism – Pros, Cons, and Possibilities
The Luxury Voluntourism Debate
The Argentimes: Voluntourism – Holiday or Help?
Voluntario Global - Argentina

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