Mo' Money Mo' Problems

What up to my 19 followers and others that periodically view my blog. Thanks for making me feel better by reading my blog. Geniunely, though, thanks; support is always good.

Life is good. Just got back from In Service Training, which was awesome. Got to see all the volunteers that I've failed to keep up with. Hopefully, I'll do better at staying in touch now that I've been reminded how cool my fellow SED (small enterprise development) volunteers are.

During the training a lot of interesting discussions came about, some techinical talks about rumpshakin' and others that were a little more serious. The one that I felt was the most provoking was about monetizing a homestay. Two (actually a very cool married couple) of the volunteers from another island brought a story of how families in their village had housed tourists and had refused payment, which then led to the discussion of whether they should charge or not.

This argument had come up before in previous economic discussions that I had at college. It's obvious that there is a market for the good (shelter), but should they charge? My argument was that they shouldn't. If they were absolutely desparate for money, then it's another story, but it seemed as if they were doing alright, relatively speaking. The point that I always brought up was by charging for a good does that inherently change the good/service; in this case, I think it does. It changes a genuine act of compassion, providing shelter, to just another business transaction with people "looking to get ahead in the world". I don't think that it would be wrong to charge, they are providing a service, but I think that it would change the service/good. Once we start to turn everything into a business transaction, human relations turn colder (if they haven't already in many parts of the world). Sometimes accepting a gift is just as important as giving one. This family in Santa Antão (the other island) didn't have much to give, but they had space in their house for the tourists. Being nice and compassionate, they offered it without any real benefit to them. To offer money in this case would be extremely awkward, to say the least, it may even be considered rude. Who's to say the family needs the money? The best thing to do, accept it. Be grateful that they're people like that in the world. Then, return the favor somewhere down the line to some tourist/homeless person. In Small is Beautiful, Schumacher uses Gandhi quite a bit, especially this quote, "The world has enough for every man's need, not every man's greed." Our generation needs to heed this statement because who knows what's going to be left for our kids. Or maybe our generation can take some of Sean Puffy Combs wisdom:

I don't know what they want from me
it's like the more money we come across
the more problems we see.

Truth, this coming from a man who has a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars. U.S.A!!!

Talk to some stranger today.

One Love and Peace