NGO Without Borders

NGO Without Borders: Providing HIV/AIDS orphans and widows with food, shelter, healthcare, education and microfinance loans. Specializing in Serengeti safaris and Kilimanjaro treks. Also Barack Obama regional headquarters.

This isn't the name of an actual safari company cum NGO here in Moshi, but it might as well be. Every entrepreneur we meet on the street seems to be from some new NGO that wants us to "fund" them by climing Kilimanjaro. (He's also probably wearing a Barack Obama pin.) This is simultaneously off-putting and absolutely hilarious, as they certainly have travelers like us well-pegged. Who woudn't want to help as noble a mission as the one above, especially if all you need to do is go on a luxury vacation?

Two examples: In Zanzibar, we were pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Barack himself, running for an unspecified local office. After an impressive speach about the value of education, in which he lifted lines from Martin Luther King, Jr., Julius Nyerere, and Obama himself, we were asked to sign a petition, with plenty of personal information, to put him on the ballot. How exactly an Obama impersonator would get on a Tanzanian ballot with a petition full of foreign signatures is still unclear to us. Granted, we also don't know what they were trying to sell us as we have yet to receive an email. Nevertheless, it was good to know that "change we can believe in" had made it to Zanzibar.

Here in Moshi, one of our first weekends in town, a man approached us asking if we were volunteers. When we said yes he proceded to tell us all about his NGO, which specializes in teaching teenagers about safe sex. After a somewhat drawn out conversation about another American volunteer he knows (for whom he took our email address), he asked us if we had any interest in climbing the mountain with him.

These interactions have left us wondering, is telling us exactly what we want to hear really disengenuous, or are they just being good businessmen? Is a hawker who "gives us a discount" because we support Barack Obama being slimy? Although our sense of morality may be initially challenged by this appropriation of causes we all believe in, is it really so different from the fundraising schemes used by Western organizations with which we are more familiar?

The other day we met some volunteers traveling with an NGO from the UK. They had each fundraised a substantial amount for this organization, and in exchange the NGO brought them to Tanzania to see some of the projects their money will fund, climb Kilimanjaro, and spend a week in Zanzibar. The leaders, professional development workers, seem to believe that this marriage between philanthropy and holiday is a model that works. They have been able to fund great local organizations here in Moshi. . . so who are we to argue?

Nonetheless, it makes us wonder why this model is so successful. Why do we feel too guilty to travel here just for a vacation? Everyone seems to feel the need to help, whether they book with a "porter friendly" safari company, or come for the whole summer to volunteer at a local nursery school. Nobody chooses their Versailles tour guide based on whether they teach sexual health education in the Banlieux.

However, let's not let our cynicism be misleading. We clearly believe that we do have something to offer, or we wouldn't be here...