AdVenture Capitalists

Santa Clara University grads Austin Woody and Sam Baker have been traveling the world looking at development projects and issues. They recently spent time in Ghana and are currently in Burkina Faso, visiting and volunteering in the FAVL libraries there. They've been keeping a blog, and raised some interesting questions about "development tourism" that are pertinent (and have been discussed in Chris Blattman's excellent development blog). Here's an extract from Sam and Woody's blog, read the full blog here...

Walking in the breathtaking landscape in the remote Nepali village of Lamatar we proudly returned warm smiles of welcome with our newly learned greeting “Namaste.” Upon which, and without fail, the local children would gladly respond to our traditional gesture, with not-so-traditional demand in English “Chocolate, Please!”
Fast forward thousands of miles to Paga Northern Ghana and as we stand frozen with cash in hand to pay a taxi driver for a trip to the Burkina border he looks at us longingly, wondering why we would cheat him out of the “bag fee”