Very interesting question:
Personally I give A Lot away, way more that the national average as a percent of what I make, both time and money. I truly enjoy it because I am friends with a lot of the people I help out. I also enjoy the bi-cultural aspect of it. In many ways I am a different person when I living at my house in Nicaragua and speaking and thinking in Spanish. I am sometimes amazed at the difference and I find it fascinating.
In addition, there is a great deal of ego satisfaction (and I’m not sure this good) when I walk into a village and every kid goes around spreading the word “Tom is here, Tom is here”.
I started doing what I do in Nicaragua to atone for being such a complete little shit to the poor while I lived in Peru as a child. Now I have over atoned, and am looking for ways to pull back from my philanthropic activities. I have now at least have limited them to just one community.
Except: Another problem now is that I have learned how to get things done down there and have gained a reputation as someone who can solve problems with the government, importing equipment duty-free; and all of the cross cultural probems the other do-gooders run into with the people they are trying to help – they are always calling me for advice. When they call, I try to just give them advice, but if the problem sounds interesting I tend to get roped in. That is an ego thing too, because I enjoy being the hero. And also, I the back of my mind, I am sizing up the foeriegners I help with problems there as potential investors in my real estate development busness here in the U.S. And people here in the U.S. who have never been to Nicaragua but who know what I do there, have a tendency to be larger investors in the syndications I put together here.
It’s truly a joy to see the smile on the face of a child you have helped, but there is a little voice in the back of my head that is always that that the gods will ultimately reward me with money, eithther directly through investors, or indirectly by the Latin business tactics I have learned there.
