14 more guests!

A few weeks ago 14 Spanish primatologists stayed at the ecolodge for a few nights. While they were not the first guests, they were the first “real tourists.” The other people who have stayed thus far have all been PCVs or study abroad students. So it was exciting to see what foreigners would think of the ecolodge. They were generally appreciative of our efforts and were pleasantly surprised by a few details; having enough towels for everyone and that we did not block the view with a building. These are two considerations that are often not taken into account by other lodges in the area.

However the really great moment came after the tourists left and we were calculating the profit for the first time. We’ve settled on keeping 35% of the profits for reinvesting in the ecolodge, 15% going to the village, and the rest being divided up between the owners and staff. It’s exciting to know that after our first guests we already have $120.00 set aside to reinvest in the ecolodge. That was a big problem with their previous attempts to run a tourist lodge, they didn’t save enough money for upkeep. When I told the village chief about the money the village was getting he said, “Great! We can use that to restart the village fund for medicine and hospital visits.” The money will be kept in reserve to loan to people who are sick but to not have available cash to pay for medicine or doctor’s visits. It was always the intent that something like this would happen, but actually seeing a profitable business that I helped to start provide social security and development funds to the village made me into one big warm fuzzy. The last exciting thing to happen was when we were talking about how much the staff would get of the profits. Months ago they “hired” their staff by having them submit written applications on scraps of paper. The understanding was that the staff would lend a hand in the construction and then share in the profits afterwards. However, they only occasionally showed up when they were called upon. For that reason, when we were discussing how much they would make for the two days the tourists were here my counterparts said, “Well, we’ll give them a little this time but we’ll also tell them that if they don’t shape up and start helping out we will just hire new staff.” This probably seems completely logical and not a big deal, but you have to understand that the last attempts at a tourist lodge were all communally owned which meant that if someone was not doing their job it was very difficult to replace them. For that and other reasons we decided to make the ecolodge privately owned. I never expected to see the benefits of that decision so clearly. We might just be getting this thing right this time!