Invisible changemaker: A pioneer of community-based tourism in Ethiopia

In the first of her ‘Invis­ible Change­maker’ inter­views, Elisa Spamp­inato chats with Mark Chap­man, a pion­eer of com­munity-based tour­ism in Ethiopia. 

The “Good Tour­ism” Blog is proud to pub­lish this inter­view series in col­lab­or­a­tion with Elisa’s Trav­el­ler Storyteller, a “GT” Partner.

It’s a “GT” Insight Inter­view. [You can write a “GT” Insight.]

To start this series of inter­views with the grass­roots change­makers of our industry I have chosen a per­son whom I met very recently, dur­ing my last trip to Ethiopia.

To tell the truth, Mark Chap­man’s repu­ta­tion pre­ceded him. The CEO and Founder of Tesfa Tours is someone I have wanted to meet since Tri­cia Barnett from Equal­ity In Tour­ism told me about him in 2020, while I was plan­ning that trip to Ethiopia. 

Tri­cia referred to Mark as “someone you must get in touch with if you want to con­nect with loc­al com­munit­ies and com­munity-based tour­ism in Ethiopia”.

Strangely, though, my meet­ing with him occurred thanks to one of those happy ‘coin­cid­ences’ that hap­pen in my life. But that is a story for anoth­er time.

Mark Chap­man is a real ground break­er; a per­son of influ­ence in the his­tory of com­munity-based tour­ism (CBT) in Ethiopia, with a rich account of real pos­it­ive impacts among many loc­al com­munit­ies in dif­fer­ent regions across the country.

Mark organ­ises trekking hol­i­days in sev­er­al ‘unex­plored’ areas of Ethiopia. 

Trek­kers stop in loc­al vil­lages where they are hos­ted in com­munity-owned gues­t­houses, which are struc­tured as cooperatives. 

Some 75% of the total income from these com­munity-based tour­ism activ­it­ies goes dir­ectly to the loc­als. With those rev­en­ues “they can pro­tect their loc­al envir­on­ment, their soci­et­ies, and their way of life,” Mark says.

I am glad to share here the report of my recent con­ver­sa­tion with him.

Also read oth­er “Good Tour­ism” Insight Interviews

Elisa Spamp­inato: What you star­ted to offer in Ethiopia at the end of the 1990s was some­thing really unique and innov­at­ive for the coun­try, quite apart from the fact that tour­ism was not even prop­erly developed at the time. 

You told me once that the idea to cre­ate the found­a­tion for com­munity-based tour­ism in Ethiopia came from the desire to rep­lic­ate your first per­son­al and amaz­ing exper­i­ence in the coun­try, as a back­pack­er in 1992, and make it avail­able to oth­er travellers. 

Tell us how that ini­tial exper­i­ence marked you so strongly.

Mark Chap­man: I believe that the thing that struck me the most was that the real­ity revealed to me dur­ing that trip was extremely dif­fer­ent from my expectations. 

Bob Gel­dof’s Live Aid was the soundtrack behind the dra­mat­ic images of the fam­ine that struck Ethiopia so harshly in the 1980s. They remained the only images asso­ci­ated with the coun­try in our minds in the West.

But I found a stun­ningly beau­ti­ful coun­try, and the fact that I arrived dur­ing the rainy sea­son only emphas­ised the impact it had on me. Everything was painted in a vivid green and I could only see lots of fruit and veget­ables around me; plenty of food.

The human aspect was no less remark­able. I was embraced by this warm hos­pit­al­ity that just comes so nat­ur­ally to the Ethiopi­ans. And I met com­mit­ted young people who loved their coun­try and wanted to do some­thing for it.

ES: How did you become the first per­son to talk about and, most import­antly, imple­men­ted CBT in the country?

MC: After my hitch­hik­ing trip across Ethiopia, in 1993 – 94 I got the chance to go back with a clear plan to work on tour­ism with loc­al communities.

I developed a concept which I called ‘com­munity-based tour­ism’ at the time because I felt it really should be owned by the loc­al com­munity; based in the com­munity rather than fol­low­ing a pater­nal­ist­ic mod­el where you involve the com­munity but you run the thing and they just get a fee. 

The NGO I was work­ing with at the begin­ning was involved with com­munity-based asso­ci­ations, which are essen­tial parts of the tra­di­tion­al struc­ture, such as the com­munity funer­al sav­ing and sup­port­ing scheme, known most widely in Ethiopia as idir. 

The NGO was really try­ing to work with the com­munit­ies and integ­rate them in a multi­sect­or­al rur­al devel­op­ment project. 

When I star­ted my tour­ism pro­ject, I wanted it to fol­low the same eth­os and logic. It was nat­ur­al for me to com­bine ‘com­munity-based’ with the word ‘tour­ism’ to make it ‘com­munity-based tourism’. 

I don’t think oth­ers were talk­ing about CBT at that time; at least not in Ethiopia.

Don’t miss oth­er con­tent about “Good Tour­ism” in Africa

ES: What are the pil­lars of this kind of tour­ism that you built from scratch?

MC: I felt that one fun­da­ment­al aspect of com­munity-based tour­ism would be to build people’s capa­city and their confidence. 

If they could run a tour­ism busi­ness, inter­act with fer­en­gis (the Ethiopi­an way of refer­ring to for­eign­ers), and earn an income, it would help them to do oth­er things as well. 

They could start run­ning oth­er busi­nesses linked to that, improve their qual­ity of life, but at their own rhythm and accord­ing to their own priorities.

Anoth­er cent­ral part of the pro­ject was that it would be a two-way pro­cess of com­mu­nic­a­tion between vis­it­ors and com­munity members.

On one side, there are the vis­it­ors who can learn a lot about the things we have lost in our cul­ture in the West, such as a close con­nec­tion to the rhythms of nature and the rich­ness of a simple life, and have the oppor­tun­ity to get a healthy detox from the vari­ous kinds of pol­lu­tion absorbed in mod­ern societies.

On the oth­er side, loc­al farm­ers can build their capa­city to run a busi­ness and learn a bit about the out­side world. Con­sequently, they can appre­ci­ate even more what they have, by comparison. 

In fact, the encounter can help loc­als real­ise that West­ern cul­ture has lost many tra­di­tion­al ref­er­ences, and that there is an awful lot that is of great value in the way com­munit­ies live and func­tion in Ethiopia; that com­munit­ies should hold on to that.

ES: Now, a big ques­tion about my favour­ite sub­ject: change. What kind of changes have you observed in gen­er­al while run­ning Tesfa Tours?

MC: When I was try­ing to set my pro­ject up, a lot of people in the tour­ism industry were say­ing “we don’t believe that the loc­al com­munity and farm­ers can provide a ser­vice to tourists”. 

On the con­trary, I firmly believed that with the right level of train­ing and sup­port, and while keep­ing your object­ives quite simple, it is pos­sible for loc­al com­munit­ies to offer a ser­vice that tour­ists can enjoy.

You ask about changes, but I want to state that the first achieve­ment was to real­ise that, yes, these farm­ers’ wives, daugh­ters, and the farm­ers them­selves can indeed offer a good level of service.

Also see oth­er “GT” con­tent tagged with “Com­munity-based tourism”

ES: The next ques­tion has two parts, really, because there are two act­ors in this pro­cess. Firstly, how have tour­ists changed over the years?

MC: When we star­ted at the end of the 1990s there weren’t many tour­ists aware of the pos­sib­il­ity that you could do some­thing like this. With time I have seen an increase in the num­ber of people out there who are look­ing for a com­munity experience.

Also, I think that people nowadays are a lot more con­cerned about the impact that tour­ism has. I observe that there is an increas­ing num­ber of tour­ists who worry about the way they travel, either in terms of CO₂ emis­sions and the means of trans­port­a­tion, or the hotel they choose to stay in while abroad. Inter­est­ingly, they often see CBT as a way to give back and bal­ance that as well.

Of course, there are those who choose CBT because it is part of what they want to do when they are on hol­i­day any­way. These are people that don’t just want a guided tour and stay in a fancy hotel; they want to get out there and see how life is in that coun­try, and they see CBT as a great way to exper­i­ence the loc­al lifestyle.

I think that the seg­ment of tour­ists request­ing a CBT exper­i­ence — that once was niche — is def­in­itely grow­ing, and I expect it to con­tin­ue growing. 

ES: The second part of the pre­vi­ous ques­tion, of course, refers to the loc­al com­munit­ies. Take, for example, the Wajela com­munity, which I per­son­ally vis­ited in April [2022]. What changes have you observed over the last twenty years?

MC: On the com­munity side, tak­ing as an example a place like Wajela, in the moun­tains south of Lali­bela (Meket Woreda) where they have 20 years’ exper­i­ence of tour­ists com­ing through, a lot has changed since the beginning.

The first time that tour­ists walked into the vil­lage, the whole com­munity showed up to see them. After a year or so it calmed down, and even though they con­tin­ue to greet people warmly, and kids still run across the fields to come and talk to you, you’re not quite as mobbed as you used to be (which is not at all a bad thing for the often sur­prised visitors).

These days you won’t get so many loc­al people stay­ing at the gues­t­house, listen­ing to the guests, and talk­ing to them for hours. It is not such a new and excit­ing thing to do as it was. But still, there remains a fas­cin­a­tion and interest in visitors.

Don’t miss oth­er “Good Tour­ism” con­tent about ‘storytelling’

I always remind cli­ents that nobody has satel­lite TV and so the stor­ies that hosts usu­ally tell are gen­er­ally loc­al ones. But you will give them the most amaz­ing stor­ies. They are going to retell what happened the night that you vis­ited and, for months and years to come, you will be part of the enter­tain­ment and their memories.

ES: Have you noticed any changes in the beha­viour of women towards guests, in their own com­munity, and in their atti­tude towards life, etc.?

MC: Yes, indeed, I have noticed some pos­it­ive changes with the women too.

When I first star­ted work­ing with the Wajela com­munity, for example, and went to talk to the women that were work­ing at the gues­t­house, they would not look me in the eyes or at my face. They let men answer for them. 

This has com­pletely changed now. I inter­act with the women, I talk to them, and they talk back to me. 

A couple of weeks ago, return­ing to the Simi­en moun­tains after a long time hav­ing not vis­ited, a young woman who is a cook ran down the hill to give me a big hug and tell me that I don’t look any older. (That was quite nice to hear.) 

I don’t believe that these changes I am wit­ness­ing are a dir­ect con­sequence of their act­ive par­ti­cip­a­tion in CBT, but I think it must have helped. 

Of course, we need to con­sider the changes that are hap­pen­ing on a big­ger scale in soci­ety as well: Women’s edu­ca­tion is slowly improv­ing, girls are attend­ing school more, and new con­cepts are per­meat­ing soci­ety. Women have more rights now than were recog­nised in the past; are treated more equally than before.

CBT is surely back­ing all of that up because women are now earn­ing an income from it, which gives them a high­er status with­in their own community.

ES: Thanks, Mark, for shar­ing part of your story with us!

For more inform­a­tion about Tesfa Tours please vis­it their web­site.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Sun­rise at Wajela com­munity in Meket Woreda, North Wollo, Ethiopia. Photo © Elisa Spampinato.

About the author

Elisa Spamp­inato is a travel writer and com­munity storyteller “ded­ic­ated to telling the untold stor­ies of indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies and loc­al change­makers and unveil­ing sus­tain­able and regen­er­at­ive tour­ism prac­tices at the grass­roots level”. As Founder & CEO of TravellerStoryteller.com, Ms Spamp­inato “dis­cov­ers ways to travel in a respons­ible way and to make tour­ism an oppor­tun­ity for trans­form­a­tion­al encounters”.

Early in her career, Elisa worked with social pro­jects and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment pro­grammes in Brazil, where she dis­covered the poten­tial of tour­ism in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Today she col­lab­or­ates with SMEs, loc­al tour oper­at­ors, and com­munity-based tour­ism (CBT) pro­jects around the world to enhance their digit­al pres­ence and boost their com­mu­nic­a­tion and mar­ket­ing skills.

Elisa believes in the power of storytelling: “We need to include more nar­rat­ives in the pic­ture”. This is why she designs and deliv­ers tail­or-made Com­munity Storytelling Work­shops to sup­port loc­al com­munit­ies and their CBT pro­jects in effect­ively shar­ing their stor­ies with the world.

A Glob­al Com­munity-Based Tour­ism Ambas­sad­or for the Trans­form­a­tion­al Travel Coun­cil (TTC), an Asso­ci­ate for Equal­ity in Tour­ism, and a Mentor/Mentee for Women in Travel CIC, Elisa is a “strenu­ous advoc­ate for diversity, equal­ity, and inclu­sion in the travel industry”.