As I plan the financials for my first trip to Africa, the subject of tipping is a mystery to me. This trip will be a 14 day plains game hunt in 2011 (probably with Vaughan Fulton, as he was highly recommended by a friend).

I know this subject has been covered here before, but I can't seem to find any good, concrete suggestions.

Assuming good service (or bureaucratic necessity ) whose palms get greased, and by what amount? Any suggestions?

Congratulations on your impending "infection".

As to tipping, I took my first and, so far, only trip last summer and after hours of exhaustive research I decided to leave it up to the PH. I used the general rule of 10% of daily fees for him but as for the others I
asked him to provide the guidance, which he gladly did. I made sure to tell him that "while I wasn't made of money I certainly wanted to compensate the staff accordingly and fairly" and his guidance at the end of the hunt was hopefully accurate and well appreciated.

BTW I ended up tipping him more than I'd planned as I felt that after putting up with me for two weeks he deserved an additional bump .

Again, congratulations and have a BLAST!!!
Remember: report and pics

Regards,
Scott

quote:

Originally posted by Vanderhoef:
Congratulations on your impending "infection".

As to tipping, I took my first and, so far, only trip last summer and after hours of exhaustive research I decided to leave it up to the PH. I used the general rule of 10% of daily fees for him but as for the others I
asked him to provide the guidance, which he gladly did. I made sure to tell him that "while I wasn't made of money I certainly wanted to compensate the staff accordingly and fairly" and his guidance at the end of the hunt was hopefully accurate and well appreciated.

BTW I ended up tipping him more than I'd planned as I felt that after putting up with me for two weeks he deserved an additional bump .

Again, congratulations and have a BLAST!!!
Remember: report and pics

Regards,
Scott

Excellent suggestion. I'm usually pretty generous with tips, especially for good service, and I also want to compensate staff accordingly & fairly. I just don't want to look like an easy mark for tipping too well.

Leaving it to the PH is the best way.

The subtle intricacies of the hierarchy within the crew, the social implications of seemingly innocent acts (that small girl with a radiant smile who was by the gate this morning and joyfully opened it for you, you remember? She was so cute with her clean dress and bare feet and enthusiasm, you could not resist giving he a meager dollar so she could buy herself some sweets... Well, she was on the way to school. A dollar is what an adult spends for his lunch, and a fortune for a kid. Tomorrow, she won't be going to school, she'll be waiting for you at the gate. And she'll soon find out that she better not go to school at all and hang around whenever there is a foreign pale face in the vicinity...), the completely different scales of values, the disruption that can be caused in a camp by a too large tip given to the wrong person, all these take years of life in-country to understand.

Consider also all those staff that you don't even see, maybe because they are busy digging pit latrines 500 miles away, after having sweated for a week to make sure that you would be comfortable at your arrival; and the smart and polite boy who helped you today: who will tell you that in fact he was only standing in for his cousin, who's nursing the broken leg he got when the deep freezer he was unloading fell on it?

Bear in mind also that "sharing" with someone who is not present is a totally alien concept around here. Who grasps keeps.

Yup. Better leave the PH to sort it out...

I am probably not much help. I am also one who is not comfortable and struggles with this. I want to give an appropriate tip but dont want to be ridiculous about it. I also want to take care of the people who deserve it the most. I have always used the 10 percent thing but that is often not adequate or even at times too much.I give what I can comfortably afford if the service was good. Do talk to your ph about all the camp staff and the heirarchy.

I used to wrestle with this every time. I think the 10% +/- to the PH is a reasonable starting point. It's all socially clumsy. If you overcome your reluctance, your PH can provide pretty good guidelines as to what is expected, what would be considered generous, etc. for the rest of the staff. You obviuosly want to be fair without being over the top. How else can a visitor know what's appropriate?

I only tip the PH if he is an employee, no tip if he is the operator. I usually follow the outfitter or PH's lead, I have been told NO tip as the group in camp ahead of me over tipped and the crew misbehaved for a couple weeks.

What about the seedier aspects of baksheesh? 'Gratuities' to get paperwork pushed through or officials to overlook things?

quote:

Originally posted by akalinin:
What about the seedier aspects of baksheesh? 'Gratuities' to get paperwork pushed through or officials to overlook things?

That's as African as the elephant or the buffalo.

Al,

You'll be exposed to very little of this as a client.

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by akalinin:
What about the seedier aspects of baksheesh? 'Gratuities' to get paperwork pushed through or officials to overlook things?

Mark is right, you won't see much of that as a client. Where you might see the need for baksheesh is at the airport, where an oversized or overweight bag might be overlooked for US$5 or $US10 - instead of the official rate which could be ten times that amount. You'll know if a 'situation' might be resolved by a discreet dollar-laden handshake if the person who has exposed the problem brings it to your attention in a quiet person-to-person fashion.

For these rare occasions, and the myriad of more common times when a tip is appropriate, I always take to Africa about US$100 in one dollar bills, with about twenty in my pocket at all times. Even when purchasing small souvenirs, it seems that quantity of bills is always more impressive than denomination of bills.

I tip the trackers/skinners directly, after discussing an appropriate amount with the PH first. On all of my hunts they have done an excellent job and work from a couple of hours before dawn to a couple of hours after sunset almost every day. If you take a couple of animals on the same day the skinning may go on until late into the night.

I never had to pay a bribe, I mean tip, at the airport or other venue for services rendered in either safari (one in Namibia with Vaughan and one in RSA). Maybe I was just lucky.

I tipped both PHs/outfitters. Vaughan was solo at the time and we provided a tip for him and another set-aside that he distributed to the camp staff at his discretion. I trusted him to do so, as he is most familiar with them. Plus, this freed him up to offer a little, if appropriate, to the staff memberss at other facilities we hunted. I also hunted with Andrew McLaren in RSA. He is a solo PH/outfitter and received what I thought a fair tip. Of course, he went all out trying to make my trip as good as it could be, so maybe I should send him my first-born!

DesertRam,

Please watch and nurture your firstborn until she is at 21 years of age, then send her!

Andrew

To heck with that, I want to drag her along when she 12 or so to see if she can outshoot me! If I wait until she's 21 she'll have found something/someone more entertaining than old Dad!

To me baksheesh means more than tipping. It implies a payment to an official to accomplish the performance of an otherwise ministerial duty.

Here's my Namibia story. We arrived in WH at the same time as a German hunting club of 20-30 members. That meant one customs agent filled out our firearms forms while many, many Europeans milled and mumbled. On the last day of my hunt, I pulled out my forms and found that my three guns had morphed into two, more or less. My PH just shook his head and said "you might lose your '06 or your shotgun, I just don't know."

When we got to the WH airport, I thought the best course of action was to talk directly to the customs agent who clears the gun permits. I walked in, somewhat uneasy, and explained what was what. He said "this is not a problem. I will fix your forms." A big sigh later he said "I coach a youth soccer team. Would you care to contribute for them?" My wife didn't have a $10 so I gave him $20 and my guns, all three of them, are with me now. Not sure if this is baksheesh, but it may be pretty close.
kh