Yes­ter­day I was involved in a motor­bike acci­dent in Kupang, West Timor. Basic­ally, a twelve year old kid drove straight into me, while I was indic­at­ing to go right. He was way too fast and he didn’t have a drivers license. Both of us had friends on the back, but luck­ily nobody got hurt apart from a few bruises and scratches. But this post isn’t actu­ally about the acci­dent. There was never any doubt in any­bodys mind, that I was to blame what­so­ever. Shit happens…

All of us went back to my guest house, where the owner of my bike tried to sort out the whole mess. He thought the dam­age to his bike will cost about 350.000 Rp (about 30 EUR or 35 USD) to repair. There was another for­eigner present, who sug­ges­ted that I pay for the dam­age, since I can afford it, whereas the par­ents of the kid will most likely have a hard time com­ing up with that kind of cash, it being almost a month’s salary. Now, I know that’s a lot of money for an indone­sian fam­ily, but I think if I would have paid it would give every­body a totally wrong pic­ture. He’s a tour­ist with lot’s of money, so never mind my own responsibility.

I didn’t like the way this guy was talk­ing to me and per­son­ally, I think he’s a wanker, to put it bluntly. He got me think­ing though, and I was won­der­ing what other trav­el­ers out there think. Is it alright as a trav­eler to pay for dam­age you did not cause, but were involved in, so that a local fam­ily in a third world coun­try does not have an addi­tional bur­den on their wallet?