Breaking the fourth wall

Dereje and I drove into old town and pulled up to the main square where we parked the day before. However, today there were three guys loitering in that spot who feigned some sort of parking service. Harar is a small town and I already knew their faces; one was a 15 year old kid who showed us where Nure coffee roasters was located the day before, another was the deaf guide, as usual wearing his black down vest jacket, and a third guy who was a bit older who I'll simply call 'the Hustler'.
Dereje cracked his window and talked to the Hustler, Kid and Vest-jacket for a minute in Amaharic and then we got out of the car. For the most part, these guys were non-threatening, but we were still on our guard. We told them we were uninterested in a self-appointed parking maid or any guides that day.
As we walked toward the shops, the Hustler decided to make another try to be part of our day. Walking over to the shop I had been interested in visiting, I found it was closed and Dereje and I considered leaving to go check out the Christian market instead. But the Hustler pointed across the street and said another shop had the same stuff. There was an old Harari woman weaving quietly behind the counter. We stepped into the shop and the Hustler went directly behind the counter and started putting out decorative handicrafts that the woman had made. "These are made of paperboard, basically," he said, "so you're better off with a hand-woven basket. She only makes 5 of these every year so one costs 350 birr [about $30]."
I wasn't looking to spend very much money, nor was I looking for a large basket to try and fit in my suitcase, but I really wasn't interested in dealing with this guy. The woman stayed quiet as the Kid walked in and said, "How much you want to spend? That's your right; you can offer 1 birr if you want. Get what you want!" Outside the shop, Vest-jacket was chewing apart a sugarcane, spitting out the husk and gnawing on the sweet fibers. Dereje and I glanced back at the woman and seeing an opportunity she wagged her finger at us to signal her opinion of dealing with these guys even one second longer. We said we weren't interested in the baskets and stepped out of the shop, knowing we were saving her a lot of trouble. Vest-jacket was furious with the whole thing though, uttering words we couldn't understand and motioning frantically at the Hustler, somehow getting the point across loud and clear. The Hustler yelled back at Vest-jacket, and the Kid explained that they were accusing each other of being thieves and preying on tourists. Vest-jacket told us to watch our wallets and motioned that we should tell the Hustler to buzz off, using a very understandable finger gesture in the Hustler's face. We walked back to the car with Vest-jacket holding the Hustler at bay with his middle finger, still holding his sugar cane in his other hand.

There seems to be a real tension in Harar between those who want to welcome tourists to this UNESCO world heritage site and UN-declared city of peace, and those who try and take advantage of the short-term visitors while they can. However, it seems there are enough people who see the big picture and know that they need to preserve their reputation and be honest in order to attract the rest of the world to their small part of it. As exemplified by the old woman, although places of poverty are helpless to a great amount of reliance on others, there are those that see it as a relationship that needs a great deal of care to cultivate, i.e. a business agreement. People are not prone to spend, explore, hire or invest time if they think it is part of a swindle or someone's way to kill the afternoon. In that sense, it might be more apt to call the Hustler the Hassler, since he was just as much a threat to himself as anyone else. Hopefully the Kid will come to understand this as he choses a path for himself. But Vest-jacket seemed to understand already; a young man who seemed to straddle both worlds somehow; perhaps because he didn't have to listen to the claptrap musings of the aspiring slumdogs, yet knew he was destined to be part of them, emerging from the same fold to compete for the attention of the outside visitors which offered some hope or, at the very least, a break from the realities around him. The fruit sellers, the tailors, the peddlers of odds-and-ends and other residents of the old town put on their best smiles to greet the camera-touting tourists as they exit their buses that carry them from the hotel to the market, but in times of necessity, like the old weaver in her shop, they broke the fourth wall between the show and the audience with smiles to communicate, bring it back to human interaction and understanding, charm many to stay, to enjoy their trip, to prove the hasslers wrong and prove to you and themselves that they're better than that. In that way, the old weaver gave a signal akin to Vest-jacket's finger gesture that said, "Despite the riff-raff of the world, you are most welcome and please try to enjoy your stay."