Amadzofe is, at heart, a farming community, and by his account tourism has brought modest but real change — a tourism centre, a bit more entertainment, more activity in the shops, though still not as much as he'd like.
For the youth especially, tourism matters: training as guides prepares them for jobs that are still, in his view, on their way rather than fully arrived. What tourism has enabled more concretely is the collection of contributions toward local development projects, and a modest boost to business and employment more generally — new jobs specifically at the tourist centre and in guiding.
Tourism teaches people the importance of education, without an education people cannot communicate with the tourists.
That lesson landed in a very direct way for the community: one visitor considered local education important enough that she's personally helping fund the renovation of the school.
Nearly everyone here farms for a living, and it isn't easy work. Even so, some residents have given up pieces of their own land, without payment, so the community could develop it for shared benefit — a gesture he clearly sees as meaningful. When the guesthouse fills up, tourists overflow into ordinary homes as paying guests, giving those families a bit of extra income they wouldn't otherwise have.
“Tourism has not influenced the social structure of our community,” he says. “It helps us improve our culture, since tourists are always with us, and we show our culture to foreigners, and our beliefs too.”