The change that pleases me most is seeing children become interested in school. In the past, many did not want to attend. Now they want to learn English so they can talk with the tourists who visit our village.
Visitors tell us stories about their countries and explain how people live elsewhere. This is very interesting to us. Almost nobody here owns a television, although radios are common, so conversations with tourists are one of our main windows onto the wider world.
I remember when a white visitor was such a surprising sight that children followed them through the streets shouting “obruni.” Some children still call out now and then, but tourists are no longer completely new to us.
What we know about the countries tourists come from often begins with the stories they share with us.
Clothing in our own community has changed greatly during my lifetime. Kente, our locally woven cloth, was once worn every day. Each pattern has its own meaning. Now Kente is too expensive for daily use, so most people buy ordinary clothes at the market and save the traditional cloth for special occasions.
Relationships are changing too. Young couples are more likely to live together before marriage, although most still wait until the wedding. Sometimes a pregnancy makes them marry sooner.
I do not think tourists are mainly responsible for this. Modern ways of living arrive through Ghanaians from cities such as Accra as well as through foreign visitors.
There is one thing I wish tourists understood about us. Local standards of dress are more modest than those in many of their countries. Bare chests and very short skirts can make people uncomfortable.
We may remain silent because we do not want to offend visitors, but silence does not always mean that people approve.
I do not expect tourists to become exactly like us. I only ask them to recognise that they are guests in a community with its own customs.
Tourism helps our children look outward and gives us stories from places we may never see ourselves. The best exchange is one where visitors share their world while also showing sensitivity towards ours.