Tourism has given the village a real economic lift, in her assessment — more work for local businessmen, and a modest but genuine rise in employment. The new jobs are specific: guiding, catering, and providing accommodation. Caterers have learned to prepare food tourists actually want — omelettes and pancakes alongside the usual fare — and families running home stays now keep their houses noticeably cleaner than before. Some residents have found another way in altogether, offering drumming and dancing lessons to visitors.
Every shopkeeper is earning more, even without selling anything fundamentally new — mineral water aside, it's the same goods moving in larger volume: water, biscuits, fruit, sodas. The women who cook for tourists buy more food to keep up with demand, which in turn is good for her own business.
Money earned through tourism splits several ways — some to the chiefs, some into community development. Right now that includes a planned pottery workshop, where local people could work and sell what they make both locally and to tourists. Further ahead, there's talk of buying a trotro to improve transport in and out of the village, and of building a second guesthouse.
Most tourists are very respectful, maybe because I am older.
Not every guest has been a pleasure, though. Most are kind, she says, and only rarely rude — and when they are, it almost always comes down to money, wanting everything explained or done for them without paying for it. A few have caused real damage: one group, drunk, broke a sink; one guest, similarly drunk, was sick over her sheets. She takes it in stride more than most might, crediting her age with the general respect she's shown.
What she wants most isn't different behaviour from tourists — it's more of them. The village, she says plainly, needs the money.