What she values most about tourists coming through is the exchange itself — hearing what life is like in the West, sharing in turn what life looks like here, and getting to practise English along the way.
Elders in the community have been clear on one point: admire, don't imitate — particularly when it comes to how some tourists, mostly women, dress. A very short skirt isn't really acceptable by local standards, though no one says so to the tourists directly. Nobody wants to cause offence, and a Peace Corps volunteer once explained that this is simply normal dress where the tourists come from — something to be accepted as their culture, without necessarily adopting it as one's own.
She also pushes back, gently, on the local habit of charging tourists more than locals for the same goods. Some in the community see nothing wrong with it — tourists can afford the difference easily enough, they argue, and it's still a bargain by their standards.
I believe that we are all equal, so why should we be charged differently?
Plenty of people leave the village for city jobs and better pay — her own brother did, and now earns enough to help support the family and contribute toward festivals and celebrations back home.
Her one real disappointment is with individual promises — tourists who, asked for help with something like school fees, say they'll write or send money once home, and then never do. “I think it would be better,” she says, “if they do not promise things they are not going to live up to.”