I attend school only three days a week. During the rest of the week, I stay home to help my mother make pottery.
Tourists sometimes visit our home to watch her work. Since they began coming, I have started making small objects myself, especially cups, which I try to sell to them. The money is useful, but making and selling pottery is also one reason I am not in school every day.
Tourism gave me a way to earn money with my hands, but when I am doing pottery I cannot work for school.
Our school has received some money from tourism. It was used to build a house for a teacher. Most of the building is finished, but there was not enough money to complete the bathroom and kitchen.
But that is only a small problem compared to the other needs at school. We have only nine teachers for almost one thousand students. Our classrooms are crowded, and there are not enough books. I often have to share one book with two other students. More teachers, desks and learning materials would make a big difference.
Many children begin primary school, but only a small number reach secondary school. Most leave education early. Some go to other towns to look for work. A few return, while others stay away, although young people who find employment usually send part of their earnings home to support their families.
Our teachers’ house is almost complete, but inside the classroom nearly a thousand children are still depending on only nine teachers.
My friends and I enjoy seeing tourists. They laugh and play with us, and their visits make the village feel connected to places far away. Some children would like to dress like them, but families here cannot afford those clothes.
I think tourism has been good for me in some ways. It brings customers for our pottery, and its fees have helped the school. Yet it also makes earning money outside school more attractive to children, who sometimes earn more that way, than what their father brings home from work. So they prefer hanging around tourists over going to school.
I have heard that young people in other places face similar problems, including Maasai girls who dance beside the road for tourists. I do not know all the details, but I hope adults find ways to protect their education.
My week is divided between three days at a desk and the remaining days beside my mother’s pottery wheel, where tourism offers income today but may quietly narrow my choices tomorrow.