Three years into the tourism project, he's not convinced it's done much for him directly. Tourists rarely visit his shop, and when they do, it's usually just for biscuits. He hasn't been able to grow the business on that trickle of income, though he has managed one real improvement — better storage, meaning stock no longer spoils before it sells, and he can carry a wider range of goods as a result.
Tourism has meant more buying power for small traders generally, and market women are selling more fruit than before. But it's also driven prices up across the board, eating into whatever gain he might otherwise see — his own costs rose right alongside everyone else's.
Some of the incoming tourism money is being set aside for the community's share of a Danida water sanitation programme, though it's still only in the saving phase. Locals have used tourism as leverage with the district authorities too, pushing for better roads into Amadzofe — for now, though, most of that work still falls to residents themselves.
We used only to clean our houses, toilets and streets when we expected visitors. Now we do it every day, because we expect tourists.
That daily habit has visibly changed the village — cleaner, better painted, more attention paid to the roads. Tourism money has also let the school buy instruments, and he's noticed a real shift in ambition among the young, sharpened by contact with visitors.
Although until now we only had radio, no television, I see tourists as our television: they are the window through which we look at the world around us.
Visitor patterns split fairly cleanly: international tourists, mostly young, come mainly for the waterfall, with the mountain drawing crowds on occasions like Easter. National tourists come for funerals and festivals — mostly relatives visiting from elsewhere. He himself rarely has time to visit any of it; making ends meet doesn't leave room for sightseeing.
Most young people stay in town despite the pull toward the city for study or work, and those who stay would like a real say in how tourism develops — currently a decision made by the seven clans, the chief, and the elders, with local entrepreneurs left out as a group. What information does reach him comes through friends or occasional public meetings of the tourism committee — meetings, he's careful to note, meant to inform people rather than to ask their opinion.
“What I can see with my eyes, I can talk about,” he says. “What is not in my eyes is not in my knowledge.”