I own a guesthouse, coordinate the SNV tourism project, and manage the local post office. I came to Longido twenty years ago, from the coast originally. Around a thousand tourists come through here each year, most of them camping in a field outside town so they can feel like they're really in the wilderness. Tourism didn't really drop after 9/11 and the crisis that followed — the big groups kept coming, though these days they're mostly students.
The money that comes in through the project is split according to an agreed scheme, and we always follow it — exactly how much goes to the women, the cooks, the guides, the Maasai community, the guesthouse. Some tourists try to negotiate the price down, but that's not something I can decide on my own. If they want a lower rate, it has to go to a village meeting, and if they're willing to wait a week for the answer, that's up to them.
If tourists want a lower price, there has to be a village meeting about it — so if they want to wait for the outcome of that, they have to wait at least a week.
Some tourists want to smoke marijuana, which is very illegal here, and I strongly advise against it — though a few have asked me to buy it for them, which I obviously won't do. One night the pressure got so bad I offered a compromise: smoke outside, in the middle of the night, where no one would smell it and the police wouldn't be called. It wasn't a good idea, looking back — it put me at real risk.
Other tourists drink too much at the bar and turn into completely different people after two beers — loud, sometimes aggressive, and I never quite know how to handle it. Once, a couple left without paying their whole bill; they came back, the bar owner wanted her money, and by the time it was sorted out, half the town had gathered to watch. I offered to cover it myself just to end the scene. We agreed to settle it the next morning, and in the end they paid. It really wasn't worth all that fuss over so little money — but thankfully, that's rare. Most tourists behave well.
There are still things I wish visitors understood better. Kissing and touching in public makes people here very uncomfortable, and it comes across as strange, even offensive. Shorts are fine for men, as long as they reach the knee, but not for women — local women don't show their legs, so I ask female guests to wear a long skirt or trousers instead. It matters most with older women; here, elderly women are treated with real respect, as mothers or grandmothers, so seeing one in shorts is genuinely hard for us to understand. I always try to explain that before anyone heads out to visit a village.
Twenty years in, he's still translating — between prices, between customs, and between two very different ideas of a good night out.