My daughters only go to school three days a week — the rest of the time they help me at home. Before tourism came here, children didn't take part in pottery; now they make small things like cups and try to sell them to tourists. They start younger, and fewer of them go to school. Once one child makes money selling something, others quickly start trying to do the same.
The money I get from tourists who visit the pottery — what we call the contact fee — goes straight into my daily income, mostly for food. It's 500 shillings, around fifty cents, per group, and it's easy money. To earn that normally, I'd have to make and sell ten pots at the market, a full day's work. Now I can keep making pots while tourists visit and still walk away with something extra.
In order to earn 500 shilling normally, I have to make and sell ten pots at the market, and that takes a full day of work — now I can go on making pots when tourists come and get some extra money.
Most tourists ask the same kinds of questions — where the clay comes from, how much a pot costs, where we sell them. I'm happy when they visit, and glad to know they'll be talking about us back home, somewhere far away from here.
I don't mind tourists photographing us, if that's what they enjoy. I do appreciate it when they send us copies afterward — I understand not everyone can or will, but we like having pictures too. We don't own cameras ourselves, so theirs are often the only photos we ever get.
It's better if female tourists avoid shorts or tight clothing — it has a bad influence on our culture, since local women never dress that way. Men can dress however they normally do. I'd welcome more tourists in the future — ten to fifteen a day would be good, though I'm not sure about more than that. When tourists come in big groups, their behaviour changes a little. There haven't been problems so far, but I'm not certain that would still be true with much larger numbers.
A living made faster by tourists, and a childhood being spent, a little more each year, beside the wheel instead of at a desk.