As secretary of the village committee in Ng'iresi, most of his work is advising farmers — he can't offer them money, since there simply isn't a fund for that, but he can offer guidance. The government pays him for the role, though he still keeps his own farm going alongside it.
What tourism has brought to the village, in his telling, is concrete and visible. Development money collected from visitors has gone into the school — new classrooms, desks and chairs, even a house built for the teacher — and into repairing the roads. It has replaced something, too: the village tax that every adult over eighteen used to have to pay just to fund basic improvements. Tourism covers that now. The women's group benefits directly as well, sharing the money earned from cooking for visiting tourists across different families.
“Before, everyone over eighteen paid a village tax. Now tourism pays it for us.”
Not everything about tourism's arrival sits easily with him. He worries about how tourists dress rubbing off on the village's children — shorts and tight clothing that are fine for a foreign visitor but not, in his view, appropriate for local girls. The girls dress by the village's norms while they're home, he says, though he's honestly not certain what they change into once they reach town.
Guided tourism, at least, has never caused problems here — almost everyone who visits comes with a guide. It's the idea of tourists wandering unguided that concerns him, with no one to explain what is and isn't appropriate.
Clothing tells its own story of change. Women in the village still dress traditionally; men largely stopped long ago, well before any tourists arrived, after being mocked in Arusha town for looking too rural. Traditional dress is now mostly kept for home and for celebrations. Both boys and girls attend primary and secondary school, and some go on to short courses — computer training, for instance — in town afterward. He expects more girls to land office jobs there in years to come, and thinks that's a good thing, as long as they keep supporting their families once they've moved away.
Asked about the future, his answer is simple: let the tourists keep coming. Seeing the visible good that tourism has done for the village, he says, is something he's genuinely thankful for — and he doesn't believe there could ever really be too many visitors.