By
ADAM IHUCHA -- When a 76-year-old Nekaki Meikoki begins telling a Maasai folktale, her
weathered face grows animated and she flashes a sly grin.
Around a campfire before her, a group of American travellers sit with wide eyes, as engrossed in the storytellers' tales of Maasai warriors, monsters, proud lions, and wily hyenas.
Around a campfire before her, a group of American travellers sit with wide eyes, as engrossed in the storytellers' tales of Maasai warriors, monsters, proud lions, and wily hyenas.
Ms
Nekaki, a Maasai grandmother who resides in the remote Sukenya Village of
Loliondo in Tanzania’s wildlife-rich- northern tourist circuit, can attest the
impact of tourism in Maasai community, in line with the World Tourism Day 2014’s
theme.
In
2010, when she turned 72-years, the life dynamics took her to unimaginable
height as she began telling folktales to groups of tourists traveling with
Thomson Safaris to the Enashiva Nature Refuge, a 12,600-acre private wildlife area
within her village, for a token of a $5.
Four
years now, Ms Nekaki earns a $30 or even more, each evening for narrating
folktales for an hour, to groups of tourists, through a
translator.
The story didn’t ends there; she later on in partnership with her
colleagues formed a group with an eye to make fortune by selling beads
which now earn the group up to $2,500 per day in a peak tourism season.
“I
didn’t go to school, I know nothing about contemporary world, save for my
traditional fiction stories and beads. But God is great, these two products earn
me a lot of dollars” Ms Nekaki says.
Should
the Thomson Safaris firm bookings remain intact, in the wake of Ebola virus
disease outbreak, the women group anticipates raking in $27,100 on beads sales
by the end of the current tourism season, their order list shows.
Though
little, as it may seem, but for the poor people, it is a substantial income, as
Ms Nekaki says that apart from basic needs, the tourists’ dollar had enabled
her to build a modern house and pay for her grandchildren school fees.
The
income is a slice of the $32 million package of tourist’s dollar that trickles
down to the pocket of poor Tanzanians annually, through, probably the forgotten
cultural tourism.
Freddy Massawe, the Chief
Executive Officer for Tanzania
Association of Cultural Tourism Organizers (TACTO) says that at the moment the pro-poor cultural
tourism handles only 30 percent of 1.2 million tourists who visit Tanzania’s
wildlife-rich-attractions annually.
This means the segment is responsible for nearly
360,000 tourists, directly earning the common Tanzanians roughly $32.4 million
annually, but Mr Massawe sees this as paltry amount in comparison with the
potential.
Looking
beyond the numbers, experts say that this is a typical example of successful
model, in which tour companies could borrow a leaf to transfer the tourist
dollars to the poor people in the country.
Mr Massawe underscored the
need for local tour operators to incorporate culture in their safari package in
order to transfer more dollars to the local people.
“The country is blessed with over 120 tribes who live
in harmony. This is a sleeping giant tourist product that needs a good will of
tour operators to include in their itinerates for tourists to appreciate cultural
diversity and pay direct to the community” Mr Massawe said.
“Cultural tourism if well developed can attract million of tourists in our
country given the cultural diversity we have” he explains, adding that
countries such as France, Egypt and Morocco rely on cultural tourism solely and
have attracted millions of tourists.
For instance, he says,
French cultural tourism attracted 87.3 million international tourists in 2013, with
Egypt 9.1 million and Morocco 10 million, generating a multi-billions-dollar
for local people.
In Tanzania, TACTO chief says that the problem lies
on the national tourism policy, which does not recognize cultural tourism as
potential tourists attractions.
“Multiple taxes caused by inter-sectoral acts also
hinder the growth of cultural tourism businesses” Mr Massawe noted, stressing
that in certain instances local government authorities do raise tourism levies
without considering its impact in the tourism businesses.
Again, the government is
blamed for not doing enough in marketing cultural attractions worldwide as
other countries do.
“To make the matters worse,
Tanzania has never put any regulation of service provision of cultural tourism
service providers resulting into any body to do service provision hence
undermining the quality of the service” he says.
In his conclusion, Mr.
Massawe argues that cultural
tourism if well developed could generate employment to thousands of youths and
women as well as bringing in the much-needed foreign currency.
More importantly, it can also be used to combat poaching,
as community will see the benefits of tourism, he says.
Growing at a steady
rate for the past two years, Tanzania tourism is booming with latest data
confirming the industry as Tanzania’s top foreign currency earner and export
sector, outshining the gold.
Fresh figures from
central bank indicate that the tourism brought in $1.973 billion during the
year ended June 2014, up from $1.757 billion earned in previous corresponding
year.
Recent statistics
show that earnings from the Tanzanian tourism industry increased from $200
million in 1993 to $1.88 billion in 2013.
The number of
visitors also increased over the same period from 230,000 to a record one
million, creating direct employment to 156,500 Tanzanians.
The reported
number of tourists who visited Tanzania in 2012 and 2013 places the country on
the map of leading African safari destinations with million-plus visitors per
year.
Other tourist
competitive African destinations, rich with resources and which have a high
record of tourists reaching a million or above are Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Namibia, Zambia and South Africa.
Natural resource and
tourism, Lazaro Nyalandu says that the sector directly accounts for about 16
percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and nearly 25 percent of total export
earnings.
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