Village tourism on the rise
VILLAGE tourism, where visitors from outside the country, take time to tour around communities and experience African way of life, is growing in areas around Victoria Falls.
Tourists especially from Europe and America enjoy experiencing the African way of life where they take time to sample traditional foods, activities as well as cultural practices.
One major attraction in Monde area outside Victoria Falls is the homestead of an inyanga, Mr Sikhetha Nowakhe, also a polygamist with three wives. Some visitors have also sought the traditional healer’s services, Mr Nowakhe said.
“Whites are interested in seeing how we live and many have even visited my surgery to see how I cast bones. Quite a number have consulted me and I have cast bones for them,” said Mr Nowakhe.
He said tourists find polygamy interesting.
“They find having many wives interesting and I have told them that to us it’s cultural and we also do it for manpower at home,” Mr Nowakhe said.
This new trend of village tourism has also seen villagers benefiting as some of the tourists end up adopting schools, villages and pupils who they sponsor for various projects. Tour operators such as Shearwater, Wild Horizons and others occasionally take their clients outside town life to visit villages where they marvel at the African traditional life.
The tours are popularly termed Bantu Village tours where tourists would spend time with communities, engage in traditional and household chores and share traditional food. A former pupil at Chidobe Secondary School, Khulu Josiah Nowakhe, has taken the initiative to embrace the opportunity on behalf of the community of Monde and Chidobe.
Mr Nowakhe has approached some tourism companies to develop infrastructure such as schools and provide stationery and facilities to provide clean water.
“We started the programme in August last year where we want our community to benefit from Bantu Village tours. We noticed that the completion of the airport would lead to an increase in visitors and we thought as a community we should benefit from that,” said Mr Nowakhe.
“It may not be direct but if we get to have tourists getting deep into the villages people can learn a lot from cultural exchanges as well as donations that come along with it.”
Mr Nowakhe said the idea was to solicit for donations on behalf of schools and other social amenities programmes, infrastructure and services.
“Tour operators are already doing village tours but that’s not helping communities. Our coming in means that whenever there is a village tour, the community must benefit as well than just to host them as visitors,” he said.
He said schools need textbooks and other learning material.
Sizinda Secondary School was the first to benefit after some clients donated a submersible pump after a village tour.
“So far Shearwater has responded and we have been going on village tours with their clients some of whom have given back to our community by donating a borehole,” said Mr Nowakhe.
In the rural areas, tourists are taken to various places of attraction such as village courts, community water sources such as wells and boreholes and are served traditional dishes.