How running water changes lives: Tourism takes a second look in Tanzania

Tan­ner C Knorr, Pres­id­ent of “GT” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide, takes us to Kakoi vil­lage in Tan­zania — the first bene­fi­ciary of a prag­mat­ic approach to sup­port­ing com­munit­ies that are dir­ectly affected by, or live adja­cent to, tour­ism activity. 

When trav­el­ling to devel­op­ing coun­tries, noti­cing dis­crep­an­cies between the areas of tour­ism and those imme­di­ately out­side is hard to miss. These dif­fer­ences come in many forms, includ­ing the qual­ity of roads, restrooms, hous­ing, clean­li­ness, and nat­ur­al beauty. I find myself recon­cil­ing the fact that I some­times stay and exper­i­ence silos of gor­geous archi­tec­ture and activ­it­ies, while right out­side the gates, loc­al com­munit­ies often seem to have so little. 

In these cases, there is no ques­tion why loc­als may often not have the kind­est demean­our towards us out­siders. Tour­ism is cer­tainly a world of “haves” and “have-nots”.

When form­ing our travel com­pany, I knew that I needed to con­sider the pop­u­la­tions liv­ing both with­in and around the des­tin­a­tion points of our tours. The idea from the begin­ning was to reserve 5% of the pack­age cost and devote that to improve­ments in the places near our trav­el­lers’ accom­mod­a­tions and exper­i­ences. After a couple years of the busi­ness, we decided to incor­por­ate a sep­ar­ate sis­ter organ­isa­tion to ensure more funds were able to get to the places that needed it the most.

Our not-for-profit organ­iz­a­tion is called Second Look World­wide. We strive to take a second look at des­tin­a­tions and see them for more than just a place to travel, but as the liv­ing, breath­ing com­bin­a­tion of com­munit­ies, wild­life, and land­scapes that they are. We focus on infra­struc­ture improve­ments near the places we travel. 

At the end of 2018, we began work on our first pro­ject in the Kakoi Vil­lage out­side Tarangire Nation­al Park in Tan­zania. There are around 15,500 Maa­sai liv­ing in this area at the north­ern tip of the park. They make their liv­ing through agri­cul­ture and herd­ing cattle. Very rarely will this com­munity inter­act with tour­ists, but they may see a safari car drive past every now and again because they are loc­ated so close to the nation­al park.

The vil­lage is in what is called the buf­fer zone or wild­life man­age­ment area. Because there are no fences around Tan­zani­an parks, this area is where wild­life and humans often con­verge. Without see­ing the bene­fit of tour­ism, the value of wild­life among these com­munit­ies is often quite low. Ele­phants and mon­keys are fairly reg­u­lar vis­it­ors in the Kakoi com­munity, lured by water, water­mel­on, and maize.

Sev­er­al years ago, a loc­al lodge in the north­ern Tarangire region installed a water pump sys­tem in the vil­lage in exchange for water usage at the lodge. When the lodge closed and moved to a dif­fer­ent loc­a­tion, it took along the pump sys­tem equip­ment, includ­ing the pump itself and the gen­er­at­or, leav­ing Kakoi with a couple of slightly broken water stor­age tanks atop the con­crete pump house. The vil­lage was reduced to using sur­face water for both live­stock and community. 

When search­ing for our first ini­ti­at­ive with Second Look World­wide, Kakoi proved to be a great fit. Togeth­er with their tribunal sup­port and Tan­zani­an engin­eers, we began by sur­vey­ing the land and water source for clean­li­ness. The bore­hole was still intact, but the pump and drill had to be replaced, and pip­ing would need to be recon­nec­ted in order to reach the primary school in the vil­lage. We decided that sol­ar power would need to be the fuel to run the sys­tem because installing a dies­el-powered gen­er­at­or would be unsus­tain­able from both an envir­on­ment­al and eco­nom­ic stand­point. After rais­ing fur­ther funds, we trav­elled back to Tan­zania in early 2019 to begin the project.

We worked with and relied heav­ily on loc­al part­ners to assist in nav­ig­at­ing and installing the pro­ject, and, by July 2019, we were able to see clean water flow from the sys­tem to the tap on site and through to the primary school. We met with the chair­man of the Kakoi and signed all equip­ment over to the vil­lage so that no one in the future could take it away again. 

In the final phase of our pro­ject, we along with our Tan­zani­an and Amer­ic­an part­ners will build out the plumb­ing and hygiene edu­ca­tion at the primary school. Rather than the chil­dren con­tinu­ing to use restrooms with sep­tic tanks, we will install a leach field, and make sure that run­ning water and soap are avail­able. Not only will this reduce the awful smell from the restrooms, but also increase the health and well-being for the hun­dreds of kids at the school. 

We are ini­ti­at­ing work with oth­er inter­na­tion­al part­ners and Amer­ic­an organ­isa­tions to estab­lish pro­jects in more des­tin­a­tions around the world. These will soon include Uganda, Nepal, Ethiopia, and Tunisia.

Util­ising tour­ism for loc­al devel­op­ment pro­jects like this has sev­er­al bene­fits. Not only can we rest easi­er know­ing that thou­sands of people have access to multi-faceted, sus­tain­able infra­struc­ture improve­ments, but per­haps these sup­por­ted com­munit­ies will value the wild­life to a high­er degree and begin con­trib­ut­ing to con­ser­va­tion of the area in a more robust way. 

Fea­tured image: Water run­ning through grate­ful hands; a crop of an image in the gal­lery. All the images in this art­icle were sup­plied by the author, Tan­ner C Knorr.

About the author

Tan­ner C Knorr is the Own­er & Founder of the sus­tain­able tour oper­at­or Off Sea­son Adven­tures and Pres­id­ent of Second Look World­wide, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organ­isa­tion that ensures the bene­fits of tour­ism are real­ised in loc­al com­munit­ies by spon­sor­ing infra­struc­ture improve­ments around the world. To date, Off Sea­son Adven­tures has kept more than 90% of the tour costs with­in the loc­al eco­nom­ies and con­trib­uted sig­ni­fic­antly to forest con­ser­va­tion with­in the des­tin­a­tions. Extens­ive stake­hold­er meet­ings and inter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships go into his work with both organisations. 

Tan­ner also man­ages busi­ness devel­op­ment, com­mu­nic­a­tions, and events for Epler­Wood Inter­na­tion­al.

With a Bach­el­ors in Archae­ology and a Mas­ters in Admin­is­trat­ive Stud­ies (Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment and Tour­ism Man­age­ment) from Boston Uni­ver­sity, Tan­ner helped teach “Envir­on­ment­al Man­age­ment of Inter­na­tion­al Tour­ism Devel­op­ment” at Har­vard Extension.