Archive for July, 2008
The Little Things That Make Me Smile and Scratch My Head
There are a number of things here in Nigeria that are just different enough to bring laughter and puzzlement to my days…
“Oyibo” – Wherever I go, people call out “Oyibo.” Naturally, I initially thought this meant “hello” or served as some sort of greeting. I suppose it is a greeting of sorts, but literally means “white person.” It isn’t an insult, just a way to get my attention and a wave. Generally oyibos remain in Lagos, the business capital, or Port Harcourt, where the oil flows. I’ve seen two other oyibos in my first month here in Benin City – not many. I’m certainly an anomaly. I wish I could capture the curiosity and discovery that I see in the eyes of the children I meet. They look at me with a deep attention. Every movement is watched. Every action is noted. For many, I am the first white person they have seen outside of the manufactured distance of a television screen. They are excited and confused. Some try to stay very still as not to let on to their interest. Others creep up next to me and casually rub against my skin or run around giggling with their siblings, beaming smiles on their faces.
Divine Businesses – Nigeria, and especially Benin City, is a very religious place. In the north of the country Islam reigns. In the south, various Christian denominations rule, ranging from Pentecostal to Baptist, Catholic to Apocalyptic. The seriousness of faith is evident just driving down the road passing signs displaying religiously themed business names. Some are expected (e.g. Christ’s Bookshop and Religious Store). Some make me smile in their randomness (e.g. God’s Time Aluminum Co.). Others make me laugh out loud with comical plays on words (my favorite, God’s Power Electrical Supplies).
“This House is Not For Sale” – you will find these words scribbled in paint across houses throughout Benin (and probably Nigeria). From a Western perspective this seems odd. If it is not explicitly stated that the house is for sale, then why would it be assumed otherwise? Why would the aesthetic of one’s home be sacrificed to clarify this seemingly intuitive statement? The answer: fraud within the family. Apparently it is not uncommon for one family member to try and sell the house out from under another.
Soup – Tired of eating a diet based primarily on an endless variety of starches, one evening I decided to order “soup and salad.” Both of these words are used in relation to Nigerian food, however, “salad” is more of a cabbage garnish topped with a dollop of mayonnaise and soup is not spooned into ones mouth, but eaten as more of a sauce with pounded yam and other cassava-based starchy staples. One orders their starch as the main and specifies which soup for flavor (like ordering rice with a side of salmon or a whole grain sandwich with turkey). The difference is subtle, but important. To me, my order of “soup and salad” seemed to me to be a smart alternative to a carb overload, but the looks I got were riddled with confusion and amazement. The restaurant staff was so baffled by my order that it was on the house. From what I can tell as a result of my questioning, an equivalent order in America might be a bowl of alfredo sauce with a side of parsley and an orange slice.
3 comments 31 July 2008
The Nuts and Bolts
Part of the reason I signed up for the Kiva Fellowship was to see how microfinance actually works on the ground. You can read all the books on microfinance, but that couldn’t make up for never seeing it in action with your own eyes. After getting an understanding of AMK’s operations from their nice air-conditioned central office (where I just finished making them an Excel macro to keep better track of their Kiva loans), I knew I had to see the loan officer in action to really understand the pros and cons of microfinance.
Saphanith, Elena and I stopped by Au Village, the home of two Kiva entrepreneurs, Mrs. Kim Eng and Mrs. Eak Maong. Both entrepreneurs received their loans recently (which is why my journal updates on them are rather meek). We went to their village bank meeting. Here’s a quote from AMK’s website that describes the village bank:
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AMK’s flagship product is the solidarity group loan product, which offers flexible repayment terms where clients can borrow and repay at any point during the cycle. AMK’s end-of-term repayment product is delivered to members through a solidarity group lending methodology. These village solidarity groups are called Village Banks (VBs) and constitute the group loan delivery mechanism; they are in effect a “Village Association” or “Village-level client group”. The potential clients self-select themselves into solidarity groups of 4 to 6 members and these, in turn, are organized into VBs of 4 to 12 groups (or 20 to 60 clients). Being part of a self-selected solidarity group entails that three to five other villagers trust the loan applicant to let him/her join their solidarity group. All loans are guaranteed by the respective group members and appraised and approved by AMK’s Credit Officer (CO) and the Village Bank President (VBP) before the disbursements take place in the presence of the group members and AMK’s Area/Branch Manager. |
As I mentioned in my last post, each village bank has a president who is elected by the villagers and facilitates the functions of the village bank. When we showed up at Au Village, Ly Chandara, the loan officer was busy collecting payments from many of the villagers. Most of the loans were end of term loans, so the loan officer was collecting mainly interest payments. Nevertheless this took a lot of time. All the clients did not come at the exact time, after they came he had to calculate how much was paid and how much interest they owed. Once they paid up, the loan officer had to do a lot of counting because they mainly gave him small bills 100, 500 and 1000 riels (worth 2.5 cents, 12.5 cents and 25 cents respectively).
Ly Chandara, an AMK loan officer, collecting payments from Au Village Bank members
The village bank meeting was very close to Mrs. Kim Eng’s little shop, so we stopped by for a visit. We saw all the goods that she was able to buy with her loan. She told us about her husband’s death. He had gone to Angkor Wat, and when he came back he became really sick. She thinks that he probably died of food poisoning. She was pregnant at the time of his death, which was ten years ago. Despite all of this she is able to support her family and I wish her the best of luck!
Mrs. Kim Eng and her well stocked store
Smiles!
We then went to Mrs. Eak Maong’s residence. She showed us the new pigs that she bought with a Kiva loan and a gigantic pig that she was getting ready to sell. Her pig breeding business has been doing very well, and she hopes to increase her profits with the pigs she bought using her Kiva loan!
Mrs. Eak Maong and her new pigs
Is this a pig or a small elephant?
Before we left, Saphanith and Elena also got lessons from another Au Village bank member on how to make Num Thnot cake. Num Thnot cake is made out of palm fruit and plam sugar. It is wrapped in banana leaves and then steamed. The first step is to make a box out of a strip of banana leaf and a toothpick. This is what Elena and Saphanith tried to learn.
Elena and Saphanith in the background, while the master Num Thnot maker shows them how it's done.
I don’t want to rush to make any conclusions, good or bad, about microfinance based on my two visits into the field, but hopefully after spending some more time (and learning some Khmer!) I will get a better sense of what microfinance, AMK, and Kiva are accomplishing and what they could improve upon. In the meantime, here’s another animal picture for KivaFriends members.
Oink Oink!
Click here to see all the loans from AMK that are currently fundraising on Kiva.
2 comments 28 July 2008
From the city, into the field: views from a motorbike
To see a complete list of MAXIMA’s clients who live in rural areas such as this one, please click here.
6 comments 28 July 2008
My First Ugandan Fight
Yesterday I was not in a fight, but rather saw my first fight in Uganda. This fight was over a woman – me. However, it was not between jealous lovers. Rather, the fight was between two taxi drivers vying for my fare.
In Kampala, if one doesn’t have a car or is too scared to drive (me), there are two other forms of transportation to get around. One option is to take a boda-boda which is a motorcycle. The other option is to take a matatu which is a shared van that is licensed to carry 14 people, but usually has upwards of 16 people crammed into the small van.
At MCDT, we usually travel via matatu as this is the cheapest form of transportation. Loan officers and I catch the matatu at the taxi stop by the Kampala branch. Yesterday, Rose and I headed to the taxi stop to catch the Jinja Road/Kampala Road matatu. These matatus show up constantly, and there are usually at least two waiting there upon our arrival like there was yesterday. At each stop they wait in hopes of filling up their matatus with passengers before heading to the next stop – this wait can be anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes.
Matatus love muzungus (white people) as they tend to not know the proper prices (there are no real set prices – one just needs to know how much to pay) and can be pressured into paying higher prices. When I travel on matatu, I go with a loan officer who doesn’t let the conductor (the one in charge of collecting passengers and money) overcharge me. Rose, being the ever-conscious loan officer she is, not only protects me from being charged too much, but also bargains to ensure she can save MCDT even the smallest amount. Yesterday was no different.
As we set off on our way yesterday, we headed to the taxi stop and stood there with a look of not caring in an attempt to get the conductor to lower the price. Two conductors were vying for our business until finally one conductor offered us the ride for 300 shillings rather than 500 shillings. We immediately boarded his matatu and Rose was very satisfied with her powers of persuasion. Unfortunately, the matatu conductor that lost our business was not impressed.
Immediately after we boarded, the matatu conductors started arguing and the one whose we did not board began sliding our van door closed so no one else could board, clearly angered by our decision not to ride with him. Our conductor was getting more and more annoyed with this behavior but mostly ignored him and kept opening the door and acquiring passengers. The other conductor got even more angered by this and then started pushing our matatu driver. The pushing was not to be tolerated and the two drivers exchanged more heated words and harder pushes. Through this entire altercation, people barely watched as apparently this is “normal” behavior for matatu conductors.
Finally, our conductor boarded our van and our driver started the engine intent on moving onto the next stop. The other matatu conductor would not have this and stood in front of the van, not allowing us to pull into the two lane traffic. Our driver, used to the treacherous driving conditions in Kampala, was amazingly able to maneuver around the angry conductor trying to standing front of our van. However, seeing that our driver was heading onto the street and away from the angry conductor, the driver of the other matatu (and apparently the partner-in-crime of the angry conductor) then pulled into the street and positioned the van horizontally so that both lanes were blocked and no traffic could pass.
Eventually, all passengers including Rose and I got off the matatus and boarded other vans. These matatus and the other traffic started passing the feuding matatus by driving on the sidewalk. I have no idea how long the vans stayed feuding and basically blocking traffic, but what I realized was something more personal: In the 8 weeks I have been here, little now surprises me and my patience has increased incredibly. I now know I will eventually end up at my destination, I just have no exact idea how or when.
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=112&status=fundRaising&sortBy=New+to+Old_tpg=fb
5 comments 27 July 2008
The Expectation of Innovation
Microcredit undoubtedly represents a creative and original response to poverty. But I think that somewhere along the way, the innovativeness of the idea seems to have translated into an expectation of novelty and ingenuity for all “small-scale entrepreneurs.” I was reminded of this recently while reading a report published by IBM that described microcredit recipients as “creative” and “entrepreneurial.” While I’m certainly no expert on the subject, my time in the field has reinforced my belief that microloans do not generally enable budding entrepreneurs to realize innovative business ideas. Although there’s always an exception to the rule, the loans seem to help ordinary individuals start or expand one-(wo)man enterprises that resemble many other businesses in the marketplace. I don’t believe that this fact diminishes the significance of the loans. Yet I do think that the common media portrayal of microfinance’s potential is out of line with the reality on the ground. I have to wonder if this gap between expectation and reality (as I see it, at least), will eventually hinder the microfinance movement.
Personally, I have to admit that the first time I looked on Kiva, I was a little disappointed. The opportunity to make a loan directly to another individual excited me, of course, but the nature of the projects seemed so provincial. Profile after profile showed conventional businesses with the loan purpose listed as “expanding her business” or “purchasing more goods for sale.” I had wanted to help someone who was doing something new and different. Something more than simply buying goods in bulk at reselling them for a small profit. Perhaps I’m all alone in this respect, but I suspect that many Kiva lenders have the same initial response. Working with CRAN this summer, however, I have had the opportunity to witness borrowers’ modest businesses firsthand, and to learn from them about the nature of work in the informal sector. It has been an eye-opening experience and has helped me to understand the importance of “purchasing more goods for sale.”
In my interviews with clients (most of whom are traders), I always ask how they got into their line of work. I hear two common choruses. Either they inherited the trade from a parent, or they observed the market, noticed a particular set of goods selling quickly, and decided to start selling it themselves. In doing the latter, they instinctively respond to market trends—which always impresses me, but there’s no apparent attempt to define a new niche for themselves or to offer creative solutions to conventional problems. Take the sale of bread, for instance. Generally speaking, there are 4 types of bread in Ghana: sugar bread, tea bread, butter bread, and brown bread (all of which are delicious). And on any given commercial street in Cape Coast, you’ll likely find one or two bread stands, two or three breakfast stands, and seven or more general stores, all selling some combination of these four breads. Why, I’ve wondered, if bread is so popular, does no one experiment with other types of bread? Perhaps a loaf with a crispier crust, a heavier dessert bread, or a good ole fashion banana bread? Why hasn’t CRAN helped a client open a banana bread stand, when all of the ingredients are so abundant?
I suspect that there are many explanations for this—and I’m interested in learning more about them—but I think that the risk involved in any entrepreneurial undertaking represents one major factor. Innovation seems to require that both the buyer and the seller have some breathing room in their expenses. Someone living at or below the poverty line can likely not afford to charter a new path in the bread market. If a poor baker invested all of her capital into an experimental batch of bread that flopped, the result could be disastrous for her and her family. With minimal savings and no official safety net, it could mean that her children go without much food or schooling indefinitely. Furthermore, if the start-up capital came from a microloan, then she’d be saddled with debt too. And from the buyer’s perspective, testing out a new kind of bread may seem risky and unnecessary. Why take a chance with the unfamiliar when a second loaf of bread cannot easily be bought, and when the conventional loaf fills her children’s stomachs just fine? Without the cushion of savings or disposable income, the price of innovation seems to increase significantly. Experimentation seems to become a luxury reserved for the well-off.
So, the risk of innovation may encourage poor individuals to open businesses whose success has already been demonstrated. Beyond the risk factor, however, I think that the nature of the informal sector also encourages the duplication—and the constant desire for a loan to “buy more goods for sale.” The informal economy in Cape Coast comes as close as I’ve ever seen to perfectly competitive market. The barriers to entry, for one, are almost non-existent. Although profits generally increase as one’s supply increases, someone can start a business with only enough inventory to fill a small basket. Such women carry the baskets on their heads and walk door to door searching for customers. With no red tape or minimum requirement of capital, hundred of sellers in the marketplace, and nearly identical products, everyone ends up a price taker. They charge the market price and not a pesewas higher; if they do, they’ll lose their business to the person half a block away selling the same thing. As a result, everyone ends up with slim profit margins. Yet expansion provides a straight-forward way of making more money. With a slim profit margin on each good sold, her profit slowly accumulates as she sells more of the same stuff. The basket carrier seeks to set up an informal stall; the stall owner wants to open a sturdy kiosk; and the kiosk saleswoman aspires to expand into a modest shop.
So that’s what I’ve seem in the field so far. Individuals don’t take out loans to start new, creative businesses. They access credit in order to enlarge their inventory. The traders want to buy more goods for sale; the fishmongers want to buy more fish; the bakers want to purchase more ingredients. It’s not glamorous but it seems to be the pragmatic reality of microfinance. Expecting more from the financial service may be dangerously wishful thinking.
10 comments 25 July 2008
Five Things I Love About Tajikistan
1. Tajiki-what?: Being an American in Tajikistan means that you are in a country that few of your compatriots have ever heard of, let alone traveled to. You are a curiosity everywhere you go and the lack of Westerners gives you the opportunity to act as kind of a mini-ambassador, answering all of questions that Tajiks have been waiting, sometimes their whole lives, to ask an American. Especially in the small towns, I attract a crowd of onlookers whenever I’m conducting an interview with a Kiva client, gawking at me as if I’ve just arrived from the moon. It is quite fun to be suddenly elevated to such pseudo-celebrity status and when I speak people listen to every word with an incredible amount of interest. I’ve been asked by mothers to marry their daughters, I’ve had a child named in my honor, and the usual response by my driver when we reach some kind of checkpoint or roadblock is to loudly exclaim to the soldiers or policemen on duty “We’ve got an American in the car!” and the problem just disappears. I relish the time I spend teaching others about America, answering their numerous questions and asking them in turn a litany of my own questions about their country. Because Tajikistan is so far off the beaten track the cultural exchange that occurs here is really intense and you experience travel in a way that people rarely do anymore in a world where there are so few places left to discover.
Me with my good friends, the Tajik Border Guards
2. Hospitality, re-defined: Trust me, you don’t know the meaning of the word until you’ve been to this far-flung outpost of former-Soviet Central Asia. Everyone wants a little piece of the new Yankee on the block and over the past several weeks I’ve felt a little bit like a human pinball, bounced back and forth through all the different feats of generosity that my wonderful, yet often overbearing hosts can throw at me. My patience, my Russian language skills, the strength of my gastrointestinal system, and above all my appetite have been tested in ways that I never thought possible . Exhortations to “EAT!” and “DRINK!” are shouted at me like I’m in some kind of Central Asian bootcamp with Tajik babushkas playing the role of drill sergeant as I try to get the mounds of plov and shashlyk down my throat without choking to death. Even after what I think are my Herculean efforts to consume everything my hosts have offered me, I’m usually ridiculed with a typical “Ha! My grandson, he’s not even a year old, and he eats more than you!” or “What, are you not hungry? Do you not like our Tajik food?” It is an utterly exhausting endeavor to “go as a guest” in Tajikistan, but it is a wonderful and often hilarious experience nonetheless. You learn the real meaning of generosity, when you are given a feast of epic proportions by someone who makes $100 dollars a month and has several children to feed. Even though I consider myself a fairly giving individual, I feel like a real Ebenezer Scrooge in the face of such kindness. Despite the fact that it’s not always the most delicious meal and you may add a few inches to your waistline in the process, being a guest in Tajikistan will open you up to a new level of hospitality that you will never forget.
mmmm...yummy
3. Melons, melons, and more melons: Central Asia is known for its melons, especially in summertime when the bazaars are packed with pyramidal stacks of the ubiquitous fruit. Almost every meal either begins or ends (sometimes both) with slices of fresh watermelon (tarbuz in Tajik) that are amazingly sweet and delicious. As a guest here in Tajikistan, I am usually forced to eat about half a gigantic tarbuz at every sitting, and sometimes they throw in a regular yellow melon just for good measure that far outshines the comparatively bland honeydew and canteloupe that we have become accustomed to in the states. You could live here on melons alone, especially during the hotter months when there is nothing as refreshing as laying down on the tapchan (a traditional raised square platform where Tajiks do most of their eating) with melon juice sloshing around your stomach as you sip green tea and drift slowly into a lazy afternoon siesta.
Me and the Wonderful Watermelons of Tajikistan
4. Apricot heaven: I have to admit that I’m a huge fan of apricots, but never in my life did I think that I would stumble onto the apricot mecca that is northeastern Tajikistan. The area around the city of Isfara is the epicenter of the apricot world where over 40 varieties of the fruit are grown on the seemingly endless orchards that surround you as you drive into the countryside. Everywhere you look you see the deep orange hue of fresh apricots drying on huge pieces of cloth underneath the summer sun. Women kneel over and remove each pit by hand that they then dry and roast in order to eat the almond-like nut inside. While interviewing clients outside of Isfara I asked my loan officers if we could stop and take a look at some of the orchards. They kindly granted my request and with permission of the local farmer I giddily ran around, plucking the ripe fruit from low hanging branches and sampling the amazing gift of Mother Nature that is the Tajik apricot. Dried, the apricots serve as a kind of local currency that people can barter or sell when they need some extra cash. Therefore, not only are apricots delicious, they are a kind of safety net for families in this part of the country during the harsh and economically uncertain winter months.
Apricot time!
5. A Mild Cult of Personality: President Emomali Rahmon’s obsession with himself is something that I both love and hate simultaneously. For a foreigner like myself it is one of the more hilarious aspects of being in Tajikistan, yet as I laugh at his silly portraits and statements hanging everywhere in the cities and along the roadsides, I am also sad for the people who are stuck here with this post-Soviet despot and can’t take these curious monuments as lightly as I can. One of my favorite pastimes here is to make fun of Rahmon’s attempts at being a “man of the people,” when it is obvious, especially with $6 billion sitting in a Swiss bank, that the people are really the last thing on his mind. At the main intersection here in Khujand there is a jumbotron that plays a non-stop montage of Rahmon’s sojourns amongst the citizens of Northern Tajikistan, cutting ribbons, visiting schools, kissing babies while crowds of people clap in rhythym, standing in a wheat field and feeling the crop with his own hands, giving speeches surrounded by gigantic picutes of (guess who?) himself, and receiving various awards for basically doing nothing. Over and over again the largest screen in the city plays this vacuous film when they could be using it for some useful purpose, but alas, logic and common sense are often scarce commodities amongst the leaders of Central Asia. The type of humor that comes from watching this display of extravagant narcissism is bittersweet and stems from a certain exasperation one feels when the system is so stacked against change that the only thing left to do is laugh at the absurdity of it all. But, laugh I do, and even though it is tinged with sadness, seeing this strange form of political expression is endlessly amusing and fascinating.
What a great guy! (President Rahmon is the one on the left)
8 comments 25 July 2008
Beautiful Cambodia
I’m regularly taken aback by the beauty that I witness all over Cambodia. However, I am hesitant to write this blog for one reason: I could never fully recount the beauty of the landscape, people, and culture, neither through words nor photographs. Life in Cambodia has been surprisingly humbling and incredibly rewarding, so I hope that I can convey at least a glimmer of my experiences of the country. I’ll do my best to highlight a few of the aspects of Cambodian life and culture which I most appreciate.
Cultural Persona: Pride, cheer, concord – these elements are pervasive in Cambodian culture. Perhaps it’s a result of the past national turmoil, which forced strangers to band together as family for the purpose of survival. Perhaps it’s because the culture is rooted in Buddhist influence, and therefore traditionally devoid of consumerism, deceitfulness or cynicism. Perhaps I shouldn’t try so hard to explain why, but rather appreciate it for what it is.
Three cousins. They stick together, so don't try to mess with them!
Resourcefulness: By necessity, Cambodian people have had to develop an extremely opportunistic and enterprising way of life. It is rare to see a resource go wasted, whether that resource is food, raw material, machine, or manpower.
Driving through Phnom Penh I saw this truck loaded to the max with metal brackets AND people
Tradition: Despite the difficult modern history of Cambodia, including national devastation by the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia has maintained strong cultural traditions. Out in the countryside you can find communities living in the same manner in which they lived before the dawn of motorized transportation, electronics, and other modern comforts. Even in the urban centers, many people still live in close accordance to Buddhist, Muslim or other traditional principles.
A Family business in Kampong Chhnang - the daughters are already expert at pottery
Cuisine: An often overlooked aspect of Cambodia is the delicious Khmer cuisine. Cambodian dishes require natural ingredients and items from the surrounding landscape, and often incorporate animal parts or creatures often overlooked by Western culture. If you can overcome your preconceptions, you can enjoy the cuisine like the Khmer people do.
An array of Khmer dishes for sale at the local market
History: There is no more obvious way to illustrate the spectacular history of Cambodia, than with one of the many magnificent temples at Angkor. The complex of ancient temples at Angkor Wat is the kind of place that you have to visit to fully appreciate, but the grandeur of the temples is clear in any picture, nonetheless.
Ta Prohm Temple, near Angkor Wat
Sometimes life here feels surreal to me, as if I am on the set of a movie (the temple of Ta Prohm near Angkor Wat was, in fact, a set location for the first Tomb Raider movie). Often, It’s not until I skim through my photographs that I realize how uniquely beautiful are the people and their country.
Click here to see all loans from HKL that are currently fundraising on Kiva
2 comments 25 July 2008
Life of Kiva Clients in Bosnia: The Amateur’s Version
The smell of a farm is one thing that is familiar to me, but not much else is. It’s amazing how removed you can be from a process that is so central to life, but it’s true. Feel like I should take some kind of crash course in farming, something that would qualify me to report on the majority of the businesses here. But I’m not qualified and that’s that. This is the amateur’s version of the life of Kiva clients in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Farming is not a business, it’s at least 10 businesses wrapped into one. These women manage everything, from the planting of seeds to the final selling at the market. What they don’t sell they use to feed their families and keep their animals alive. They share barns & supplies with their neighbors, trade food, and keep each other afloat. There is a lot of talk about sustainable living these days, but the only time I have witnessed it is here in Bosnia.
It’s tempting to glamorize the life of a farmer, but since it’s anything but I should stop that right here. 14 hour days are the norm. The weather can be unkind, and there go your crops. A cow dies, your flock of sheep are wiped out by disease, and there goes all your income. It’s a job in the end, like any other, but a lot less forgiving. I don’t know how they cope with that ongoing disappointment, with the fickle nature of fate. I wonder if they get any kind of joy out of their work, like many city dwellers imagine they would. But these women have a lot to deal with. There is not a lot of time for all these questions.
It is awkward to be the outsider here, this strange intermediary between the lender and the borrower, and my awareness of this gives me pause whenever I meet with clients and try to explain what I’m doing here. Many get a kick out of seeing their business profile, but I wonder what they really think about all that goes on behind this. What continues to amaze me most about Kiva is what it has created—an amazingly dedicated lending community, a force of nature itself. I want to tell clients that there are many people so interested in hearing everything they have to say. That they send their hopes & wishes to them, via comments on a website. It’s hard to explain this phenomenon at all, even in English.
I feel lucky to be in this strange & wonderful position, to be here at all, to be able to meet these clients. But the distance between any two people can be small yet great at the same time. There’s a lot I wish to know about these women, but not a lot I can know. I just wish they could all just speak to you for themselves, and tell you what they really thought.
Here at least is what I think. The women I meet are strong and they are fighters. They find new ways to make the most out of their land every day. They have better business sense & work ethic than you can imagine. They take care of their family, and they look out for each other. They are kind & gracious despite all the bad luck they’ve had. And they all deserve better luck than they have had. Though I may not be doing a good job in communicating anything here, I hope they know that they have a lot of people on their side, and that the world has not forgotten them.
To fund a new business from Zene za Zene, click here (if these run out more will be posted soon!)
Zehra, Kiva Client
Sadika, Kiva Client, with her family
Vesna, Kiva Client, with her daughter
Emira, Kiva Client, with her husband
Redžiba and Namka, Kiva Clients, also neighbors & distant cousins
2 comments 23 July 2008
Finest Poyo in Sierra Leone
Musa Kamara is a simple man. He lives in small hut in a remote region of the Sierra Leone jungle. He lives with his wife and daughter under a palm-branch roof that he built himself. For food he grows a few vegetables in his garden and hunts his own bushmeat. Musa gets almost everything he needs for his family from the jungle. Maybe you would expect it, maybe you wouldn’t, but Musa is an extremely happy man. If you ask him why, he’ll probably say it’s because he has the finest poyo in Sierra Leone.
Musa and His Daughter
It was Wednesday at twilight when I first saw Musa. I was in the passenger seat of a white Land Cruiser, traveling down a dirt road that looked more like a shallow, red clay river. We were returning from Dogolaia village where I had interviewed rice and okra farmers near the Guinean border. I was hanging out of the window, watching the jungle pass by when Musa came into view through the palm trees. He was sitting on a wooden stool in front of his hut. He was shirtless and smiling. With a Krio accent he said, “Got de finest poyo in Salone.” And that was all. I shouldn’t have even been able to hear him over the engine of the Land Cruiser. But I did.
Finest poyo in Salone? Constantly on the lookout for that authentic drinking experience abroad, I couldn’t pass this up. I had heard of poyo before I arrived in Sierra Leone. Poyo is a slang term for palm-wine. An alcoholic drink extracted from palm trees and revered for its deliciously relaxing effects. I got the driver to hit the brakes and we backed that cruiser up to Musa’s hut.
“How de body?” “De body fine. Kushe.” “Kushe” “Tapped dis an hour ago.” Then he proceeded to pour a mug full of whitish liquid. Honestly, I was revolted. It looked like a cup of soapy water with globs of snot floating in it. Top it off with bits of bark and gnats swimming in it. Musa had a huge grin on his face, but I’m sure my face was contorted in disgust. You have got to be kidding. This was going to take some convincing. So what is the big deal with this poyo?
Musa Tapping a Palm Tree
The process starts with Musa finding the right palm tree. The liquid is stored inside the trunk and can be tapped about once a year. There is a whole art (which I won’t pretend to know) of selecting the tree at the right time. Tap the tree when the poyo is too young and it will be overly sweet and weak in alcohol. Tap the tree too late, and the poyo will have fermented too long and taste sour. You can also do some distilling outside the tree trunk, but that’s not Musa’s style. He likes to keep things organic.
Once Musa has the perfect tree ready, he climbs it with a strap made out of old palm branches tied together. It looks like it is going to snap at any second… but Musa doesn’t seem to mind even when he is over 30 feet off the ground. When he gets to the top of the tree he pulls out his tap. It is a very simple wooden carving that he hammers into the trunk of the palm tree. Once he pounds it into the right spot, out flows the poyo. It’s as simple as that. No filtering, no aging, no refrigerating. Just tap and drink. That’s where all the delicious floaters come from.
With Musa standing in front of me pouring the sap into a plastic mug, I was starting to get a bit nervous. The mug looked filthy and the poyo looked like it might kill me. I was actually thinking more about what diseases I could get from drinking out of this guy’s mug than anything else. But Musa brought me back to attention by filling me in on an African tradition. The pourer always takes the first taste. Always the pourer. With a grin, Musa put the mug to his lips and took a healthy swig. “Dats fine poyo.” The look of sincere pleasure on his face as he said this had me convinced. My turn.
Good Sign in the Poyo
He handed me the mug and I looked in side. Besides there being a healthy amount of “stuff” floating in the mix, there was a dead honey bee bobbing on top. Musa explained that was a good sign. The poyo was just so tasty that the bee fell in, got drunk, and died. Who can argue with that?
I held the poyo up to my nose and took a deep inhale. I was strangely shocked. Nothing like the smell of coconuts or pineapple here. You won’t even believe what it smells like. The strongest aspect of the smell reminded me of a pungent pickle relish. Think of something similar to a freshly chopped up palm leaf. On top of that, there is a woody smell in the poyo… something that imitates a savory beef aroma. Put it together and you have a drink that smells oddly like a McDonalds value meal. I’m not kidding.
So with no more procrastinating I drank up, paying attention to avoid the bugs. The taste followed the smell… a watered down milky drink, with a woody relish flavor. It sounds awful. But actually it wasn’t that bad. I could immediately tell that it was an acquired taste. The loan officer with me, who is something of a poyo connoisseur, was next up. We took his taste and pronounced, “That’s very fine poyo.” It doesn’t get fresher than that he said. If you get it in town, it would probably be diluted with sugar water. This was the good stuff.
Sharing the Finest Poyo in Salone
Not to break tradition, we pulled up stools in front of Musa’s hut and shared a couple liters of poyo. At times I’ll admit I was choking it back. But the stories were good and the drink had an endearing disgustingness to it. After paying Musa for his poyo, we headed on our way back to Kabala.
Would I drink poyo again? Well… I wouldn’t buy it at Starbucks. A liquid hamburger just isn’t at the top of my list. But in the middle of a jungle, listening to stories in Krio as the sun goes down… pass me another mug.
8 comments 22 July 2008
Chicks and Dirt Roads
On Friday, Sophanith, Elena and I went to visit the Thea Chhin group, to do a journal on the group leader, Thea Chhin. The journey to Sala Khom Village was quite long. We left AMK’s central office in Phnom Penh early in the morning and the drive to the branch office in Kampong Chhnang took about an hour. There we were greeted by the branch manager and we switched from our car to a pickup truck that was able to handle the village roads. As soon as our truck started driving on dirt roads, I was reminded of a road trip I took during college with my friends to Havasupai Canyon in Arizona. To get to the canyon we had to take a dirt road that was labeled “primitive road.” There was no such sign in Sala Khom Village.
Primitive road sign from my college road trip
The road to Sala Khom village
After another hour of driving, we arrived at the house of the village bank president where we were informed the village bank was meeting a few hours later. The VB president is elected by the other village bank borrowers. They organize village bank meetings and handle problems that villagers have with repayments or interest rates. While we were waiting I took some pictures of chicks (the animal type!) for KivaFriends members to enjoy.
Chickies!
As the clients started to trickle in, eventually Thea Chhin arrived. She is currently pregnant and is expecting a child in September. Sophanith interviewed her using a questionnaire form Elena developed with him. Hopefully this questionnaire will be used by loan officers as they interview clients for future journals. (At AMK we are still working on integrating Kiva’s needs into their business structure). I took a picture of her and she smiled! Adam, an Australian volunteer for AMK who does a lot of graphic design work for them, has been taking pictures of Cambodians but has had a hard time getting them to smile. When Cambodians pose for pictures they usually have a serious face (like in the business description).
Thea Chinn, another Kiva Success Story!
I wasn’t able to get a picture of her with her business, because she was busy at the village bank meeting. On my next visit to a village I’ll try to get pictures of clients next to their businesses.
This is the journal update I wrote on Thea Chhin which describes how the loan has changed her life:
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With the loan that she borrowed, Mrs. Thea Chhin was able to buy more vegetables to resell and her husband was able to buy more parts for his motorcycle business. This increased their profits which has improved the living conditions of her family. She has also bought some kitchen equipment. Her three children are doing well; two are working at the same jobs that they had, while the other is still in school. Mrs. Chinn is currently saving some of her money because she is expecting another child in September. The rest of the group is also doing well. Another member has bought fruits from Poy Peth and vegetables from Phnom Penh to sell at the local market. This is an end-of-term loan, so Mrs. Chinn has not made any payments on the principal, but next month she will have to repay the loan in full. She has made every monthly interest payment on time, as has the rest of the group. Just so you know AMK’s default rate is virtually zero. The few loans that are not repaid (less than 0.1%) are mostly those that are written off due to the death of the entrepreneur. |
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1 comment 22 July 2008
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