Archive for August, 2008
Progressive housing 101, or, an intro to why housing microfinance matters
I promised a long time ago to write about housing in Nuevo Laredo.
So I will exercise self-control and delay the gratification of writing about my recent outing to a lucha libre pro wrestling extravaganza. I will write instead about how housing gets built here in Nuevo Laredo – more of a sweaty struggle than the lucha libre on any day – and why housing microfinance is important in this process.
Visiting Kiva borrowers and writing journals represents a big part of my work for Kiva at my partner organization, FVP (Fundación para la Vivienda Progresiva, or Progressive Housing Foundation). For those of you who not yet gotten addicted to reading them, journals are updates that give a fuller sense of the Kiva client and the impact of the loan. So far I’ve visited over 100 borrowers to interview them for a journal. More than 50% of FVP’s portfolio is in housing loans, so I have spoken to many individuals and families who have borrowed Kiva capital to make housing improvements.
One sure icebreaker in Nuevo Laredo when talking to borrowers is to ask if they built their house all at once.
That usually gets a big laugh – a kind of “you don’t know how things work around here, do you?” laugh.
To understand how housing works in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico (and in a lot of Latin America) requires rewiring (or maybe discarding?) the typical 21st century American conception of how a house gets built. Houses do not just look different here; most of the process that brings them into existence is different from the process by which new houses are born in the U.S. – different in terms of the time it takes, how the capital flows, who maintains control of the process, and many other factors.
My icebreaker usually gets a laugh – or a sneer – because it often takes years for families to build their houses to fit their needs. The relatively low household incomes of FVP clients mean that it takes a long time to gather the capital to make housing improvements. Most families thus make housing improvements in stages, using gradual savings and occasional windfalls to purchase building materials and incrementally build their houses, wall by wall, sometimes block by block.
Behind every incrementally-built house there is a unique story. Out front there is usually a dog.
When you drive through some neighborhoods many of the houses look like construction supply yards, with future building ambitions measured in stacks of concrete block. The same number look like construction projects abandoned at various stages of completion. On one block you can sometimes see houses ranging from a wooden shack up to a two story concrete home with balconies – a textbook graphic of the stages of the housing process in that neighborhood. If you have never been to a developing country, this afternoon drive through one such neighborhood gives a sense of how the housing stock is in a perpetual state of evolution.
Time moves slow on housing improvements because money does not accumulate quickly for most families. Traditional mortgage financing is not an option for most low-income families. Part of the reason is that low-income households simply cannot make the payments that would be necessary to carry even a modest (say $15,000) conventional mortgage. Furthermore, many are self-employed or work informally, making it difficult to prove income even if it were high enough. And the land that they build on often falls short of having full title, so they lack collateral to secure a bank loan. These are only some of the reasons.
Even if these factors were in place for low-income households, most banks are not set up to offer small housing loans and would struggle to break even on small loans. Some government programs have had success in helping low-income families, but are typically only available to workers in the formal sector, i.e. not those who are self-employed or work in informal enterprises. (Probably more than half of FVP clients with Kiva capital fall into the latter categories.)
So households rely on their own wits and resources to build their own housing. This process is called by various names: progressive housing, self-help housing, incremental housing, and informal housing. Variations of this strategy account for the great majority of housing production in the developing world. (By the estimate of one author, Diane Mitlin, upwards of 80% of housing in the developing world is built this way.) The main characteristics of this process are 1) an almost complete lack of involvement on the part of formal institutions (banks, government permitting or inspections, formalized contractors or developers) 2) an incremental approach, building in stages over several years 3) household control over most aspects of the process.
Step One: provisional wood house; Step Two: house of block
This latter point means that each household, in a sense, becomes a micro housing developer. Each family acquires its own land, buys its own materials, provides its own labor or pays an informal contractor to complete the work. All of these inputs to housing require capital, which the family raises however it can – self-financing, you could call it.
As you might have guessed, the process of building housing in a low-income neighborhood of Nuevo Laredo is not exactly like building a house in, say, the suburbs of New Jersey.
To start, the order of the construction process in neighborhoods built incrementally is almost the opposite of building a new house in the U.S., as this crude comparison shows:
Typical new house in U.S.:
1. Land purchased
2. Installation of services (water, sewer, electric)
3. Paving of roads
4. Construction of home
Typical incrementally built house in low-income neighborhood of Nuevo Laredo:
1. Land purchased
2. Provisional home construction starts
3. Home construction gradually transforms into more permanent materials
4. Installation of services, usually electric and water first, then sewer later if at all.
5. Paving of roads, if at all.
Households acquire land by various means – some by purchase and some by occupation. (Purchase seems to be more the norm in Nuevo Laredo now.) Low-income families usually purchase in relatively unsettled areas on the outskirts of the city, where prices are most affordable. For many if not most families, this is likely the biggest sum of money that they have ever paid for anything in their lives. (The average salary of a factory worker here is about $2,000 dollars a year. I never heard of a plot of land costing less than $1,500 in 2008) Families often buy the land in installments, paying a downpayment to the seller and the paying the rest over several months or even several years.
Other families acquire land through occupation. This is a much longer story that would take another blog. To generalize, it means that a group of families “invades” (that’s the word they use here) a plot of uninhabited land (often owned by the city), typically on the periphery. The city often “regularizes” these settlements once they have grown into neighborhoods, eventually granting some form of legal title to the occupant.
For many families used or found materials build the first house. Those who have invaded land also use this house as a marker to stake their claim.
At this point families are landowners, but that’s about all. It is typically land without services – no electricity, no sewer, no water hookups, definitely no cable or internet. Often they have a bill of sale or some proof of an exchange of ownership, but less frequently have an actual title to the land. This is a longer story of informal land divisions that I will get to in another post if I can.
María, a Kiva client and single mother, is one example of how families persistently and progressively build up their home over time. Her parents acquired the land through occupation about 13 yrs ago, a 7X20 meter (about 23X65 feet) plot in a neighborhood that was basically monte — desert brush — at the time of occupation. Their first step was to build a single room house out of wood. This is a typical of families with limited capital; they often build this first part of the house out of found materials or buy used wood and materials at one of the many pulgas (flea markets) in the city. The variety of materials that you see is impressive: old pallets, sheet metal, big cans pounded flat, old signs, the works. Why is this the first step? Two main reasons: some families can afford to pay rent for a more decent place, but paying rent means not being able to save to build a house. So people build a provisional house, live there, save on rent, and can put away some money to build a “casa de material” – a house of more permanent materials.
In the case of María, after four years of being on the land, the city began to install water lines, followed by electric. After about five years she and her family had saved enough to begin building a second room made of wood. Many families at this point do not yet have the resources to put down a floor, and the roof is often made of makeshift materials like second hand plywood and sheet metal. After this point María began saving up to build the first room of permanent materials..
Three years later María applied for and received her first housing loan from FVP, for $8,000 pesos (about $800 dollars). María combined this loan with her own savings to start building the first structure of new concrete block, a two room house behind the original wooden house. (By this point, she said, the original wooden house was already in bad shape.) María told me it would have probably taken her at least another 1-2 years to put together the money to build this first phase of the concrete block house if she had not received the loan.
At FVP, this is often the point at which housing microfinance enters the scene as a source of funds for these “microdevelopers” of housing i.e. when families are already addressing their housing needs, but need to access capital to move their projects forward more quickly. Not unlike the way that microfinance capital can unlock the potential of microentrepreneurs, housing microfinance helps to loosen the bottleneck of capital that can impede housing improvements.
This family bought a "piece of the desert" 15 years ago, built a small wooden house, which they slowly transformed into a two bedroom house of concrete block, using their own savings and three loans from FVP (the last one was Kiva capital).
Based what I have seen as a Kiva Fellow at FVP, here are some major reasons why I think housing microfinance is a valuable tool in a housing context like Nuevo Laredo:
1. Households are already accustomed to improving their homes in stages, so small loans complement this incremental approach. Having a small loan – in the case of FVP usually between $500 and $2,000 – allows families to move forward with improvements and then pay back the capital at a pace that they can handle. It is a like a miniature home improvement loan, tailored to a strategy of progressive construction.
2. The requirements for the loans are flexible – alternative proofs of land ownership are accepted, and the land itself does not serve as the collateral for the loan. (The guaranty on the loan comes from a friend or family member who serves as a kind of co-signer.) Loan officers understand have learned how to determine the income of self-employed or informal sector employees, recognizing that just because they don’t have paystubs does not mean that they don’t have incomes.
3. This capital allows households to make improvements at a much faster pace. This means that families get to live in healthier, safer, more comfortable conditions sooner than would have been possible without a loan. The potential positive ripple effects, in my view, are numerous.
4. Housing microloans enable households to make improvements that require a large infusion of capital and cannot be completed incrementally. For instance, a family can gradually build four walls for a new house, but you need to pour the concrete roof all at once. Many families use a loan for relatively big ticket items that are hard (or much more expensive) to achieve incrementally. Having more capital also means being able to buy more in bulk, get better prices, and get more brick for your buck, so to speak.
5. A housing loan contributes to the creation of an asset that helps to stabilize the family in the present and into the future: a home. Having a house of one’s own means not having to pay rent – and being able to save for other purposes. This asset is probably the greatest representation of wealth that the family has, and, theoretically, could be sold or serve as collateral for a loan in the future. Even if a weak housing market means that the house does not necessarily have a high exchange value, it has a high use value for families, both in the present and a patrimony for their children.
6. Improvements in housing conditions can have positive economic multiplier effects. Of the businesses I visited (about 50) 75% were located in the home of the entrepreneur, ranging from a tailor to a small grocery store to a tortillería. Many families have told me that they had always thought about starting up their own business, but they were waiting to have their own home to be able to do it. Home improvement loans can thus play a role, direct or indirect, in fostering the conditions to start or to expand home businesses.
To continue with the story of María: after finishing the first phase of the two room house, she continued to save, and just completed the two room house by combining Kiva loan capital (a second loan of $1,000) with these savings. It took thirteen years to go from blank land to a house of permanent materials. The newly-inhabited house looks great, stuccoed smoothly and painted a peach color. Right in front of it stands the bare frame of their original makeshift wooden house, a testament to how far they have come. She now uses the second room made of wood for her hair salon, which she started with her sister a few years ago. She makes enough income from the salon to support herself and her three sons, who play under the wooden structure that was their home when they were toddlers. She is thinking of applying for another loan to put up walls around the rear of her property and a new roof on this original structure, to provide a shady place for her children to play. All of this would have been harder to achieve and much slower, María and other families have told me, without having access to microfinance capital.
Stories like María’s are important because they describe the housing process for a large part of the population in Mexico and the developing world: progressive, incremental, largely informal. The way that houses, neighborhoods, and cities evolve has a lot to do with the way that low-income families build progressively in reaction to a housing market that has not offered them many other options. It is easy to look at the first steps some of these houses – scrabbled together plywood, half-built block walls – and think that they are constructed in a helter-skelter manner. To the contrary, there is, in fact, a system by which people improve their housing and a pattern to their resourcefulness. Housing microfinance can play an important contributing role in this system, serving as a powerful resource for these “micro-developers”. It loosens up the blockage of capital that can prevent improvements from moving forward, clearing the way for families who already know how to be resourceful in addressing their housing needs.
Mama’s Left Leg
Squeezing people into taxis is par for the course in Cameroon. As cabs approach, you shout your destination to the driver and if you get the nod you hop in. If there are already three in the back, no matter, there’s room for one more. If there are two in the front, again, no problem: a third person can fit in – roughly positioned astraddle the gear stick (US English: stick shift).
Leaving Bamenda to make the journey to the small town of Belo, I felt a certain smugness at having bagged the front seat of the taxi. A medium-sized (US English: very small) 1980s Toyota Corolla with a broken windscreen it might have been, but at least I had my own seat.
Cars depart the town’s ‘motor park’ (a muddy square with much transport activity) only when fully occupied. However, I’d rather failed to appreciate what this would mean, having made a naïve presumption that longer-distance transport might be a little more comfortable than the round-town variety.
Time passed as I chatted outside with the driver, an agreeable chap despite his keen support of Manchester United Football Club. One, two, three got in the back. The drizzle turned to downpour, so I climbed into my big comfy seat and prepared for the attractive scenery I’d been told the journey would bring.
But it wasn’t yet time to leave. A young woman with (school age) child rocked up and squeezed into the back. The old lady holding a large plastic box of starchy-looking substance grumbled loudly in Pigeon English as she folded an arm somewhere. I began to feel rather guilty about my luxury tourist’s seat.
At least I did – until the appearance of a petit Cameroonian woman in a rather nice gold dress. Bugger. I knew six weren’t going to fit in the back, so I moved up, resigned to an hour in the gear stick position. But some chap directed that I should get out – Mama (as older Cameroonian woman are respectfully called) was to sit there. I made sure I shared a good section of my seat. Rather a squash.
By this point, there was no sign of my Manchester United supporting pal. A new driver instead took position and started the engine. A big, thick-set man, he filled out the remaining third of the front seats with ease. Until he got out. And another man got in. But rather than being yet another new cabbie, this man’s unfortunate destiny was to occupy the seat roughly underneath the driver, astraddle both the gear stick and Mama’s left leg.
I think this may well be the worst seat in Cameroonian taxis. However, as I have only been here a couple of weeks I wonder if this may prove a hasty assertion.
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A Study in Contrasts
Dar es Salaam. The city is an assault on the senses. Flying into Nyerere International airport, my first glimpse of Tanzania, and indeed of Africa, is incredibly beautiful – mile upon mile of azure ocean clings alluringly to a sandy coastline, clusters of coconut trees spring up from between houses with maroon and blue roofs, and an incredible profusion of blood red hibiscus infuse the entire landscape with color and vibrancy. Quite simply, it is breathtaking. Little wonder then that the city’s name translates into ‘abode of peace’ in Arabic, named so by Arab sailors who arrived here after months on the Indian Ocean to be greeted by pleasant weather (for most of the year!), fertile land, and incredibly hospitable locals.
Mambo from Dar es Salaam! My name is Nabomita and I am fortunate enough to be spending the next few months working at SELFINA (Sero Lease and Finance Ltd.) here in Dar. Dr. Victoria Kisyombe founded SELFINA in 2002 with the goal of providing Tanzanian women, many of whom are excluded from land and asset ownership due to local customs and traditions, with access to micro-credit. Most of SELFINA’s customers use their loans to start or infuse fresh capital into small businesses. In an economy where unfortunately even college graduates find it an uphill task to find gainful employment, these loans provide women with the opportunity for self-employment and the ability to support their families.
SELFINA’s office is located just off of Old Bagomoyo road, in the Mikocheni B area of the city. The impression that one is left with driving down Old Bagomoyo road, besides the vista of the ocean within walking distance, is of imposing ten feet tall padlocked gates and hired security shielding stately mansions and the people who live in them from the hoi polloi on the street. One could be forgiven for thinking that much of the city’s population lives sequestered behind barricades in absolute luxury.
This could not be further from reality. My visit to a client this week took me into the heart of the Vingunguti Miembeni settlement and showed me just how humbly many Tanzanians live. To get to Vinunguti, one must take a dala-dala or local bus down Uhuru road and then walk about a mile to the entrance of the settlement. Our client, Neema Damasi, met us at the entrance and led us through the confusing maze of winding streets that led to her general store. To call these dirt paths ‘streets’ is misleading. With no concession to modern city planning, the paths slope up and down, and around at random. No more than a foot wide at any point, people walk through them in single file. During the rainy season, the lack of drainage means that the dirt road is flooded with not just mud but also with overflowing sewage and excreta from outdoor latrines. Not surprisingly, the settlement recorded 130 cases of cholera outbreak in 2003 (the last year for which I was able to find credible data). All along the paths and in sudden clearings that one stumbles across, people have built their homes. A vast majority of these are made of wood and have tin roofs, but a few people are fortunate enough to be able to afford concrete. Despite having 14 deep wells dug by the government and other private companies, most of the water is saline and unfit for consumption. Drinking water is supplied by the Water and Sanitation Authority twice a week at midnight. Residents with taps at home are able to store the water in buckets for later consumption, while others must purchase drinking water from vendors. 77% of the population of the settlement earns less than 60,000 Tanzanian Shilling or $52 per month. With almost 69,000 people (2002 census) crammed into an area of 32 hectares (less than 1/10th of a square mile), Vingunguti is one of Africa’s urban ghettos. Despite being only fifteen miles inland from Old Bagomoyo road, it is a completely different world in here. Walking into this was an overwhelming and humbling experience, as I’m sure you can imagine. I had seen poverty before but not on this scale, and definitely not this up close and personal.
Our client Neema Damasi rents a small store deep in the heart of Vingunguti from which she runs a grocery business. Earlier this year, she was selling traditional African cloth on the streets for extra income. Prior to that, she ran a tailoring business in 2006. Because up to 53% of Vingunguti’s population is informally employed in small businesses and petty trading, it is not uncommon to switch your trade fairly often. If landlords can find someone to pay more rent on your store than you currently do, you can be evicted – contract or not. Neema is actually doing very well when compared to the average resident of her neighborhood. She requested a loan of 300,000 Tanzanian Shilling from SELFINA in January of this year in order to purchase more fabric in wholsesale for her cloth business. When business did not pick up after a couple of months and a store became available inside Vingungiti, Neema sold off her fabric inventory and used this money to pay rent for and stock her grocery store. Her store sells everything from rice and beans to toothpaste and batteries – given the unusually high population density of Vingunguti and the universal applicability of her wares, business is doing well. During the thirty minutes we spent at her store, she made three sales. True, one of them was selling about a big ladle-full of cooking oil to a customer for 10 cents (probably just sufficient to cook that evening’s meal and all that the woman could afford), but small sales add up. Neema is now earning about 200,000 Shilling ($172) a month from her business, almost four times what 80% of her neighbors make. Only 7% of Vingunguti’s population earns over 100,000 Shilling a month, so she is one of the wealthiest in her area.
Neema’s husband runs another grocery store inside Vingunguti and I am hopeful that between them, they earn enough to provide for their three children and the fourth on its way.
I must admit that one of my concerns prior to coming into the field was that I would find that microfinance was not really helping the poorest of the poor, that it was not effectively reaching those who most needed access to credit. Sitting in the comfortable SELFINA office during my first week and observing clients coming in to make monthly payments did not exactly allay my fears – these women did not look desperately poor to me. After visiting Neema and noticing the marked difference between her and her neighbors, I have become much more convinced of the power of small amounts of capital to make a huge difference. I have also had the opportunity to visit other clients and seen how they live – often as many as six people to a single bare room with no electricity and running water. Conversing with them has revealed that most of them wear their best clothes, take two or more dala-dalas, and spend upto three hours commuting to the SELFINA office every month to make their loan repayments. THIS is how desperate they are for credit. In a society where there are not very many opportunities for formal employment, these women must carve out their own paths to a livelihood. For many, Dar es Salaam does not quite live up to the meaning behind its name, but organizations like SELFINA are doing a fantastic job to try and change that.
To support SELFINA and women like Neema Damasi, please click here:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=90&status=All&sortBy=New+to+Old&_tpg=fb
New businesses are constantly being added so please check back frequently!
P.S. – I have attached a picture of Neema Damasi and her grocery store, as well as a picture of an adorable and precocious young Vinunguti resident who posed and pranced like a model, as she demanded that I photograph her. 
Targeting the Poorest of the Poor
In Cambodia, AMK has the lowest average loan balance per borrower. According to MIXMarket, AMK’s average balance at the end of 2007 was $86 per borrower. To put that in perspective the second lowest was AMRET at $164, which is nearly 90% higher. HKL, Credit MFI, and Maxima (the other three Cambodian MFIs working with Kiva) have an average loan balance of $603, $564, and $514 respectively. Currently, 93.4% of AMK’s loans are below $300 and their average loan balance is now $114. AMK chooses to keep their average loan balance low. They limit individual loans to $500 and they limit the amount an individual can take out as part of a group loan to $150. The reason they do this is because of their mission statement:
“To help large numbers of poor in Cambodia to improve their livelihood options through the sustainable delivery of appropriate and viable microfinance services”
In my last blog post I mentioned how most MFIs were trying to increase their average loan balances to improve their efficiency. AMK, on the other hand, has created a business model that relies more on lending to as many clients as they can. This allows them to use their capital to reach the poorest villagers in Cambodia. The data shows that this business model is working. In 2007, their loan portfolio started at $5 million dollars and grew to over $10 million. From this they made a net income of $823,222 and their return on assets was 9%, which is beyond incredible considering the average loan size. Also, I should mention that AMK is currently owned by Concern Worldwide and Concern Worldwide UK. They have returned all of the profits to AMK as retained earnings, so all the money earned by AMK is reinvested back into the business.
Road in Toek Noem Village
AMK, just like every financial institution in the world right now, is having a hard time getting additional capital because of the credit crunch. Because of this, they are hoping to raise the percentage of their loan portfolio that comes from Kiva. Right now it is about 2.6%. For awhile AMK had limited the number of group loans they were posting because it was too difficult to keep track of them so they could report payments to Kiva. Group loans are usually a mix of monthly-installment loans, end-of-term loans, and credit line loans, so each group loan would have to have payments manually reported after each clients payments were tracked. This was a shame because the group loans are AMK’s best way of reaching the poorest villagers in Cambodia. Group loans can now easily be tracked with the new loan tracker I created for AMK, so they are now going to increase the number of group loans they post on Kiva. You can find them by looking at the loans with the smallest loan size per entrepreneur that are currently fundraising on Kiva.
If you really love what AMK is doing in Cambodia you should join the AMK Fan Club, a Kiva Lending Group which is part of the new Kiva that is about to be rolled out very soon. If you can’t wait leave your e-mail address as a comment and I’ll invite you to the group!
NEW DISCOVERY!!! Microfinance before Grameen
Well, maybe I’m not the first to discover that microfinance existed in Cameroon before the Grameen bank was founded in India or before Mohammed Yunnus got the Nobel Prize, but I felt like I had when I stumbled upon Njangi while talking to some friends over the weekend. The young people who I’ve met in Cameroon are all very intelligent and informed. The standard of education is excellent and radio commercials advertising excellent classroom facilities for young children frequent the radio. Conversation amongst the teens most often centers on grades from the last semester and I’ve yet to meet someone my age who does not plan to pursue at least one masters degree before finishing their education. At the same time that people generally agree here that you must get an advanced degree, cynicism surrounding job prospects is rampant. They swear that no one can achieve a decent position within a company unless they’ve got connections or they’re embezzling. In one of these conversations about the sad state of the nation, I asked my friends why it was that they still pursued advanced degrees and how it was possible for their parents, with families of five to nine children, to sponsor children over twenty years of school. It is a struggle for my family to support just me in college and there are only two children in my family. They said “Njangi!” and then started laughing.
Njangi, as I found out, is microfinance on a smaller scale. Groups of friends, neighbors, mothers of school-age children or motorcycle-driving men get together and pool money that they can then have access to for activities related to the mission statement of the group. Some of these groups have grown into such large and established institutions that credit unions sprouted from their meetings. These groups assign treasurers and leaders. They are based not only on finances but also on community and friendship. The trust amongst the members and the knowledge that without the Njangi groups, life would be a lot harder, brings honesty into the groups. My friends say their mothers get money for schooling, feeding the household and supporting the church all through their Njangi groups. It was a debate amongst them whether Njangi could be the sole source of income, but they pointed out that people “playing” Njangi could borrow from one Njangi and contribute to another and so on and so forth, in order to have access to loans from many sources. In terms of accountancy, I think this strategy is a little risky, but if people can manage paying everyone back in the end, I guess there is no problem. My friends have said that their friends, parents and grandparents all play Njangi, making it the main source of financing in the nation. It has been going on for generations from what I can tell. Apparently, it is illegal in Cameroonian law because it is tax-free and hard to track by the government, yet an estimated 7.5 out of all 15 million Cameroonians play and many towns wouldn’t survive without them. I thought I had stumbled upon some secret that would make a name for me in anthropology. Of course, upon minimal internet research, I found that some people had written on the subject before. One of my friends begrudgingly acknowledged that is was due to the low value that Cameroonian scholars place on publishing that led to the Nobel prize won by Yunnus. “If Cameroonians wrote anything down, we could win awards for the things we have been doing for years, but we don’t write!”
I sought to pursue the topic further. I asked my GHAPE colleagues what information they had about Njangi and found that our own office has its own Njangi! Some of the staff take part in up to five Njangi’s and the values can run up to 20,000 FCFA ($50 USD) contribution per month, which is 40% of their 50,000 FCFA ($125 USD) monthly salary. One of my colleagues who partakes in five Njangi groups explained the financial and scheduling obligations of each Njangi to me.
|
Njangi Group |
FCFA Contribution |
USD Conversion |
% of Annual Income, 50K FCFA |
|
GHAPE |
11,000 FCFA/month |
$27.50 USD |
22% |
|
Cow Njangi* |
30,000 FCFA/year |
$75 USD |
5% |
|
Neighborhood |
Min. 500 FCFA/week |
$1.25 USD |
Min. 4.3% |
|
Father’s Njangi |
5,000 FCFA/week |
$12.50 USD |
43.33% |
|
Njangi #5 |
2,000 FCFA/week |
$5 USD |
17.33% |
|
Total per annum |
552,000 FCFA |
$1,380 USD |
91.96% |
*Cow Njangi pools 20 members annual contributions of 30,000 into a collective fund that buys cows, rice, and palm oil at the end of the year to distribute equally amongst all members. I assume it’s called “Cow” because that’s the largest purchase and main attraction/focus of the group.
The obligations and terms of withdrawal are different within each Njangi. Despite the calculations, the Njangi membership is worth-while, say the Cameroonians I’ve asked. While a meager 50,000 FCFA ($125 USD) per month barely covers basic needs, taking 92% out of the salary seems like a HUGE chunk. At times, my colleagues don’t have an extra 200 FCFA ($0.50 USD) in their budget to eat lunch. What an Njangi offers in a society with no social safety-net, however, is a small sense of security. If a member needs emergency funds or many hundreds of thousands of FCFA, they would need many months to amass that value. Educational fees would not be a possibility without this access to capital. It relies largely on good-will and social equity which makes it such an interesting field of study.
Financial Instruments advertised on one local credit union poster
The GHAPE office Njangi has 12 members, despite there being only 8 people who work in the office. This is because people can enter the Njangi under multiple names, as long as they make monthly contributions per name. The single women in the office have multiple names because they don’t have families and they rely on their boyfriends for the majority of their expenses. Collectively, the GHAPE office offers 10,000 FCFA ($25 USD) of each members’ contribution to a pre-designated beneficiary each month. The remaining 1000 FCFA ($2.50 USD) is pooled into the emergency fund that can be borrowed from, but must be repaid with 15% interest. This is so interesting to me because it is becoming more and more apparent that EVERYONE relies on Njangi. As I mentioned earlier, some of the Njangi’s have grown so large that they are now credit unions and one of the advertised financial instruments offered is Njangi financing. Now that I’ve heard about Njangi, it seems to be popping up everywhere and every new person I question has something to say about it. I just can’t express how interested I am in this. I wish I had another whole Fellowship to study Njangi. Hopefully more extensive research can be done in the field in the near future. <http://www.kiva.org/about/aboutPartner?id=40>
Irresponsible Lending – Some Lessons
I am sitting in the modest headquarters of GHAPE in Bamenda, north west Cameroon.
I am surrounded by the membership books of some of the organisation’s small borrowers, detailing their loan totals and bi-monthly repayments. There is no column for defaults. When the women (it is mostly women) meet to make their regular contributions they stay in the room until the right amount of money has been collected. If someone cannot make their payment then the others have to make up the difference. But they all know each other and it’s never good to be embarrassed in front of your neighbours.
Across the office, Eric is counting the notes and coins collected this morning. And on the radio they are talking, appropriately, about loan defaults. But not in microfinance. It’s the BBC World Service and they are discussing the inadequacies of financial regulation in the West and the embarrassment of Northern Rock, the bank which had to be rescued by the UK government.
It rather got me thinking. Perhaps I could organise a fact finding mission to GHAPE’s offices for the battered bosses of Britain’s Financial Services Authority. I’m sure they could learn a few lessons.
Click here to see if any GHAPE borrowers in Cameroon are currently fundraising on Kiva.
Alternatively click here to view other African loans you can support.
To Begin
Mornings, always one rooster does not know the time of day. As is customary in the neighborhood, most chickens start calling between five and six – but renegade number one is early. 4:30, last time I checked.
To be sure, were it not for the roosters I am guaranteed to wake soon after. Shortly after six the children start to make pattering noises outside my door, as they run out to wash and brush and use the outhouse, and to heat the water kettle for the plastic basin in the washroom. There are four of them – aged 7, 7, 9, 12 – plus an assortment of relatives. School starts early in the neighborhood, and they must all start walking by seven.
These are the children of a colleague, with whom I have been staying since I arrived in Rwanda. Their neighborhood lies 10 kilometers outside Kigali, near the military camp. Rwanda being the land of the mille collines, the thousand hills, our house opens onto a road with a far view of the surrounding peaks and valleys, which in the mornings are liquid with fog. With the west wind and an uncertain sun in the banana leaves it is as beautiful as you can imagine.
My adoptive family is quite a well-off one – they have a car, a few servants, a house under renovation – by no means poor when compared to the 60% of the Rwandan population under poverty line. Simplistically, poverty line here goes by the dollar-a-day standard, which you can benchmark roughly to a liter of milk, two bottles of water, or a half-pound of passion fruit. Meals, then, are necessarily starchy in composition – boiled bananas, rice, beans, potatoes – limited meat.
When I have eaten breakfast, I walk down the dirt road towards the main intersection where a great number of people wait, on toe like a swarm of runners at the starting block. They must scramble to get onto a public taxi, one of the local mini-buses that shuttle between town and the local residences. I am of course no match – you will perhaps permit me the luxury of hiring a motorbike to work, which is too a means of public transport in these parts.
Yesterday my colleague Jean and I made our first expedition into the field, which has given me a new appreciation for dust. In the upcoming weeks we will be venturing further afield – so more to come.
–Kathy
I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar
When I first began working in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill, my initial impression was horror that the country was being run by a bunch of 20-somethings. At 23, I was solidly within the median age range and even felt old when I saw peers walking around with short skirts, finding myself thinking “how inappropriate!” It didn’t take me long to become accustomed to the age range of Hill staffers and soon it even made sense to me that they’d all be so young. The hours were grueling, the work was exhausting, and without energy, enthusiasm, and a youth-like belief in our country a person could not be sustained to carry out his or her tasks.
On my first day at one of BRAC’s branches I had a similar moment of shock at the young faces of the staff. In all of the books I’ve read about microfinance and all of the anecdotes I’d heard through the Fellows Blog and other avenues, I had created an image in my head of a wise, 50-something person distributing loans to the poor, compassionately working to help them lift themselves out of poverty. While the loan officers I’ve met are certainly compassionate, they are not at all 50*. At the first branch I met exclusively 20-somethings. Thinking it might be an anomaly, I visited a second branch only to find more of the same. So far all of the loan officers I’ve met have been young, energetic, driven 20-something women. As one of those myself, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know these women and seeing what brought them to this job. The more I learn about them and their work, the more I understand why I was so wrong to have been surprised.
Much like Capitol Hill, the work of a loan officer requires massive stores of energy. Arriving at work at 7:00am daily and leaving no earlier than 6:00pm, a loan officer spends, on average, the first 5 hours of every day walking on dirt and sand roads, up hills and over streams to meet with her clients. When she returns to the office, she fills out mountains of paperwork documenting the transactions that took place in the field. As MFI branches are often located in remote locations–even those branches around the city–loan officers frequently have long commutes in the overcrowded daladalas to and from work each day. It is not uncommon for them to spend more than an hour and a half in each direction.
One loan officer mentioned to me that she is getting married in November and when she does, she is not sure she’ll be able to work at this job anymore. She says her husband won’t want her working such long hours, and as she starts a family she will have to be home more than this job allows. Worried that I would judge her for this assertion, she quickly added that “You don’t know Africa–it’s different here than America. My husband will not want me to work so much. I want to start a family.” She is right that I have a lot to learn about Africa, but the idea that the job would not be conducive to starting a family does not make me look at Africa’s culture as chauvinistic. On Capitol Hill I encountered much of the same thing (now, whether or not the Hill’s culture is chauvinistic is a different matter). When visitors would marvel at the youth surrounding them in the office my simple explanation was that we have to be young–that if we had families we could never do all that is required of us here. For a loan officer, the same is true.
Meeting these loan officers, the dual purpose that MFIs serve has been illuminated to me. The women (BRAC employees almost exclusively female loan officers–this may differ at other MFIs) are bright and ambitious. Some have finished their A-levels and are preparing for university while others hold Bachelors degrees. All of them care about Tanzania and want to stay in the country but the universal chorus is that finding a good job in Tanzania is difficult. Some of them came upon their work not necessarily out of a deep-seeded passion for microfinance but more practically as a means to make a living and have a good job. They all agree that their positions with BRAC are good for them and they’re happy to have a stable income with a respectable organization. While the power of microfinance may not have been their first reason for coming to BRAC, their investment in and compassion for the women they serve is obvious. BRAC, then, is not only providing poor people with access to capital, but it is creating jobs (several hundred throughout the country) for Tanzania’s brightest young women. As it does so, BRAC is promoting the country’s stability and future success from multiple levels of affluence, helping women from all backgrounds work to earn a living.
*Note to all of the 50-somethings reading this: I am not calling you old. Please take to heart my image of you as wise and ignore any other possible readings of this post.
To see BRAC’s currently fundraising loans, click here.
Patan Business and Professional Women Photos
A few of P-BPW’s borrowers.
A regular borrower’s group meeting.
Borrowers making payments with loan officer.
Ms. Rita
Field visits are by far the best part about being a Kiva Fellow. You’re given the opportunity to hop on a motorbike, hike up a village trail, and actually see the impact of a Kiva loan firsthand.
While this is indeed an incredible experience, after a few weeks of checking in on chicken farmers and vegetable vendors, you begin to think you’ve seen the extent of microfinance’s impact: a few new chickens or vegetables, a small increase in profit margins, etc.
But then you meet someone like Ms. Rita…
Ms. Rita Bashnet lives in the village of Bhatkepati, a small rural development on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley. Five years ago, Ms. Rita took her first loan of NRs. 10,000 (USD $150) and purchased some extra seed and fertilizer in the hopes of expanding her small vegetable patch. With the profits from this initial investment and a second loan from Patan Business and Professional Women (they offer a graduated loan program), she then purchased her first dairy cow.
Most dairy cows in Nepal give about 6 liters of milk per day. At about USD $0.50 per liter, Ms. Bashnet hoped that this additional revenue would allow her to further diversify her family’s income. The investment paid off and, with her small savings and the funds provided by the new cow, Ms. Rita purchased a van for her husband, which he now uses to ferry passengers from the village to the more central urban areas of the capital.
From an initial loan of USD $150, Ms. Rita had managed to expand her vegetable operation, purchase a cow, and provide her husband with a job. But Ms. Rita still had more plans…
Kathmandu has long been plagued by fuel shortages that force people to wait up to three weeks for a single cylinder of cooking gas. With deforestation a serious concern throughout the country, many are forced to either further contribute to this environmental problem or use fuel sources such as small brush and trash that are both inefficient and fill small, poorly ventilated homes with heavy black smoke. After hearing about a program that subsidized the installation of methane gas storage tanks, Ms. Rita took another loan and applied for the program. With this new system, she is now able to capture the valuable gas released from her cow’s waste in a simple controlled-release storage tank. Today she no longer purchases gas from the city and can even sell some during times of shortage. With a smart investment, Ms. Rita was able to meet her own energy needs while increasing the income-generating potential of her previous investment.
With her gardens producing healthy vegetables, her husband employed, and her cow producing valuable milk and fuel, Ms. Rita recently took a final loan of NRs. 30,000 (USD $475). This loan has been used to purchase a high-yielding jersey cow that Ms. Rita reports is now producing a whopping 20+ liters of milk each day. This new investment has already proven so fruitful that the Bashnet family has begun construction on a new home on their property.
Ms. Rita exemplifies the potential of microfinance. A combination of access to capital and strategic investment has allowed her and her family to drastically improve their economic situation in a short five years. On the day I visited her farm, she fed me cucumber from her fields, milk (heated on her methane stove) from her new cow, and gave me a tour of her nearly-completed home.
See photos below:
Ms. Rita's old home.
The Bashnet family.
Playing Catch Up.
I should have been a better blogger.
After two months in the field as a Kiva Fellow, I have now returned home to speedy internet, reliable electricity, and a slightly more predictable daily schedule. So, from my comfortable desk with my cup of coffee, I will now try to make up for a less than prolific blogging history.
It can be hard to convey the sights, sounds, challenges, and small victories that are experienced in the field, but here I will attempt to pass along a few stories that might give others a better understanding of Kiva Fellows and the field partners that so kindly put up with us.
Waiting for that elusive internet connection...
During my fellowship, I was posted in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I worked with Kiva’s first and only Nepali field partner, Patan Business and Professional Women. Over the course of two months I completed 150+ field visits and had the opportunity to experience and document the success of this small, but quickly growing, MFI.
In these catch up blogs, I will…
1) Present photo and video documentation of borrower group meetings and individual interviews.
2) Present a few short stories that demonstrate both the success and challenges of microfinance in Nepal.
3) Present a small picture of what it’s like to live and work in Kathmandu.
Coming soon….
Bolivin´ at high altitude
During Kiva orientation, we each had to name our biggest fears about the fellowship. I said I was nervous about not fitting in—I’d learned to adapt pretty well while living in Chile for a year and on my best day I could pass for Chilean, but I knew living in Bolivia would be another story. As soon as I set foot in El Alto, however, I realized how silly my worries were as this fear was immediately eclipsed by another—the constant feeling that I was about to be run over by a minibus.
El Alto is a really vibrant, mostly indigenous Aymara city on a plateau above the valley of La Paz. The neighborhood I’m living in is called La Ceja (“the eyebrow”) because it’s perched right on the rim, about to spill into the city valley. I’ve never seen so much life packed into so little space before—virtually all of my needs can be met without going outside of the two square-block radius around my hostel. Buses to anywhere in Bolivia, international flights, four different microfinance banks and at least one regular bank, quinoa juice, whole limbs of animals in jerky form, you name it. Like Cara and Chantal, I’ve found that Spanish only gets me so far here. Many alteños, especially older folks and recent migrants, speak Spanish as a second language to Aymara. I had hoped to be really good at picking up Aymara, but as it turns out I’m totally useless.
At home in the U.S., two of my tried-and-true maxims are “I’ll take whatever’s cheapest” and “They wouldn’t sell me that if it were really dangerous.” However, after a month in Bolivia (and a handful of broken down buses, a bout with food poisoning and an attempted trip up a narrow mountain road in a snowstorm on a minibus with no snow tires), my mom will be happy to hear that I’ve reluctantly retired these maxims and replaced them with “Is this really a good idea?” There doesn’t seem to be a regulatory agency for much of anything in Bolivia, which leads to delightful labeling like that of my favorite Bolivian beer, El Inca: “An iron-laden beer tonic recommended by the most renowned doctors for anemic, weak and convalescent persons.” Another one of my favorite claims was by a boy on the bus from Oruro to La Paz who was selling powdered maca (a Bolivian root vegetable)—“Do you feel tired? Weak? Jittery? Anxious? Lackluster? Señores y señoras, I have the answer. Maca, señores y señoras, will cure what ails you. Maca is the most potent vegetable known to humanity. Señores y señoras, maca prevents osteoporosis and cancer. It cures anemia, señores y señoras. It is a stimulant, señores y señoras; it is a tranquilizer. It cures impotence, señores y señoras—maca has been called the Bolivian Viagra by international experts. Señores y señoras, maca is used by NASA scientists in the United States to ensure the vitality and heartiness of their space astronauts. And I’m here to offer you, señores y señoras, three envelopes of miraculous maca for just 30 bolivianos.”
One morning, about two weeks ago, I awoke and walked outside my room at the hostel where I’m staying, only to nearly walk into a giant hole with a two-story drop (pictured). Confused, I asked the nice young guy at the front desk what was with the giant hole outside my room. “Oh, that—just wanted to let some more light in,” he replied, equally confused as to why I would ask a question like that.
Letting the light in
There’s a lot of improvisation in everyday life here – which can be fun or frustrating, depending on the circumstances – and serves as a continuous reminder of just how orderly and predictable my life usually is. Last week, for example, we were heading back to El Alto from La Paz, and halfway there the driver told us we couldn’t go any further because the alteños had taken to the streets in an impromptu pro-Evo rally. So we got out and walked along the shoulder. Along the way, we noticed that an awful lot of drivers had gotten out of their cars and were taking apart the highway median by hand so that they could turn their cars around—this was a standard, sturdy metal freeway median with big bolts the size of my fist! It never would have occurred to me that such a thing could be taken apart by hand, much less that this was the logical solution to being stuck in traffic. But when in Rome (or El Alto)…
All in all, Bolivia has been a great experience and quite the adventure. I’ve really enjoyed my first week working with AgroCapital, my MFI, and have been really impressed by the hard work of both the loan officers and the clients I’ve met with. I was also lucky enough to meet up with Partner Development Specialist Dan, retired Kiva Fellow Cara and her husband Engineer Sam in La Paz—it was great to see some familiar faces.
Looking forward to writing more soon!
To see all AgroCapital clients currently fundraising on Kiva, click here
Three border crossings
The border by foot
There are two bridges that cross the river between Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, called Bridge One and Bridge Two. They have other names, if you look at the signs more closely, something like Bridge of Fraternity and Solidarity or International Friendship Bridge. But everyone here seems to refer to them by their numbers. On a recent Friday night I was one of the only people crossing Bridge One on my way to Laredo, passing a line of informal merchants who looked bored and ready to go home. The last of these was an accordion player propped up sleepily against the bridge rail, the hat at his feet bearing barely any change. As soon as he saw me approaching he started pumping out a Mexican love song, and then abruptly stopped after I walked by him. Fleeting love, I suspect.
When I approached the end of the bridge it became clear that there was a crowd, a line of people and families in that linear pose of conversation that only happens in crowded hallways and slow lines. I asked the rear guard of the line what people were waiting for, and the answer was one word: “Permiso”. Two hundred plus people were waiting for permission to get into the U.S. Nothing unusual or special, but it is hard not to feel a bit of something (guilt? empathy?) at moments like this when geopolitical realities are laid bare by long lines of real people. This was compounded by an unfortunate linguistic coincidence: I then had to make my through the crowd saying con permiso, “excuse me” in Spanish but literally meaning “with permission.” Kind of embarrassing.
By the end I started to say perdón, but by that point it just seemed like an admission of guilt: pardon me.
The Border Patrol officer on the other side looked quickly at my passport and asked me what I was doing “over there”. I briefly told him where I was working. He then asked me how crime was these days “over there,” and a couple more “over there” questions. He was talking about it as if it were a town somewhere in Spain or in Puerto Rico. We were standing about 200 yards from “over there”, mind you.
I had a desire to take him by the hand, lead him over to the line of people waiting for permiso, have a short conversation with each of them to see what they had to say about “over there”, walk across the bridge (pointing out its short length and the pleasant river breezes) and then treat him to tacos in Mexico.
The border by water
I remarked in my first posting that the river that acts as the U.S. – Mexico border seemed neither big (Rio Grande) nor angry (Rio Bravo), especially considering what a well-known international demarcation it is. I have since been corrected that the Spanish name translates more as “rough river.” And I have since been told that its placid look is deceiving, especially when it has just rained.
I live about 4 blocks south of the Rio Grande/Bravo. The river still looks tame to me, nevertheless, and on a hot desert day its water looks pretty inviting. I have been told by a family that lives next to the river – the second house in from the border – that even good swimmers have been drowned by the strong undercurrents. Still, would-be migrants arrive at the border wanting to cross over; some don’t have money or don’t want to pay a coyote to cross them over clandestinely, so they decide to try their luck at crossing what seems like a short distance.
Just a couple weeks ago, said the mother of this family, they pulled two men’s bodies out of the river. She called the river a “traitor” given the way that it looked so smooth but could be sinister.
I recently chatted with a Texas journalist who just did a tour of the border with the Border Patrol. (She said they’re a lot nicer than the INS, or BICE, as they’re called now.) They showed her the strategic points where people cross clandestinely. When people swim or wade across they get really muddy. So when they reach the other side, she explained, they remove their clothes and put on a change of clothes that they bring along.
At some point along the banks of the Rio Grande there is apparently a long colorful string of wet discarded clothing, forming its own kind of borderline. I’d like to take a photo of that.
Generic border shot to replace the photo of the discarded clothes that I haven't taken yet.
Border by train
When I walk home in the evening I come to a railroad track that takes commercial trains across the border, loaded with goods coming from other parts of Mexico and the world, from factories and Pacific ports. I prefer to just walk across the tracks rather than duck down into the foul-smelling underpass.
With the slow-moving train blocking the way, I stopped to talk to a guard there the other day. The train slowed down at this point in order to pass through a big sensor that could supposedly detect the heat of a human body. I noticed the signs warning you not to remain for an unnecessarily long time in the area. Never did I think that small talk could have a slightly dangerous edge to it.
Northbound train
He told me that about 1,000 train cars passed across the border rail bridge every day. Since the track across is only one lane, there was a schedule for going north and schedule for going south. He said that right before the border every northbound train was checked by U.S. Border Patrol and Customs officials, four men and two dogs on each side of the train, inspecting the contents car by car for drugs and I’m not sure what else.
As I write this, my next door neighbor’s dogs are marking their third hour of almost constant barking. Either they don’t like my music, or something serious is happening in Dogland. I wonder if the K-9 squad accepts unsolicited deliveries of mutt poodles and chihuahuas.
To see all currently fundraising loans from FVP on Kiva.org, please click here.
Abdugaffor and Me
“Hello Daniel. How are you? I remember you said that you were willing to help some of my students out with their English lessons and…well, I have a nephew whom I would like you to meet.”
It was 9am on Monday morning. I was drinking Nescafe and checking email, when the MicroInvest English teacher came in to see if I was still willing to fulfill the pledge that I had made the day before to give some of the locals a chance to chat with a native speaker. I was expecting one, possibly two hours of tea with an eager, fresh-faced teenager, a Central Asian devotee of American culture who listened to hip-hop and watched old reruns of “Friends” on Russian TV. What I got was something far different. What I got was Abdugaffor. A 38-year-old doctor-turned-“biznezman” with anti-Semitic tendencies and a David Letterman-like gap between his two front teeth, Abdugaffor did not fit my preconceived mental image of the typical English student. He was not amongst the Western-looking vanguard of Tajik youth, but was instead a well-intentioned, yet bumbling caricature of his country’s isolation from the rest of the world, earnest in his efforts to learn English and clueless about America and the world in general in a simultaneously endearing and shocking, “Borat”-esque sort of way.
Caught between two worlds , the stable Soviet society in which he had come of age and the cutthroat(sometimes literally), winner-take-all world of “kapitalizm” into which his country has been unwillingly thrust in the early 1990s, Abdugaffor is, in certain ways, representative of his generation. He was in medical school in Dushanbe when the brutal Civil War broke out and had to abandon his studies due to this violent struggle for the reigns of power in the newly formed Republic of Tajikistan. When he finally received his degree, salaries for medical professionals had plummeted to below subsistence levels, and Abdugaffor spent six years in the local hospital, working for a pittance before calling it quits. The $40 he received every month didn’t provide him with much of an incentive to stick with his chosen profession and the exigencies of life led him to a career in the bazaar, the only viable option in the constrained economic landscape of Tajikistan. Throughout the course of my time here I have interviewed dozens of individuals trained as economists, engineers, mathematicians teachers, etc., who now work baking bread, selling children’s clothing, or hawking watermelons at a stall in one of the countless markets of northern Tajikistan. The refrain of wasted talent is a constant one. In Abdujaffor’s case, however, the bazaar allowed him to discover his knack for business, and he now has three shops within Panjshanbe Bazaar, selling various food products. Business for him is good as evidenced by his silver ’97 Mercedes.
Here in Tajikstan, the Mercedes is de rigueur for anyone who can afford it, a conspicuous status symbol that doesn’t necessarily mean that one is rich, just not poor. There must be more “Mare-say-days” (as they say the name here) per capita here than anywhere else on earth, most of them coming from the Baltic states where used and damaged vehicles are repaired before being shipped off to the marketplaces of Central Asia. In this part of the world people tend to care less about performance than they do about image. As long as it has the classic emblem on the hood, what’s underneath is not much of an issue and these casualties of Europe’s roads are thus given a second life in the “’stans.”
At 5pm, the time of our first meeting, I walked out onto Sharq street, the bright and chaotic thoroughfare where MicroInvest’s offices are located, lined with a jumble of food-stalls and smoking shashlyk grills, and packed full of speeding minibuses and porters pushing their overloaded carts through the incessant pedestrian traffic. Two minutes later, a silver Mercedes pulled up to the curb, its middle-aged driver turned off the engine, excitedly leaped out of the vehicle, and vigorously shook my hand, exclaiming in slow and labored English, “Helllloooo. My name Abdugaffor. Very niiiice to meeeeet youuu.” A slightly mischievous, yet bewildered smile lit up his face as I returned the greeting, annunciating every syllable to make sure my new pupil understood me.
“I am very glad to meet you too. My name is Dan. I am from America, from Washington, the capital of the United States.”
“Ohhh…veeeery niiiice. I am very happy… very, very happy that you are teach me English. Let’s….EAT!”
What followed was a night of non-stop food accompanied by a endless cups of green tea. The first two hours were spent at the depressing Tajiki-Turkey café, a “fusion” restaurant that turned out to be a dimly lit cavern whose fading green walls probably hadn’t been painted since Stalin died. The conversation started off fairly simply. I asked Abdulgaffor what his favorite food was. “Fried…SHEEP MEAT!” he responded enthusiastically. “Yes..fried sheep meat very good..very tasty…I like. But not very good for you. I doctor so I know these things.”
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“I doctor for children. But I not very good doctor!! Hahahaha,” he said playfully poking me with his elbow and giving me that mischievous smile that was slightly disconcerting. I silently thanked God that I never had to use the Tajik healthcare system.
Next stop was meal number two, this time at Abdugaffor’s friend’s house in a distant part of the city. Plov was served, copius amounts of alcohol were consumed by our hosts, and Tajik poetry was recited. All around me were drunk doctors, practicing their poor English and telling me about the virtues of the USSR and traditional Tajik medicine.
“European Union, Soviet Union….same thing!,” the man sitting next to me exclaimed.
“We Tajiks,” one of the more inebriated ones began, “We discover everything before Europeans. The great Avicenna, one thousand years ago he say baby need to drink milk from mother…and now all Europeans say same thing. They steal from Tajiks! What do they know? Nothing, that’s what!”
The evening was a typical night out in Tajikistan, a heady stream of overwhelming and boozy hospitality, and I left late that night with Abdugaffor demanding that he pick me up after work the next day, same time, same place. Having little choice, I reluctantly agreed.
The following evening, when the Mercedes pulled up right on time, I saw that Abdugaffor had brought along one of his friends, probably to show him that he was actually meeting with a real, live American. We proceeded to my favorite restaurant in town, that wonderful oasis of deliciousness called “Zaitun,” where I had, to say the least, one of the more interesting meals of my life. Abdugaffor began by asking me questions about America such as the following gem that seemed to be taken straight from a script written by Sacha Baron Cohen: “My friend, he live in America. I think he live in Los Angeles. He tell me that he kill sheep in yard and then police give him fine.” A look of earnest confusion swept over his face and he asked “Whyyyy?!! Why not allow kill sheep in yard in America?”
After then going through a 30-minute explanation of what to do in an American airport (“You give the customs agent your passport.” “And then?” “And then he stamps it.” And then? “And then you go to collect your luggage.” “And then?……”), our comedic conversation took a turn for the worse when Abdugaffor and his friend jumped headlong into the subject of Jewish conspiracies.
“You know Putin is Jew and Medvedev, he also Jew.”
“No they’re not,” I futilely replied.
“Yes, they are! So is Bush and…what his name?… oh, Al Gore, he also Jew. You not know? America is Jewish country!”
His friend then piped up, “Why Hitler no like Jews?”
“I don’t really know, that’s a very complicated question and I don’t have time to….”
Abdugaffor immediately corrected the record. “No, no, no, Hitler not that bad. It just story…skazka like we say in Russian. It just skazka made up by the Jew.
Being a Jew myself I was left somewhat speechless at this moment, my face was bright red and my ears were hot. I had heard of people spewing such nonsense before, but it is one thing to read about it and another to experience it laid out in front of your own two eyes in a strange country, with strange people, after too much plov and green tea. My head was spinning and I needed to calm down before I did something I would regret. I just shut my mouth and waited until the tirade had subsided until I berated Abdugaffor’s ignorance in English that was spoken too quickly for him to understand. He drove me home soon afterwards, and at this point I thought that my days with Abdugaffor were over. I was wrong.
A week later I picked up my phone and was greeted by an excited voice on the other end asking, “Oh, Daniel, how are you? It Abdugaffor! You remember me?”
“Of course. How could I forget?”
“Oh, good…veeeerrrry gooood, I happy you remember me. What you do this evening? I want meet with you and practice …ENGLISH!”
Although our last meeting had left a bad taste in my mouth it was hard to say no to his boyish enthusiasm and I chalked up his previous comments to the ignorance that can come from living in such an isolated place like Tajikistan. I didn’t sense any hostility from him, just an utter lack of understanding about the world, that in many ways was a product of his environment. I decided to give him another chance, and as time passed I became less frustrated with Abdugaffor’s narrow view of things and just tried to learn what I could, observing him with a degree of detachment that helped me deal with some of his more unsavory remarks. Things went quite smoothly for several weeks, and I was beginning to think that maybe Abdugaffor was even somewhat “normal.” Needless, to say, these false illusions were shattered fairly quickly when at one of our recent dinners he dropped the following bombshell:
“Ohhh, in America you have lots of gay. It very baaaad…men sleep together, very very bad. In Tajikistan, we don’t have. I never met gay in life. In America you need to….cut them!” he says making a slashing motion with his right hand.
“Cut them? You mean kill them?! But they’re human beings!”
“Yes, yes…zarezat nado!,” he said affirming his opinion in Russian, “Need to kill the gay. Maybe you can cure them, but if not….” He left this sentence hang ominously in mid-air as he made the slashing motion again.
As I picked my jaw up out of my soup I realized that the old Abdugaffor was still alive and well and that maybe some cultural gaps were never meant to be bridged. Yet, what is so strange is that despite his incredible statements of ignorance he could not have been more kind or generous (at least to me, that is). Although I am viscerally opposed to his philosophical viewpoints and I feel that people should be held accountable for their opinions, I have learned to simply throw my hands up and accept Abdugaffor, like so many things in Tajikistan, warts and all.
Where’s my parachute!
Hello all! My name is Mark Disston and I am the newest Kiva Fellow to head to the field. I am writing this on my flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia where I will be joining Maxima Mikroheranhvatho. Maxima is one of the smallest MFIs in Cambodia but has ambitious plans to expand their services. I have the fortune of teaming up with Amy Killian, the current Fellow at Maxima, whose work most of you have likely already read about (if not, see Straws and Sandpaper – my favorite post).
The past week has been a whirlwind. In quick succession I bought my ticket to Phnom Penh, quit my job, packed and subletted my apartment, and sprinted to my plane. Whew. However the upside was that in not sleeping for the 50 hours before my flight I managed to be devoid of all jet-lag when I landed. I just slept the whole flight.
Since I haven’t done anything as of yet, there isn’t much to post. But this is what I’m excited for (no particular order):
1. Meeting the borrowers and hearing their stories – not only those about how Kiva loans helped them, but really any story they feel is important enough to share. I think these small interactions will help me learn the most about the people of Cambodia.
2. Understanding the mechanics of how Kiva loans are implemented on an operational, financial, and technical level.
3. Seeing first-hand the impact, positive and negative microfinance has in people’s lives.
4. Living in a developing country with a scary past – definitely a learning experience.
5. Meeting others who share my passion.
6. Having time to consider my own path in the future and whether living and working in the developing world is something I want to continue.
7. Discovering when I’ve returned to the U.S. how much this experience has changed me in ways I didn’t notice day-by-day until I was re-immersed back into New York culture.
Well here I go! 10 minutes out and descending into Phnom Penh. I’m really not sure what to expect in the months ahead. I wish I had done more research! My thoughts are stuck on the half-completed to-do list sitting in my pocket and the myriad of things I forgot to pack. Oh well. The safety of home is behind me. I’ve made the leap – nothing to do now but enjoy the ride. I just hope I remembered to pack my parachute!
The Last Time I Was Considered Tall I Was 14 Years Old
I proudly remember how for the first 2 years of high school I was considered quite tall and got to stand for the annual class photo. From the 3rd year onwards however I was eclipsed as puberty prevailed in others. From then on I sat in the front row, demurely folding my hands in my lap. Not that I am short – I am 167cm tall – which by western standards makes me an average height. I would also describe my build as average – you will have to take my word for it as I have no intention of publically disclosing any vital statistics! So I pretty much blend into the crowd. But in Vietnam I am tall. In Vietnam I would go so far as to say I am Amazonian. In Vietnam I am exotic.
This week I have been contemplating what it’s like to be - what I romantically like to call - exotic. I have yet to reach the stage where I do not notice that people outright stare and heads turn as I walk by. I do not live or work in the tourist centre or in a heavily expat populated area and have yet to encounter another westerner as I walk my home and office neighbourhoods. The reactions of the children particularly delight me as they look in awe. The more confident ones wave and shout “hello” and when I respond back with a “hello” and a wave they squeal with delighted laugher. The shier ones stare with quiet concentration as they peak out from behind their parents’ legs. Even though I am an obvious object of attention, I have never once felt remotely scared as the attention is either of a curious ( what is she doing here? is she lost? ) or delighted ( how wonderful! a westerner is here! ) nature.
Even simple things like demonstrating proficiency with chopsticks are an act of diplomatic wonder. I try to tell them that Australians eat a lot of Asian food and we all have basic chopstick skills, but still they are enchanted. My name also scores brownie points, as ‘Xan’ and ‘Thi’ are not uncommon Vietnamese syllables. In fact Thi is a very common middle name, so when people see my name written out they exclaim “your name Vietnamese”. I quite like the way it is pronounced ( “Suntee” ) and have no problems responding when that name is used.
The reactions that humble me most are when I go to the villages to visit the Kiva clients. There a westerner is definitely exotic! Word spreads as I attend a community meeting or go to a client’s home and from nowhere an army of children appear and a choir of “hello, hello, hello” reverberates. The SEDA staff introduce me and I am automatically given VIP status – the best chair is dusted off, fans are brought out turned on and pointed in my direction, cups of tea are thrust into my hands and refilled the split-second they are empty. The first few times I tried to tell them to please ignore me and not make a fuss, but that provoked even more fuss, so now I have learnt to graciously accept and thank my hosts for their hospitality. I think that throughout the entire length of my stay, the pride, hospitality and industriousness of our clients will continue to humble and inspire me.
To see more loans from my Kiva clients, please click here.
An Excel-lent Time in Cambodia
For the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of data entry. Panith, the AMK Kiva coordinator, and I have been going through all the Kiva business descriptions so that we could enter their account numbers into an excel worksheet. This will allow us to easily track payments of all the Kiva loans. (AMK just got out of pilot stage with Kiva, so they’re still incorporating it into their business.) If I had been doing this for another job I probably would have been bored out of my mind, but going through all the data for three of AMK’s provinces turned out to be quite interesting. It gave me a chance to do a very, very basic analysis of the impact of microfinance by looking at the loan histories of many clients. Many clients have paid off one, two, or even three loans, taking out a higher balance each time. Some clients started out with loans as low as 10,000 KHR (less than $2.50). I was actually very surprised to see the number of loans that were less than $10. Through village banks and group loans, AMK has allowed their “poorest-of-the-poor” clients to build up their credit history so that they can eventually take out larger individual loans.
Since I’m on the topic of numbers, I should share this wonderful story with you guys. While I was out in Kandal province for a Kiva-specific training, I heard an interesting story about interest rates. AMRET is the largest MFI organization in Cambodia. They offer loans at a 4% monthly-rate. AMK started offering loans in one of the villages that AMRET operates in. AMK offered loans at a 3%-monthly interest rate, so AMRET had to lower its interest rate in that village. 1% may seem very small, but over the year that adds up to 12%. If you’re a client who can only take out 10,000 KHR, that interest rate difference is huge. If microfinance institutions are going to really make an impact in fighting poverty, they need to lower their interest rates by improving their efficiency. Kiva is helping MFIs improve their efficiency by offering 0% loans, versus the 12% loans that other institutions offer MFIs. Paul Luchtenberg, the CEO of AMK, believes Kiva will truly help AMK achieve its social mission. He just hopes that Kiva funds will account for a larger percentage of AMK’s total portfolio (right now it accounts for less than 3%).
Click here to see all the loans from AMK that are currently fundraising on Kiva.
I’m sorry because I haven’t gone out into the field in the past week, so I don’t have any pictures of microfinance in action. I did stop by Angkor Wat this weekend so enjoy these pictures of Ta Prohm Temple:
A W.A.S.P. in Nigeria
I am a WASP – white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. My parents rarely yelled, spankings were rare and more painful for my mother than me and requests were granted only when accompanied by the obligatory “please” and followed by “thank you.” On Sundays my family sat in well-ordered pews quietly listening to sermons, bowing our heads in silent prayers and rising (as directed) to sing hymns from notations in a book. At school my friends and I were scolded for being late in an effort to train us all in the expectations of the culturally dominant WASPs who value time commitments and punctuality.
For a WASP, Nigeria is a challenge. It is a harsh culture (by my comparison) with none of the comfortable social rules of home. People bark orders that pang on my eardrums. Daily prayers are shouted with chaotic fervor. Ten a.m. means noon…or one…maybe 3pm. People are friendly once one breaks through, but few smiles are plastered on to pretend that there is a fondness for you that is not there. In all of this there is good and bad.
At first I feared that I had signed up to spend 3 months among people who were rude – a people who had no respect for one another. Little things grated on me. Things like being told, “Give me your flash drive” when I expected a softer, “May I borrow your flash drive, please” or having “Are you getting me?” “Am I clear?” and “Do you understand?” snapped at me in between thoughts as if I were a mentally retarded child with an impatient teacher. I’ve come to realize that this is a Nigerian’s way of ensuring that their numerous accents, languages and dialects don’t inhibit communication with me as well as each other. Just as I have accepted that the tones in which people speak, constantly reminding myself that they are not mad, rude or intentionally aggressive…they are Nigerian.
Almost 6 weeks in, I’ve learned to accept and adapt. I’ve quickly been trained to know that the “diplomatic” presentation of my thoughts and/or requests will fall on deaf ears. I must be direct and blunt – using the kind of tone that my mother would employ when she caught me watching TV rather than doing my chores…after three requests. I am most successful when I am truly annoyed with the person to who I am speaking. In church or during morning prayers, I’ve concluded that closing my eyes, bowing my head and following my own tradition is still more comfortable. Waving my hands, knitting my brow and punctuating my prayers with an energetic “In the name of Je-sus!” is too distracting and feels forced. “My way” seems to be accepted. And when I’m feeling saucy, I’ll demand a “please” before submitting to a task or an “I beg-o” as they say in Nigerian Pigeon English. There is a happy balance to everything and I am finding that space and becoming a Nigerian WASP – my skin is thinker and I’m more likely to bite.
A Day in Prison
Two weeks ago FAPE launched a new program. After months of fighting bureaucracy, they finally got permission to give loans to female prisoners at the Centro Preventivo de Rehabilitación Santa Teresa (loosely translated, the Santa Teresa Prevention Center for Rehabilitation). The program was kicked off with a weeklong training called ISUN (Inicie su Negocio or Start your Business). Thirty-two women participated in this course, which is a joint effort from the Coordinadora Nacional de Microempresarios de Guatemala (the Guatemalan government’s national office on microenterprise), the Guatemalan Ministry of Economy, and FAPE, with most of the funding coming interestingly from the Government of Taiwan. I had the opportunity to attend one day of the course and then returned for the graduation. And yes, I was there to interview a client for a Kiva loan.
The whole experience was very interesting and quite bizarre. Santa Teresa is a low security prison, where women (there is also a men’s prison within the compound, but I didn’t visit that) are detained while their trials and sentencing are pending. Most of the women are there for either drug-related crimes or money laundering. Many of them have been there for several years, simply waiting for their cases to get through the bureaucracy of the courts.
Entrance into the prison was remarkably easy. I was with Sergio, the director of FAPE, and all he had to do was show a copy of a letter from the director of the prison, and we were allowed in right away. It was interesting to note that the “official document” that allowed us to drive right past the sign that no cars are allowed was actually a poor copy of a faxed letter – really not very official looking at all. We had to wait a little outside the entrance into the women’s prison, but only because the sign-in registry wasn’t at the front desk yet. Once we were admitted, I handed over my passport in exchange for two stamps on my forearm, which were evidently the temporary mark of a free person. I was eventually patted down, but only once we were well inside the prison, as that was the first time we passed a female guard. I had my camera in my pocket, which aroused suspicion when they felt it, but upon seeing the poorly faxed letter, once again we passed through without question – they didn’t actually even look at what the large thing in my pocket was. I’m definitely curious if the lackadaisical security is the same for everyone, or if I would have had a more thorough inspection if I weren’t American. I suspect so.
Sergio and Me in Prison
Once we were actually in the prison, I was struck by how much it didn’t feel like a prison; although I didn’t see any of the rooms where the women actually
Kids and Clothes - A Typical Scene in Santa Teresa
live, which I have heard are far from pleasant. The views are quite nice, beautiful lush mountains on the edge of the city, clothes of all sizes hang out to dry
in the sun, little kids wander around (yes, children are allowed to stay with their mothers in prison until the age of 4, but once they turn 4 they are sent to an orphanage if they don’t have family to go to), all the women are dressed just like you would see a group of random women out in town, although no traditional clothing at all.
It was really fun to watch and even participate at bit in the ISUN training, which was very interactive and the women participated very enthusiastically. There was a lot of laughter and camaraderie, and it really just didn’t feel like the preconceptions I guess I have about how a prison should feel. At one point the course involved an activity where the women were divided into groups, given some random supplies, and told to create a business in 20 minutes. Evidently when this course is taught elsewhere, the teachers bring a whole host of materials to be used to make some sort of product to “sell.” However, because we were in prison, the amount of supplies, and especially things like scissors, was quite limited. It was really fun to see them all working together and coming up with such different ideas for what they would use their bits of paper, string, glue, and markers for. Once the 20 minutes were up, the teachers, Sergio, and I were supposed to be customers and visit each business to see if we were interested in “buying” anything. One group made a catalogue of clothing and conducted an “international fashion show” of their clothing, as they had a Nicaraguan, a Russian, a Colombian, and Guatemalans in their group. I got targeted to “buy” their hypothetical clothes and it was hilarious to see them fake wine and dine me. And with Sergio along as my husband for the day, I “bought” some clothes with his credit card. The whole thing was quite funny and the ladies really seemed to be having such a good time. Other groups made things like address books, greeting cards, and random little toy things out of yarn that were actually really cute. After the activity each group talked about what businesses they came up with, what they sold, and why they thought they did or didn’t do well with their sales. And then we, the consumers, got to talk about why we did or didn’t buy the various items. It was a fun and seemingly very effective way to get everyone thinking about what all they need to consider when starting up a business, from consumer preference, to advertising, pricing, competition, etc.
One Group Planning Out Their Business
Products on Display
Creative Advertising
Sergio and One of His Purchases
While the training was really interesting on its own, I eventually got to the task I came there for: to interview a prisoner for a Kiva loan. It was very interesting to talk to her and she really was more appreciative of the chance to get a loan than almost anyone I’ve talked to yet. While we didn’t talk in detail about why she’s in prison, it has something to do with money laundering and her mother and cousin are in with her for the same. They’ve been in for a whopping four years waiting for their sentencing and can now leave as soon as they can pay their fines – 50,000 Quetzals each, which is less than $7,000, but totally cost prohibitive for them. They have a lawyer and are working to get the fines reduced, but if they can’t then they’ll be transferred to another prison to start serving out their fines – at a rate of 25 Q a day, so almost 5 ½ years, on top of the 4 they’ve already spent waiting around for their trials and finalizing the fine. Wow.
So other than the really interesting training and hearing more about the inefficiencies of the Guatemala justice system, it was also fascinating to learn a little more about how and why prisoners have businesses from within prison. Karina, the lady I was interviewing, talked about how bad the food that the government provides is and that they really do have to find ways to supplement what they’re given. From what I understand, it’s not bad just in terms of taste, it really is just very poor quality, small quantity, and relatively void of nutritional value. The prison has regular visitor’s days, and many prisoners have family members that bring them food, snacks, and necessities such as toilet paper. Some people, however, like Karina and her mother and cousin, do not have any family nearby, and are therefore left with the only option of purchasing additional food and necessities from within the prison, where prices are easily double what they are outside.
Lesvia, Me, and Karina with My Gifts
Karina and her cousin work making arts and crafts like those shown in this picture, which they gave to me to thank me for coming, and Karina has a business selling juice to the other ladies in the prison. Previously she had been able to use another lady’s freezer to cool the juice down, but that lady left and took her freezer. Obviously Karina can sell a lot more juice if it’s cold, so she is requesting a loan from FAPE to buy a refrigerator and more juice. It was interesting to hear about the networking that she was able to do from within prison, shopping around for the best deal she could find on a used refrigerator and jumping through all the hoops necessary to get permission to bring it into the prison.
She also talked quite a bit about what they’ll do when they get out. They don’t have a house or anything, don’t have any money, and will have a hard time getting formal jobs of any kind because of their criminal records. Karina really is working hard, between her arts and crafts and the juice sales to try to get a little money together to get started when she gets out. It was also really interesting to talk with her about her plans for the future and her dreams. She has all sorts of ideas for businesses she would like to start and has very clearly had lots of time to really think different ideas through and strategize.
Overall, it was a really interesting experience. In many respects, these women are absolutely not typical microfinance clients. Beyond the obvious distinction that they are in prison, every one of them can read and write and have had far more education than most FAPE clients, or microfinance clients in general. Nevertheless, in some respects they really aren’t all that different. They certainly have very limited resources at their disposal, and have faced and will continue to face many challenges in terms of building a life for themselves and their families. Many will leave prison with very little, if any, money in their pockets to get started with their lives again. What’s so exciting about what FAPE is doing here though, is that now 32 of these women will be leaving with a little more knowledge about how to start a business. And for those that will be receiving loans from FAPE in the coming months and starting their own businesses from within prison, they’ll potentially have a little more money to get started with, and will have gained some experience managing a business in what actually is a decently competitive market within the walls of the prison.
Obviously many people may have reservations about lending money to prisoners, and that’s certainly understandable. But at the same time, after having seen how excited these women were to have a chance to learn about starting up business and to potentially have access to some resources to really start doing something productive with their time in prison, I would certainly feel comfortable loaning my own money to these women. As I said before, Karina really was so incredibly appreciative of the fact that FAPE is willing to take a chance and invest in these women and I have no doubt in my mind that she will do all that she can to rise to the challenge and fulfill her side of the deal.
Eventually the training was finished for the day and we got ready to leave. Interestingly, on the way out I was given my passport back but before they would
Mark of a Free Person
let me leave they insisted I roll up my sleeve to show them that I did in fact have those apparently all-important stamps on my forearm. This particular day was a visitor’s day at the men’s prison next door, so as we headed out we saw all the action associated with that. There were tons of people everywhere, with all the women in skirts, as that’s an actual requirement to visit the men’s prison. The street outside the prison building, but still within the compound, was lined with little stores and eateries doing booming business for all the people that had come in from other areas and wanted to provide their friends/family members in prison with goodies and a decent meal. A very interesting scene overall.
While I’m certainly no expert in prison systems anywhere, I have had the opportunity to visit prisons in Mexico and Bolivia prior to this trip to Santa Teresa. And all of these prisons had very limited resources and prisoners did what they could to supplement what the government provides. Out of necessity, people start up businesses and because the governments provide so little, there is significant demand for basic products. The fact that FAPE has initiated a program to help the women of Santa Teresa start up businesses, not just through offering them loans but also through working with the Guatemalan government to provide training in starting up a business, is really such a fascinating way to help facilitate business development within this market and, more than anything, start giving opportunities to women that want to make changes in their lives but have very limited opportunities to do so.
Since businesses in prison, and especially loans to prisoners, are such foreign concepts to many of us, I’m really interested to hear what Kiva lenders think about this project and I hope to receive some comments here if anyone has any interesting thoughts on the matter.
Stories you won’t read on Kiva
There is a lot of talk here and elsewhere as to whether or not microfinance (or any kind of aid for that matter) works. Is what anyone says the truth or just perceptions and opinions? It would be nice to have a definite answer, but it always seems a little more complicated than that.
In my past experience working with volunteers and in nonprofits, I noticed how this lack of certainty over results can trigger cynicism pretty quickly. Most people in this line of work want to prove that what they do leads to something good happening, and they also want to feel good all the time about what they do. It’s probably just natural, but it’s also not possible, at least not all the time. The need for instant gratification can be a hard thing to escape, and can lead many people to become bitter, quit, or just stop trying very hard.
I wanted to share this story of Safija, not a microcredit client but a woman who participated in Žene za Žene’s job skills training program, in part because it’s one that many here would not have heard otherwise. Sometimes you never know what your time, donation, or gesture will mean to someone else. It’s great that results can be shown on places like Kiva, but there will always be lots of stories we don’t see. We may just have to assume that good things are more likely to happen when we try to do something rather than nothing, whether we know the final outcome or not.
There are people in the world who need access to money and an opportunity to get somewhere. Some of their stories end happily, but some don’t. We can try to help each other out, or not. We can be hard on ourselves, but keep trying to do better. What else is there to do?
Safija’s Story
Safija is a 56 year old woman, originally from the town Srebrenica. Srebrenica was the site of the largest genocide of the war in Bosnia, where in one day over 8,000 Muslim men and boys, including Safija’s two sons, were murdered by Serbian forces. After the war Safija returned home only to find her house destroyed. She felt haunted by memories of her sons, who she felt she could see and hear everywhere she went, playing football, asking her to make them their favorite sandwich.
Life for Safija was intolerable for those first years in Srebrenica. She was planning on leaving town when she found out about the training & educational programs at Women for Women International. Joining the program gave Safija a chance to connect to other women in a way she had not been able to in years. Since the war many communities in Bosnia remain strictly divided on ethnic lines, and this is especially true of Srebrenica. During the training program Safija met many Bosnian Serb women from her town, who she thought she would never be able to speak with. But after hearing their stories she learned that they are women and mothers, just like her, who were as powerless to stop the fighting as she was.
Between her meetings with the Žene za Žene program and her new business ventures, Safija’s days were suddenly filled with activity. Through her sponsor she was given financial support to learn a new trade, and she decided to focus on breeding poultry and turned this into a profitable business. She also now makes marmalade to sell to the kids in her village.
Safija was also grateful to receive a donated cow, not just because it helps with her income, but because it gives her something to come home to. It makes her happy, she says, to have this cow, as she feels that she has someone who she can care for and talk to again, just like a child. Safija admits she still has bad days, but she has learned that while she may still suffer from all that she lost, she is not alone anymore. She knows now that there is always a way to find the will to go on.
To lend to a Bosnian women, click here (NOTE: more businesses to be posted daily. Check back!)
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Since there is a lot of Bosnia in the news these days, here is a frontline piece done that gives a pretty thorough background on Karadzic & the conflict itself. For those who want to learn more see below.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/
Playing Chicken and Other First Impressions
Beep! Beep beep beep! This is the natural sound of the habitat that is downtown Hanoi. There is an endless cacophony of horns – sometimes short and squeaky, other times longer and more insistent. There is no aggression intended – the horn is to warn the pedestrian or cyclist ahead that their motorbike ( more of a scooter really ) or car is bearing down on you and that you should not pick this moment to change direction. Driving in Hanoi should be classified as an extreme sport. Insert small confession – I have actually ridden as a passenger on the back of a few motorbikes. An important motorbike wardrobe hint – trousers or long flowing skirts and dresses are the best attire for bikes. A slim fitting skirt that sits below the knee requires you to sit a dainty side-saddle, which reduces passenger confidence in direct proportion to skirt width! On any street corner you will see a local lying on his motorbike. As soon as a westerner materialises, he will arise from his slumber and shout “motorbike madam, motorbike madam”. The bargaining routine begins ( he says “30,000 Vietnamese Dong”; you say “too much, too much” ) and when agreement is reached you have secured yourself a cheap form of transport suitable for short distances when the sweltering humidity make walking a less palatable option.
Crossing the street in Hanoi could qualify as an Olympic sport as it takes skill, concentration and practice to master. First thing to know is that the few pedestrian crossings that do exist are laughably redundant so don’t even attempt to cross at them. You could grow old waiting for a suitable lull in traffic, so adopt a nonchalant manner, stare straight ahead and step into the ocean of motorbikes and bicycles and voila! It will be like Moses parting the red sea and the traffic will manoeuvre around you. Do not under any circumstances change course. This could tempt the natural traffic order to be thrown off its balance and who knows the consequences.
Food is to be found everywhere in Hanoi and there are people partaking all hours of the day, sitting on pavements on little plastic chairs eating a variety of noodles, vegetables and meats. One of my favourite parts of the day is lunchtime when I join my colleagues for lunch at their local haunts. Our office is a 15-20 minutes drive south of downtown and I am confident that our neighbourhood does not feature in The Lonely Planet. I love it as it is such an authentic experience. As my confidence grows I want to try the Vietnamese version of the local pub – they are called bia hois and consist of lots of little plastic chairs on the pavement or a large open space where lots of locals sit and drink lots of cheap beer. There seems to be a bia hoi on every street. One thing is for certain – whoever has shares in the local small plastic chair manufacturing company is getting a great return on investment!
The most unusual thing I have seen to date are actually dentists. Why dentists you ask? Because dentistry appears to be a spectator sport in Hanoi – they are all glass and big open spaces and from outside you look straight in and see the patient sitting in the dentist chair, mouth wide open with a white-coated person hanging out their mouth! My fancy is also tickled by the local barber shop – all you need is a spot on the pavement, an old mirror, nail with which to hang up on a nominated wall, a chair, scissors and presto – you are in business. The Vietnamese could start a business anywhere out of anything – they are the MacGyvers of entrepreneurism! It’s one of the reasons why I am so happy to be working for Kiva in Vietnam facilitating loans to people who have so much ingenuity and initiative.
To see loans for some entrepeneurial Vietnamese, click here http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=85&status=fundRaising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_tpg=fb
Wheelchair donated to a Kiva Mozambican client by KivaFriends!!!
A week ago, Regina Jose, Hluvuku’s client in Mozambique, received a brand new wheelchair to replace her broken one!!! KivaFriends donated it, and with the help of many people it was bought, transported from South Africa to Mozambique and delivered to her!!
Regina was so happy with her new wheelchair that she even cried! Now she will be able to resume her activities and will go to church on Sundays, something she described as her favorite activity. As I wrote in my last blog, it took just over one month since my first journal about Regina to get all this done. One of Regina’s lenders who is also part of KivaFriends brought this into KivaFriends attention and in a teamwork event it was successfully concluded!
As I mentioned in my last blog, I’m quite impressed with this network of good-hearted people that don’t know each other in person but work together for the same cause – to help those in need.
The picture shows Regina shaking Bernardo Tembe’s hand (Hluvuku CEO) and with Ernesto Rungo, Regina’s loan officer from Hluvuku.
I’m already back from my fellowship in Mozambique and as some other fellow fellows, I will write about my microfinance experience in my next blog.
Ate mais.
Posted on behalf of Beatriz Mauro
Three Languages and Nothing to Say
I never thought I would move to Tanzania to learn about Bengali culture, but then again I never thought I’d eat octopus for dinner so sometimes one must adjust expectations. How have I happened to find myself sitting in an office shared by one Bengali woman, one Tanzanian woman, and me? Such is life at BRAC Tanzania’s country office.
BRAC Tanzania is one of the international legs of the Bengali NGO BRAC (formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee). Started in 1972, BRAC has grown to be the largest NGO in the world and employs over 100,000 people in Bangladesh alone. They have programs beyond microfinance like agriculture, health, education, and economic development. Recently, BRAC has started to spread to other parts of the world, like Tanzania, Uganda, and Sierra Leone. BRAC Tanzania began in 2006 and is growing rapidly. The country office is in Dar Es Salaam, where I am based, but they currently have more than 55 microfinance branches throughout the country and expect to expand to 80 branches by the end of the year. The way that BRAC maintains standardization is to bring Bengali staff to its new country offices to implement BRAC’s practices and policies, which is how I have found myself sharing an office with such an international group.
I had my first day on the job just over a week ago and my first impression was that either there had to be some significant communication difficulties or I was surrounded by some seriously language-adept people. A Bengali walked in the room, said hello to me, and then started speaking to his Bengali colleague in Bangla. A few minutes later, a Tanzanian came into the room, said hello to me, and started quickly discussing something in Swahili with his Tanzanian colleague. The language where the three cultures are intended to meet is English, which would be great for me in that I’m fluent—but unfortunately that’s not quite how it seems to work. Occasional words are exchanged from Bengali to Tanzanian and vice versa, but each culture largely sticks to itself due to ease of communication.
The language barrier is indicative of a wider cultural divide between the Tanzanians and the Bengalis in the office. The Bengali staff is in Tanzania for the sole purpose of establishing a strong organization in this country. They moved here on a temporary basis from Bangladesh and left their families behind to work to create a solid foundation for the organization here. The Bengali staff lives upstairs in the same building as the office—and given the close proximity of work and home, it seems they do little besides work and sleep. The office is located off the main street and surrounded by high fences and shrubbery so it feels something like a compound secluded from the dust, noise, and daladalas (the local minibuses) of the rest of the city. They work, eat, and sleep all within the compound. Instead of taking the weekend to explore the city, they work. The whole staff is expected to be in on Saturdays, but the Tanzanians (and I) are given Sundays off. When I got in to work Monday morning I asked a few Bengali coworkers if they got to rest the previous day and all said no, they had been working all day.
For the Tanzanians, on the other hand, this is a job. That is not to say that they don’t care about it or are not dedicated—but this is where they live and their lives extend far beyond the walls of the office to where their families, friends, and homes are. They work during normal business hours (usually 8:30am to 4:00pm) but then they go home to attend to the other aspects of their lives. If I leave the office at 5 or 6, the Bengali staff is still working, without any sign of letting up for the evening. The priority among Tanzanians seems to be family first—I have seen evidence repeatedly of the strength of the family unit. I spent a few days in one of the rural branches outside of Dar Es Salaam last week and one day, one of the employees came in to work several hours late. Explaining where she had been, she said she had to help her sisters with a problem that had arisen. This 23-year-old woman had previously informed me that their parents are dead and as such, she is the maternal influence in her sisters’ lives. That she would miss a half day of work to help them with a problematic situation was not surprising to her Tanzanian supervisor. The importance of family was reinforced the next day, “salary day” (a.k.a. pay day), when the employee’s sisters came to the office so that their big sister could give them some money. On salary day, the whole family benefits—the employee does not keep it for herself.
So, what is the effect of all of these cultural differences on BRAC’s microfinance operation in Tanzania? I hate to disappoint you, but I think it’s too soon to say. Preliminary observations make me wonder how the organization will change or shift as the Bengali’s gradually phase out (which they intend to do as they eventually put the control of the country operation in the hands of Tanzanians). I want to know if the work is affected by the fact that the people at the top are somewhat disconnected from the country itself by virtue of the presence of a “compound”. I want to know if an operation and its standards that originated in Asia can translate smoothly into African culture. Finally, I want to know if a Bengali, a Tanzanian, and an American can meet somewhere in the middle to find our common ground.
Want to see more? Click here to see BRAC’s currently fundraising loans.
Death of a Client
On Friday, three members of the GHAPE office went to the funeral of one of our members, Bih Josopha. She was 48 years old and left eight children behind, four of whom are under the age of 14. The daughter had come to the office to inform us of her passing on Thursday, immediately after it occurred, and we decided which office members would go and pay dues. For GHAPE members, attendance at a fellow member’s funeral is compulsory, punishable by a fine. Some of the members were a little discontented when the burial was
food from the GHAPE members
three hours behind schedule, but most of the members wanted to show their respect for a friend. Many of the women made food to feed the GHAPE members during the funeral and also to contribute to the grieving family. A lot of work that was put into the funeral to make it happen only a day after the death, but it seemed that everyone pulled their strength together, understanding the need for the effort.
When we were doing the training to become Kiva fellows, one section of the training was about being sensitive to social interactions among office members. Maybe, as Americans, we would find ourselves more physically affectionate than locals would feel comfortable being, for example. It was a good lesson to take into the field, to be very observant of the way my colleagues acted before asserting my own personality. After all, it’s better to come off a little cold in the beginning, than to make everyone around me feel uncomfortable with the way I’m acting. It turned out that the GHAPE office members are just as physically affectionate as I am, but I took a couple weeks before letting myself be that open with them. I wanted to make sure that it was ok within office politics to joke around and play. Going to a funeral was a challenge of a different kind for me. Not only was I given little observation time beforehand, I was there as a detached member of the company she owed money to and the only white person in attendance. (The loan was forgiven, as happens upon deaths within GHAPE) I did my best to imitate an appropriately somber demeanor, but not be weepy. I didn’t know the woman, but I was really sad to see her young children so overwhelmed with grief. Part of the Cameroonian burial includes music and dance, however, which lifts people’s spirits and brings some light into the ceremony. In this way, friends and family leave the funeral having grieved for the loss, paid respect, rejoiced in the life of the person, and praised God for what they have remaining in their own lives.
musicians after the burial
I had been wanting for some time to go to what Cameroonians call a “Cry Die,” which is the commemoration of a person’s death. I haven’t been to one yet, but I hear that many of the tribes come to support the family and dance and play music on the day in honor of the deceased. As a student of African dance, I am very interested in seeing how the Cameroonian tribes dance and drum and a Cry Die has been recommended to me for this particular display of tribal culture. I hadn’t understood that a funeral service would include dancing and drumming as well, but now I’ve seen that it does. Upon arrival at the funeral, Mercybertha, Fointama, and I were shown in to see the corpse of Bih Josopha, before she was placed in her coffin. I wasn’t extremely comfortable with seeing her, let alone photographing her, but my boss at GHAPE said I had to take pictures to make a good journal for the Kiva lenders. Fointama had a camera of his own and was unabashedly documenting the entire event. Somehow I felt a little more self-conscious wielding the camera in light of the fact that I was a foreigner. Later in the process of the burial, there was dancing around the newly-packed grave, and as a GHAPE member, I was asked to come into the dancing circle and sing with the other GHAPE members. I tried to look around and determine whether I should be animated or sad or somber, but I really got no definitive answer from those I saw around me. Some were smiling and singing whole-heartedly, others were doing more of an obligatory march around the grave, while not singing at all. I didn’t want to be too animated, for fear of
disrespecting the death, so I did a side-to-side step behind the others and didn’t sing. I hope that I didn’t offend anyone by not participating as much.
Death carries a different tone in Cameroon, from what I have experienced. The family that I live with has nine children, four of their own and five orphans who are cousins or friends of the family. The orphans all lost their parents at young ages. Three of the five are siblings and they lost their father first to an unknown disease and then a few years later, lost their mother to brain cancer. They said they never expected to lose their father AND their mother, but it just happened that way. Medical care is not very good here and for something as delicate as brain cancer, there’s really no hope of being cured. I’ve heard the women here talk angrily and disdainfully about the inaction doctors take for hopeless cases, usually these decisions are made upon little more than a basic inspection of the patient. The orphans who I live with are very sympathetic and wonderful people, but they themselves have expressed how death no longer affects them as it used to. They say they can hear of a death or go to a funeral and feel little more than pity. Death is so common here, and unnecessary, preventable deaths are part of everyday life. It seems to me that people try to make a way of celebrating the person’s life and incorporating a hopeful element into the ceremony, so that the event isn’t so bleak.
Bih Josopha died after six weeks of complaining of chest pain. Her brother explained to me that he had taken her to get an x-ray, but had been unable to diagnose her from what he saw in the results, not being a doctor himself. Josopha had been taking care of her eight children alone, after her husband left her, and the four young children now have to find somewhere to live. The brother has seven children of his own and is already stretching his resources. Maybe Josopha’s older children will be able to take care of the younger ones, suggested her brother. The family is not as fortunate as those orphans living in my house, with more affluent relatives to provide a home, an education and affection for them. The outpouring of support I saw, just for the funeral service, will hopefully carry on to help the family afterwards.
A funeral is not something I can say I was happy to have the chance to experience. A death is always going to be a sad thing for me. I would like to say, rather, that I felt grateful to the family to let me attend this ceremony. I’m trying to be sensitive to where my presence is welcome and where it is not, with the understanding that perhaps not all things should be made accessible to foreigners. With this, I extend to the Kiva lender what I hope is a respectful little glimpse into what happened here on Friday and what happens here in Cameroon.
Highs and Lows
As my fellowship continues to fly by, I’ve had many, many positive experiences, and really only one low point, which I’ll get to after reporting a little on my latest work. I’ve now been at FAPE for two weeks and it’s been fascinating to see the similarities and differences between the two organizations I’ve had the privilege of working with. FAPE is a much smaller organization than Friendship Bridge and FB has access to many more resources, as they are based out of Colorado and therefore have various sources of U.S. support. FAPE is a completely local organization, with a purely Guatemalan staff and board of directors. As a relatively small (less than 3,000 clients), local organization, FAPE has historically been quite limited in the loans that they can offer. Traditionally they have only offered group loans and in relatively small amounts (averaging about $250 per person). Over the years, they have acquired quite a few really good clients that have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to pay off their loans. As their businesses have grown (thanks in part to their loans as well as their entrepreneurial abilities and hard work), many of these clients have started to outgrow the small loans that FAPE has historically been able to offer. The organization clearly doesn’t want to lose these great clients, but their hands have been tied as they simply haven’t had the resources to offer larger loans. And then along comes Kiva. FAPE is now utilizing the partnership with Kiva to offer a new product: individual loans of up to $1,200. It’s been really great to interview the clients that have worked with FAPE for several years getting smaller group loans, and to hear how excited they are to now have access to more credit. While microfinance is clearly supposed to be, well, micro, these clients are taking what amounts to a relatively large sum of money to them to take larger steps in growing their businesses.
Between my time at Friendship Bridge and FAPE, I’ve interviewed over 80 clients to hear about how they’ve used their loans to invest in their business. Most of the time they’ve used the credit to buy more stuff to sell – more pigs or chickens, more inventory for their convenience store or their clothing sales, more thread and fabric for traditional weaving and embroidery. While all of these investments are clearly exactly what microfinance is about, in talking with the recipients of these relatively larger loans I’ve heard stories of even larger successes where these clients are strategizing to maximize the use of their money and investing in things with more long-term benefits. A few clients proudly reported that they had been able to pay off the last bit of the debt for their land, so now their earnings from their agricultural work are truly theirs. Other successes include paying off their market stall or being able to make a downpayment on a store of their own. As I interview these clients that have received substantially larger loans, a common theme is that they want even bigger loans. In general, they each have some sort of big purchase that they dream of, be it a truck to help them deliver their products to their customers, a house of their own for their often very large families, or a real store where they can sell their products in the formal sector, with the taste of a larger loan, they repeatedly ask for more. It definitely has me thinking about the delicate balance in microfinance, or lending in general, between the advantages of graduating to larger sums (such as discounts from buying in bulk, etc.) versus what is appropriate and responsible to give to people with few resources. While the clients clearly want more and can benefit from more, MFIs bear the tremendous responsibility of identifying what are reasonable amounts to lend to an individual. And that brings up another issue that Sergio, the director of FAPE, constantly mentions; that microfinance is not about credit reports and business records, it’s about the people. When FAPE looks into lending to a new person, they go out and meet with that person, see where they live, take a look at their business, or at least talk face-to-face about their business ideas. And when they decide to lend to an individual, it’s not really the business they are investing in, it’s the person. Overall it has been really interesting to hear this perspective and wonderful see FAPE making such good use of their partnership with Kiva to help their best clients even more.
On a completely different note, not all of my experiences have been positive. The vast majority have been amazing, but there was one low point recently and the worst part is not what happened to me, but the fact that this is a threat that so many people in this country have to deal with everyday. Last week I was on a bus, traveling with a FAPE loan officer from Guatemala City to the neighboring department of Chimaltenango, when five men with guns boarded the bus, shut the door, instructed the driver to keep driving, and proceeded to rob everyone on the bus. Overall it was as unbelievably harmless for me as such an experience can possibly be. I gave them the money I had in my pocket, which amounted to less than $2, and later they came back by and took my watch. As the lone token gringa on the bus I absolutely should have been their biggest target, so I sat and patiently waited for them to come by and take my backpack, with my camera and cell phone among other things, my wedding ring, and whatever else they might find valuable with close inspection of the foreigner. For some reason that is beyond human comprehension, that never happened. They really hardly paid any attention to me and after taking a few other people’s bags and many wallets and cell phones, they got off the bus and we continued on our trip. The loan officer I was with (Gloria) called FAPE to report the incident, and I immediately had several phone calls from a very concerned Sergio and other coworkers.
Incidences such as this are not uncommon in and around Guatemala City. I was well aware of that fact before I arrived, and I really had prepared myself mentally to be fine with handing over anything I have on me at any given time. So the robbery of my material possessions was really not all that traumatic. And other than the discomfort of seeing somewhat fake-looking guns being waved in the air and listening to general threats that they’d shoot somebody, I was subjected to no physical danger. The most disturbing part of the day was not the robbery itself, but all that I heard afterward. During the rest of the bus ride I heard story after story from other people on the bus, including Gloria, about all the robberies they had been subjected to; in their homes, their places of work, and on the road. And throughout the rest of the day as I headed to various interviews, Gloria mentioned the robbery to all we encountered and the reactions were all the same; everyone was so concerned that I had been subjected to this side of Guatemala and everyone had a similar story to tell.
So while it was unpleasant, in an odd sort of way I’m glad I had that experience. I’m here to experience the real Guatemala. I’ve had the privilege of getting dozens and dozens of small glimpses into the lives of some of the poorest of the poor in this country. And this incident, most unfortunately, really is a part of the lives these people lead. While I appreciate all the concern everyone expressed about how unfortunate it was that I had to experience that – me as a foreigner giving my time to help the people of Guatemala – what’s way more unfortunate is that this happens all the time to people who have so much less than I do and can so much less afford to have the little that they do have taken from them. I am so incredibly privileged to know that at any moment I could have any material possession I have taken from me and that I can replace it relatively easily. My only concern is my safety, which is certainly a valid concern for anyone in that situation, but really that’s it. However, 56% of Guatemalans live below the poverty line. That means that more than half the people in this country don’t have the minimum level of income needed to achieve an adequate standard of living. So to have any amount of money taken from them is so much more devastating, not just because it’s a scary experience, not just because they worry about their safety, but because they are often struggling to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads and having money and other possessions robbed from them really may result in missed meals for their children. So while I appreciate all the concern that I had to experience this, more than anything I am grateful to be that much more aware of the challenges people face in Guatemala and am reminded for what seems like the millionth time since I’ve been here of how lucky I am to have the life that I do.
Zakierík mis Amigos (Buenas Dias my friends),
My First week in Guatemala and already very impressed! Don’t know where to start because it seems I am here already a while when counting the many adventures I already had!
My long flight from Europe through several US places brought me to Guatemala City in the evening. I was picked up from the airport by a very friendly man called Viktor who brought this exhausted woman to the hostel for me a lovely horizontal rest after being wake 24 hours! The next day the mini-van brought me to Antigua where I had 2 hours to wonder around before leaving to Panajachel. Antigua is a beautiful city and – correct me if I am wrong- stated as cultural inheritance by Unesco.
Driving through the Mountains for a couple hours brings you to lovely Panajachel on the shore of lake Atitlan. This is the place I will stay the next couple of months and seeing it while driving towards it is already warming my heart. I am being dropped off at Friendship Bridge or Puente de Amistad as the Guatemalans say. I am meeting Jorge there; my main contact. We head towards the hostel. Unpack and straight to work!
The following day I get a brief introduction and we hit the road towards Sololá. This is half an hour’s drive with a bus or in the back of a pickup-truck when you miss the bus; like we did. Sololá is known for it’s traditionally dressed both man and women. Women dressed in traditional clothes, the patterns and colors according to the region they are from are seen all over Guatemala but the men aren’t wearing theirs so much anymore. They have only kept their hats. But not in Sololá: there you see the beautifully dressed man everywhere. I will work with the Sololá branch of Friendship Bridge a lot because they cover a large section of the region in need in the highlands from there.
The day before yesterday I have switched my first hostel for a lovely little apartment. The new house is one I was passing by in the morning and thought: if that could be my house… well there I am now and I feel very happy there! It’s a small studio with my own little kitchen and it’s at the end of a nice hammock bridge a bit outside of the busy town of Pana.
But let me tell you about work; at my first meeting in Sololá I felt like a giant in a porcelain closet. In the Netherlands I am certainly not one of the tallest but the women here reach barely my shoulder and speak hardly any Spanish but mostly Quiché or are so shy they don’t say they speak Castillano. I wish I could speak some of their language to tell them how stupid I feel I can’t speak their language. Most of the women have had more micro finances and this way they managed to take control over their own life’s more bit by bit. We smiled a little bit to each other and when the pictures were taken we felt a bit more comfortable all together. The young –maybe 5 year old- son of one of the women was passing me over and over again while putting his hand shortly on my knee and look at me. It was the quietest thing to see how his curiosity won from his shyness!
The next day we took a bus to Santa Clara where Jorge would show me the art of interviewing once more. The journey took about 2,5 hours and the waited another hour on a small doorstep because the loan officer was held up. This wasn’t a problem; this way Jorge and I had a bit more time to get to know each other since we are going to work together the next 3 months. The dependence on the facilitadoras as the loan officers are called here is big: they only know the streets or houses the meetings are held. There are no street names or directions. These ladies speak the local language and are well known by the entrepreneurs because they also take care of the additional trainings such as credit control, hygiene, create more self esteem, and even sometimes gymnastic lessons as we found out that day! The people in Santa Clara are very open and we were buenas-diassing our way through the streets there: the people would even wave if you were out of reach of their voice. I caught myself staring at beautiful clothing ones and the man was waving at me to say hi. I think he didn’t see my red face after… This interview went very different from the other one because the women were very open and laughing a lot. They were very much at ease in that little backroom of one of them, and to see how Jorge connects with these women was inspiring too!
Afterwards a drive back with buses and mini-vans and on the way Jorge told me I was going to go to a meeting by myself the next day. I would be picked up at the Sololá branch at 8.30 by someone. What a surprise the next morning to see it was these two Maya women who picked me up. The two were entrepreneurs and sisters. Luckily for me they did speak Spanish and as soon we were on the streets they grabbed me by the arm and started babbling while doing some shopping before we all jumped in the bus to Nahualá. What a darlings were these two sisters Maria Magdalena -and Isabel Tamriz Chovon. And its still a nice surprise when out comes the nice cell phone and other things you didn’t expect of their traditional blouses.
Everybody in the bus was surprised and curious how I knew these two women and another woman from San José started questioning me about that. Funny: I was the gossip of town for a moment. When we arrived, almost all of the 23 women of the group were already there so I got started right away with using my new learned words: zakierík lé nubí Chanti. (Buenos Dias my name is Chanti). The women were happy and surprised I had learned some of their language and gave me a little applause! After that the question if they would understand Castillano? Well that wasn’t the case at all but luckily the loan officer was very willing to translate for me. In the beginning there was a bit hesitation but later on there was enthusiasm to answer my questions. After half an hour I walked out of the door with nice content to write my first business description! I was immediately followed by one of the sisters asking if I would be alright to find my way back. The sweet sweet woman was worried and not without a reason. I had to take a tuktuk towards the petrol station and from there buses to a sharp crossing and from there change buses into Sololá. Her explanation made it all easy and after another big hug I left feeling very humble how such a big cultural difference sometimes is not in the way of making new friends!
Sweet greetings from beautiful Guatemala
Chanti
My crazy boda-boda adventure
This past week Opportunity International-Wedco was able to finally report its loan repayments on Kiva and to its lenders (after pausing during the post-election crisis). Now I can jump into coordinating visits to do journal updates. Special thanks to the sick excel skills of my MPM, Ben Elberger.
I wanted to share a quick funny story from my travels. Many of the fellows have mentioned the various forms of transportation that we get to take around our locations. In Kenya, matatu, tuk-tuk, and boda-boda’s are the transportation staples. Last week I was heading home after leaving Kenya’s own version of Wall-Mart, Nakumatt. I took a boda-boda because I had loaded up with a couple gallons of water.
As we were going I noticed that my boda-boda driver was sweating, a lot. I’m not talking about the light sweat from a warm day, I’m talking about the kinda sweat you’d see glowing fiery red or neon green in a Gatorade commercial. While sitting behind him on the bicycle I couldn’t help but focus on the sweat droplets form around his ear lobe and I got a bit worried when I imagined it slowly flying back into my eye. So I asked him if he was feeling sick. He replied “I don’t feel so good”. Sure enough right after he uttered the last syllable the collection of droplets on his ear flew back and was aimed to hit right between my eyes. Quickly I ducked my head causing my bag with a big water jug to fall to the side of the bike throwing off the balance of the boda-boda and rubbing against the rusty spokes of the wheel. He hit the brakes yelling something unmentionable in Luo while I stuck out both my feet and thankfully we safely stopped. It was a close call and I’ll make sure to not bring large full water jugs with me the next time I take a boda-boda and make sure my driver isn’t under the weather.
Well that is my quick story, although it is nothing to the stories Nabomita could share. Also, I promise that after some comprehensive time in the field my next post will be more substantive regarding the post-election violence in Kenya and its impact upon Kiva funded businesses.
1 August 2008 at 15:31 Zack Turner, KFP Coordinator 1 comment
