Archive for September, 2008
Microfinance In Cameroon – Ten Years On
One of the most inspiring things I have seen in Cameroon is the progress made by many GHAPE borrowers over the years. GHAPE is the local NGO where I am working during my time as a Kiva Fellow in West Africa. Their aim, like many of the other hundreds of microfinance organisations around the world, is to combat poverty by bringing capital to people who have none. GHAPE sow these funds with a good handful of business advice to ensure their borrowers’ ventures grow tall.
I spent my second week visiting the small town of Belo, which is frontier territory for microfinance. Just under a year ago GHAPE chose Belo for the site of their second office, with the express purpose of reaching some of the remote villages in this lush but poor hilly district.
Under the impressive stewardship of GHAPE staffer Kenneth, capably assisted by credit assistant Miranda, the Belo branch is now meeting the needs of nearly 500 borrowers in six rural communities. I had the privilege to attend one group’s first proper meeting, a few weeks after their initial GHAPE training. As the chairperson checked his notes to ensure the procedures were being followed, the members hesitantly completed the small green slips used to record their savings. They will graduate to become borrowers only after attendance at a few more such meetings. Their first loan – they call it ‘empowerment credit’ – will be fixed at 40,000 CFA Francs ($100 /£55), which most, at least in these parts, will use to make modest investments in their farms.
Back in the town of Bamenda, I made the journey to Centre 1, in the village of Alabukam. Many of Centre 1’s borrowers were among GHAPE’s very first, taking their initial loan nearly 10 years ago. And they are justifiably proud not just of this, but also of the progress that they and their families have made. From modest beginnings, many now have empowerment credit of 500,000 CFA Francs ($ 1,250 /£700) or more and are making monthly repayments greater than their first year’s total loan amount. While many have continued to expand farm output, several borrowers have progressed to other ventures. One I interviewed had just set up the village’s first pharmacy; two others earn money by renting motorbikes to the young drivers who ferry goods and passengers to and from town.
Of course things don’t always go swimmingly, even when some British chap from Kiva is attending your meeting. One recently dragged on for four and a half hours. A group of borrowers had failed to bring any money, meaning the centre’s repayments were short by 43,500 Francs. When this happens, the rest of the centre is expected to make up the difference, which is no laughing matter when it’s a big sum like this. Cue much grumbling and discussion. But eventually a resolution was found which kept everyone fairly happy and made sure the meeting met its obligations.
Microfinance may not be a panacea, but years of hard work from GHAPE have brought results in Cameroon which are tangible. And from new groups to old I have been struck by the borrowers’ infectious enthusiasm and their genuine desire to help each other help themselves.
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.
Micro-finance in Post-Conflict: Meet OI-Wedco
It has been sometime since I’ve updated for the Kiva Fellows blog. As cliché as it is lots has happened and I’ve promised a more in depth description of the impact of the post-election crisis on micro-finance. So in baseball terminology I offer a double header (or double-dip in the vernacular of the dugout). I wanted to separate the entries. This one is about my field partner. Below is an entry more specific to the violence and its impact on three remarkable women.
I’ve been in Africa for two months and I thought I’d finally share more about my field partner, Opportunity International-Wedco. As a fellow you are caught working for two organizations simultaneously, although the missions typically align there are still interesting challenges when the organizations differ. Thankfully it hasn’t happened too much.
OI-Wedco's Main Office
Over the last several weeks I’ve been primarily working from the OI-Wedco headquarters office on the outskirts of Kisumu. My main contact has been Kimberly, an American who has been working here for nearly two years. She is a regular renaissance woman around here. Kim has been managing partner/donor relationships, consultants, hiring/firing, training new staff, among other things. I arrived into an extreme busy and tense time due to a confluence of internal and external issues. The external issues have been from the lingering impact of the post-election crisis (you can read my summary below). The internal issues include primarily HR problems. Staffing qualified positions, especially loan officers can be extremely challenging even though the unemployment rate in Kenya is around 40-50%. Due to limits of education and resources, the pool of qualified candidates is small and elusive. When I first arrived they conducted 50 interviews in a few days, so, they didn’t have much time to sit me down for conversations and training about OI-Wedco etc. Instead, I learned as I went along and jumped into preparing my travels to visit clients and sorted out the repayment sheet for their groups posted to Kiva (which hadn’t been submitted for months). Much of OI-Wedco I learned on my own and from brief casual conversations with the staff. Opportunity International is a large international organization that conducts micro-finance operations in 28 countries. They acquired WEDCO (Women’s Economic Development, something, something…they love acronyms in Africa), which was a small struggling Kenya MFI in 2006 and a few weeks they acquired another MFI based in the central province around Nairobi (which has made things interesting). Opportunity International’s growth philosophy seems to be one that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead they find local MFI’s that at the core have strong potential, but need adjustments structure and strategy. OI doesn’t seem to start MFI’s from scratch, but instead “adopts” and integrates them into their network.
At OI-Wedco, constant visitors come in and out. Most are consultants or staff from headquarters in the US, UK or elsewhere. I’ve met dozens as they visit for a week or so and leave. It makes for some interesting conversation and every day different. Ultimately, I’ve been inspired by the social and holistic mission of OI and many of the staff have beautifully expressed to me how they get purpose in working to assist their fellow Kenyans (they could be getting paid better working elsewhere).
The main product OI-Wedco offers is a group loan with a minimum of 15 people (self-help groups or trust groups). When a new group forms they get a collective bank account and apply for legal status from the local government (all together costs the group around $25). For new groups OI-Wedco loan officers offer a 5-7 week training course in various business/finance topics relevant for micro-enterprise. If a client goes clears three loans with a strong payment history they can graduate to an individual loan. That is micro-finance in action. It should provide social mobility that enables people to take incremental steps out of poverty and in this case towards more robust financial services. This group dynamic provides efficiency for OI-Wedco, while providing legitimate collateral and support for the clients. I’ve been amazed at the diversity of backgrounds and incomes for OI-Wedco clients. As you can probably tell if you have explored Kiva, most of the clients listed for funding are individuals. They do, however, have several MFI’s like OI-Wedco that work with on groups (learn more).
I found it interesting that their best clients generally come from rural villages. In order to reach out to many parts of Western Kenya they currently have five branch offices in the towns of Busia, Bungoma, Eldoret, Kisii, and Kisumu (more will expanded soon) and several one room offices in smaller towns. Having the rural areas as the stronger clients does cause problems for costs in transportation and maintaining several branch locations, but the stability, repayment, as well as mission proves its value (plus it is fun riding on the back of an OI motobike). One branch manager told me that he wished all his groups were in rural areas, if so his portfolio would have a tiny PAR (percentage at risk, the primary yardstick of micro-finance stability). He tells me that this is because the rural areas tend to have strong community ties and more responsible/mature members. His main groups with issues are in the urban areas. This he tells me, is because those groups tend to be younger, less experienced, more distractions, and less commonalities tying them to the group.
Riding Shotgun in a Matatu
The timing of the partnership is both interesting and tragic. Kiva and OI-Wedco officially became partners in early December 2007, weeks before the presidential election that sent Kenya into a whirlwind of violence, economic pause, inflation, tension, and the death of 1,500 people. I’ve met with a few clients that received their loan days before the election and used a good portion of the capital to buy stock, which many lost through looting or arson during the turmoil.
After the post-election crisis, Kiva sought to help OI-Wedco in any way. The plan was to post group loans on Kiva that were being rescheduled by OI-Wedco due to the impact of the crisis on client groups. Kiva’s policy is that a new business posted for funding must be within thirty days of the loan disbursement. Because the loans of OI-Wedco groups were only being rescheduled, not re-loaned or “topped up” as the clients like to call it, Kiva made an exception due the extraordinary challenges of the crisis.
Nevertheless, it made things messy and confusing to sort out afterwards, as I’ve been sifting through the repayment data, amounts disbursed, dates disbursed, loan terms, etc. Which made for a maddening time of reconciling the repayments schedule (my eyes are permanently cross-eyed). I discovered some of the reasons for the glitches and have been able to stabilize and I am working on getting a better system going.
Anyway, I thank you for reading this scattered and I’m guessing at some points confusing entry. All in all I am finding my fellowship to be more challenging than I thought it would be, yet more worthwhile than I ever imagined.
9 September 2008 at 08:09 Zack Turner, KFP Coordinator 3 comments
Brief Summary of the Post-Election Crisis in Kenya
The last several weeks I’ve been traveling all over West Kenya visiting groups in the branch offices of OI-Wedco to do journal updates. I return back to Kisumu with a deeply somber heart.
A few weeks ago in Kakemega I met two Kikuyu single mothers from a Kiva funded group. They told me about how they lost everything after the post-election violence. During the turmoil their shop and clothing stock was burned because of their tribal background. They fled to an IDP (internally displaced persons, essentially refugees in their own country) camp run by the UN and stayed for five months. They left the camp because of its awful conditions, and now sell cloths for a vendor and make a measly fifty schillings a day (less than a dollar).
An IDP camp in Kenya
Another woman that I met was Agripina. She is also a member of a Kiva funded group. As a result of the violence she lost everything she owned, her vehicle, house, salon, and car were all burned the evening of December 28th when Mwai Kibaki was officially announced winner of the presidential election. Agripina was a victim of the violence even though she is Luhya (the majority tribe in Kakamega) because she is married to a Kikuyu man. They fled far away to an IDP camp in Nakuru. All of this happened when she was six months pregnant and thankfully she gave birth to her first child, a healthy baby boy on March 11th inside the camp.
What could I say? What could I do?
These weren’t sob stories played up to solicit a handout as touts falsely do on the streets of Nairobi and Kisumu. These were the raw, compelling, and honest stories of the impact of the foolish chaos of the post-election crisis upon three specific women.
I’d like to do my best to explain the post-election crisis in Kenya.
*****Summary
Leading up to the presidential election held in Kenya on December 27, 2007. Several candidates were on the ballot, but the country knew that it would come down to two candidates that would battle for the presidency (much like a particular countries two party system).
Incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, and his former political ally, Raila Odinga, were the two primary challengers. Kibaki is part of the largest tribe in Kenya, the Kikuyu’s, who have had most of political power since independence and the majority live in central Kenya. Of the three presidents in Kenya’s history two have been Kikuyu’s and are notorious for preferential favoritism by giving influential political posts to other Kikuyu’s despite experience or ability.
Raila Odinga is a Luo, which is the third largest tribe in Kenya and most in his tribe live in Western Kenya (where I am based). During his campaign he rallied other tribes under his constituency in opposition to the Kibaki and the Kikuyu’s. It is disappointing that modern democracies in the developing world don’t uniting people to a political party by issues and platforms and instead resort to an easier leverage of tribal background and thus vehemently divide the electorate.
The day after the election as votes were being counted, (media coverage is as rapid as American cable news) Odinga had a significant lead and his party prematurely claimed victory, as the day progressed a swift and suspicious swing in vote tabulations showed Kibaki closing the gap and eventually winning the election.
On December 30th the other tribes grew discontent of the corrupt favoritism and alleged/assumed vote rigging, and there was widespread discontent. The perpetual marginalization spurred a rage of Luo’s and other tribes attacking Kikuyu’s and their establishments in the west while Kikuyu’s responded with attacks against Luo’s and others in the central province. Gangs and militias became small armies and neighborhoods and villages became the battlegrounds. Police and soldiers were sent in to create peace, but they are also accused of attacking innocent people. (I met a member of Kiva funded group who showed me a scar near his ankle from a bullet during the violence)
The violence was a tragic mess that left 1500 people dead, 250,000 people displaced (estimates), millions of dollars of damages to residences, businesses, and goods, and resulted in a period of zero economic activity that impacted every Kenyan as well as landlocked East African nations that rely on transporting their goods through Kenya. I met a recently hired loan officer last week who told me his story. He is a Luo from the Kisumu area, who went to college in Nairobi and got a job working for a start up telecommunications company. For the last few years he poured his life into building the company and his family, the day after the election, the entire companies headquarters were set ablaze (the founder is Kikuyu). They lost millions of dollars of equipment, but most importantly they lost the company and place of work for many people. He was bitter and angry towards the reckless thoughtlessness of the violence, they attacked the business without acknowledging that Luo’s worked there too.
It is important to remember that this crisis isn’t as simple as categorizing a group as bad and good, innocent or guilty, right or wrong. Each side has those that are to blame and each side has those that were innocent victims. Up to this year Kenya had been held as an exemplary developing African state, yet the violence revealed that tribalism still runs deep and that generalizations and hostilities had been on edge for years.
It was devastating and destructive chaos and an absolute miracle that Kofi Annan was able to negotiate a peace by creating a grand coalition government, perhaps the greatest legacy of one of the world’s great statesman. Many international observers were concerned that the crisis could have scaled to match the genocide of Rwanda in the mid-nineties.
After the coalition government was brokered on February 28th the violence stopped. Order was restored and people went back to rebuilding their lives.
*****
After my time in Kakamega, I could do nothing but think about the dark, poignant eyes of Grace, Anne, and Agripina. The pain and loss that they suffered is beyond anything I’ll ever be able to fully comprehend.
My heart is feels like lead, it is heavy seeing how we humans can still resort to the most unimaginative answer to our problems with violence.
It leaves me with the simple question of HOW? How could this happen?
Lack of hope is my best answer and may be too simple.
Nevertheless, it is hopelessness that can lead to desperation of doing unthinkable things.
Hopelessness is what fueled the post-election violence in Kenya because people saw no other hope towards the injustices of an illegitimate corrupt government and it is hopelessness that perpetuates some of the greatest ills in our world.
Grace, Anne, and Agripina have every reason to be hopeless, yet with bold courage continue on with the belief in making something better for themselves and for their children.
Kiva doesn’t only distrubute loans to the poor…Kiva distributes hope.
9 September 2008 at 07:44 Zack Turner, KFP Coordinator 6 comments
A date with Colonel Mathieu and Why Kiva?
I’ve had a pretty frustrating day here in Beirut. To those who plan on traveling, a bit of advice…don’t loose your passport. Especially not in Lebanon. I felt like I was trapped in that scene from Battle of Algiers where Colonel Mathieu is unceremoniously perched atop his desk answering the questions of reporters either with an endless moral treatise or a flippant plume of smoke from his Gauloises and a shake of his head. Afan in the background blowing thick air around around the office, a woman in the corner pecking at a typewriter from the 20′s… Except in my case there were several dozen Colonel Mathieu’s,at least 10 office buildings, and more “regulations, Habibe” than even the aforementioned military man could have stomached.
So, I’ll let my thoughts cool, and as per my last promise and inresponse to some comments (thanks for those, I love the feedback), a bit more about al Majmoua and the role Kiva plays in this whole microfinance thing…
(Disclaimer: I was not a finance major, so I shall do my best to relate the financial info as I have interpreted it to those who are still new like me. For those better versed, feel free to correct me where I go astray…)
Majmoua began as a microcredit program in 1994 under the stewardship of Save the Children. Until about 1999 alMajmoua lent primarily to women and primarily to solidarity groups, not individual borrowers. This of course followed the Grameen model by using the “moral guarantee” of a lending group where there was a scarcity of fixed assets from which to draw. Just before the new millennium however, al Majmoua began expanding its reach and opened up its loans to men and to individual borrowers. Now, with a staff of nearly 90 and $8 million in outstanding loans, al Majmoua has broken its operations into various departments tailored to the needs of very different populations. Under the microcredit umbrella, the Poverty group lending division dispenses loans starting at $100 which are mainly geared toward rural women who have few marketable skills. There is also a non-Poverty group lending division which focuses on those who have established businesses but still lack the capital needed to take out individual loans or loans from an established bank. Al Majmouaalso provides individual loans to more established customers, vulnerable workers (who aren’t borrowing money for their own business, but cannot access formal credit markets), seasonalworkers (in agriculture or tourism, who experience periods of access to capital and periods of no access to capital), families who request home improvement loans, as well as a few Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Alongside their credit services, al Majmouaalso provides their clients with financial education, business management assistance, and skills training. This last opportunity is unique in that al Majmoua tries to tailor their training to skills which will have an immediate and significant impact on their clients ability to work in their region. Many vocational schools here teach skills such as hairdressing, tailoring, or car repair that have already saturated the various markets. Training unskilled workers in these trades provides little benefit. 90% of these non-credit services are being given to women (about 4,000 people in total) and are largely subsidized by grants given to Majmoua from various international donors. That said, the credit side of al Majmoua has been self-sufficient since about 2004. Since then, a small profit has enabled the MFI to lower interest rates and expand their portfolio. Still, in order to sustain more growth, al Majmoua needs more money.
Generally, in order to have enough capital to sustain growth, any MFIwhich is not grant-subsidized will need to borrow money from one of the huge international investors such as Deutche Bank, Merrill Lynch etc in order to provide loans to its developing entrepreneurs. When the MFI makes a profit (from interest on their loans), as Al Majmouadid in 2006, this money becomes available to increase the number of loans that can be given out, but often the demand for loans outstrips the amount of safely available capital. Thus the MFI must themselves borrow in order to lend. While they aren’t borrowing enormous sums by international banking standards, the MFI’s are still being charged 10% interest on these loans from the Big Banks. Let’s say Majmoua, for example, looks to borrow $1 million to replenish its stock of capital and keep expanding its reach within Lebanon. If that $1 million comes from a Big Bank, the MFI is passing on a $100,000 cost to its clients, who will see this in the form of higher interest rates for their micro-loans. If the MFI can obtain a Aaacredit rating from one of the few international credit rating agencies (basically the highest possible garunteethat the company has a stable portfolio of investments), then it can get its capitalfrom a local investment bank at a lower rate, say 6% interest. The Aaa rating is difficult to obtain however, involves its own costs in auditing etc, and is still a significant sum.
Enter Kiva. Kivaintroduces an entirely new concept by offering a source of investment capital for the micro-banks at 0% interest. Because Kiva is given free use of PayPal, there are no transaction costs either. That means that when an individual logs onto Kiva and donates $25, that $25 goes directly, in whole, to the MFI of choice, and is in turn lent out without any cost to the MFI. The money is shipped from the debit card of the donor in New York to the account of the MFI in Beirut to the hand of the dress seamstress on Abd al Wahabstreet. This is a truly revolutionary concept, because it gets rid of a whole lot of middle men. Yes, you say, but isn’t the MFI still making money off of poor people? In a way, yes. But the alternatives aren’t so great, the on-the-ground costs are still enormous, and as I mentioned they do much more than just lend money, i.e. job training. Wa’Allah, perhaps that’s a discussion for another time.
Next time: who are the Majmoua clients? Until then, m’aa salaama, with peace,
JJ, fee Beirut
What’s in a name?
Well, I’m back in the U.S., which means back to the old grad-student-grind. (There is, however, the new excitement of teaching French 1 for the first time here in Beautiful Berkeley, where I have hardly seen a cloud since my return.) I’ve had a few things to finish up for my Kiva fellowship in Senegal, though, since my last week in the field was spent… in the field. We ran around trying to pack as many interviews as we could into the last few days; but, as if to mock our efforts at productivity, fate struck me with a quick bout of travel-related discomfort that prevented us from visiting our ecovillage clients at Palmerin, where coincidentally there was supposed to be a giant beachside party that week.
Looking back at all the pictures, notes, and data that I now have to make sense of, names and places that three months ago sounded hopelessly foreign resonate with meaning — and return to my memory tinged with nostalgia. “Assane Gueye” is no longer just “ecovillage president, member ISTD group, preschool, Thiaroye-sur-mer” but a hilarious friend and colleague who keeps a smile on his face and the jokes rolling out — the art of teasing, called tooñ or taquinerie, is highly developed among all Senegalese friends and greatly contributes to the fun had by foreigners such as myself — in spite of the fact that his group’s Kiva-financed preschool for underprivileged children is on the brink of closing. Their landlord of three years kicked them out so he could do construction on the building; but the school’s problems had been wearing it down well before that, since many parents cannot afford the $6 per month that the school asks in order to function. The fate of the project is precarious, yet Assane’s cheer and optimism remain steadfast. As he spent his holiday walking through the rain and mud with us (while gently mocking me the whole way) to visit Kiva’s other projects in Thiaroye, a suburb of Dakar that is perpetually jammed with traffic since it straddles the one highway that leads out of town, each client we saw thanked him for his tireless work managing their loans — a volunteer job. But, unlike other persons of community importance who I’ve met throughout Senegal, you would never know from meeting him that he is so respected. Young, unassuming, and witty, his presence reminds you that when your efforts don’t work out, pressing on is not just doable, but doable while enjoying life too.
Assane at the Thiaroye ecovillage office
Or, I could cite the long lists of names which the president of the Ndiaye Ndiaye ecovillage, located several hours southeast of Dakar in the town of Fatick, asked us to diligently record each time we met a group there out of concern for the precise accuracy of our records. Names like Wanguène Sène, Dieynaba Niane, the two Yadikone Ndiaye’s, and Ndiass Diouf (whose group has the unusual activity of making furnaces fueled by cow manure as an alternative to expensive butane stoves) fill this part of my notepad. But such tongue-twisters can be anything but meaningless when I look at them now. One of these groups, which mercifully for me happens to have the simple French name of “Trois Cocotiers,” gave me a heck of a welcome! The women hadn’t all arrived when we first went to their leader’s house to meet them; we waited for a while, but since it appeared they would be taking their time, we left to meet other groups. When we returned an hour or two later, everyone was assembled. But to make up for their tardiness, the women jumped out of their seats one by one and proceeded to dance for a good 15 minutes.
They even sent someone to go fetch the drums to add some atmosphere.
This spectacle more than made up for the beach party I missed in Palmerin.
It is astounding to me to think of how rich my memories of Senegal, a country I knew only through books and the Bissap Baobab restaurant in San Francisco before, have become: foggy ideas and empty names have taken on sharp contours and been colored in with both joy and worry. What will happen to ISTD’s school, or more importantly, its kids?
My only regret is that summers are so short. I can’t wait to go back.
Same Same But Different
In Hanoi the tourist stalls in the old quarter are crammed with all manner of trinkets for tourists to buy. T-shirts are of course popular and there are many that contain that ubiquitous saying ‘same same but different’. Usually I ignore the persistent hawkers ( while fighting back the urge to proudly declare that I am more than a mere tourist ) but events over the past couple of weeks have made me actually stop and think a little more about ‘same same but different’.
I am first generation Australian of Greek heritage. I grew up very much in a Mediterranean household, where family and food is at the core of life. I vividly remember the sense of bewilderment I felt when I went to barbecue of a friend and was told to bring my own meat and drinks. What ? An invitation like that would cause confusion amongst my family, as for Greeks a hosts’ table is laden with food and people fight for the “honour” of paying a bill after a night out.
Although you would not think it, the Vietnamese share quite a few similarities to their Mediterranean “cousins”, as family and food are also at the core of Vietnamese life. For the Vietnamese I would add a third pillar – business and the obtaining of money. This is decidedly lower down the list for Mediterraneans with their “live for today and tomorrow will take care of itself” attitude, although I imagine that if you live in a country where significant poverty is not an issue, you would have a more carefree attitude to money.
Another similarity is how loud the Vietnamese talk! I have a voice that is loud and rises further and quickens in direct proportion to my passion. My Mediterranean friends and I can all talk at the same time and what to others may appear as talking over the top of each other, to us is normal. You don’t stay quiet in a Mediterranean environment – you have your say and you do it emphatically. I sometimes struggle with this in the Australian business culture, but in Vietnam it’s not a problem. I often sit in on meetings where 3 conversations are happening at the same time and the voices get increasingly louder as a point is debated. Sometimes it sounds like they are angry with each other, but they are not – it’s just the very direct conversation style. If a phone rings while sitting in a bus, the phone call recipient will answer and their conversation will boom throughout the bus. This initially surprised me as I expected a more restrained conversational style, but my Mediterranean background helped me adapt very quickly.
I love being Australian. I think that if you grow up in Australia you have truly won life’s lottery, as you do for the most part grow up in a land of tolerance, opportunity and fairness, not to mention outstanding climate and physical beauty. One of things I treasure most is Australia’s multi-cultural background. I love the fact that when you travel you always feel that things are a little bit familiar because you might have seen or tasted something similar as a result of the Italian, Chinese, Portugese, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Lebanese or South African family that lives down the road. Of course Australia is not perfect, but overwhelmingly you have fewer things to complain about as an Australian than you would as a Vietnamese or any of the other countries that Kiva is active in. For me however there is a ‘but’ and the ‘but’ comes in the form of Australia’s isolation. I have often thought that if we could take Australia and just move it further up, then it truly would be perfect. I know many of my countrymen revel in Australia’s relative isolation and would be horrified by this thought, but not me. I wish we were closer to the action. That we weren’t so comfortably complacent. And most of all I wish that Europe wasn’t a whole day away. But I guess you can’t have everything. And after extensive travel and if you consider that the Unites States has had 8 years of Bush and his cronies in charge, there still is no other place I would rather call home.
One of the things I am enjoying however about my Kiva Fellowship is feeling like I am a global citizen. An Australian living in Hanoi, working for an American group with an Asian micro-finance organisation. I love hearing the multitude of backgrounds, perspectives and accents. Last week I attended a micro-finance forum at which over 500 delegates from all around the world were present. I had dinner with Cambodians and Dutch, swapped ideas with a woman from Papua New Guinea and had a lively discussion with someone from Bangladesh.
The more you travel and live abroad, the more you realise that although cultures are different and should be celebrated as such, there are also lots of areas where we are the same. That to me is wonderfully reassuring. Maybe I will get myself one of those t-shirts after all.
Who needs Traffic Lights… We have Honking!
I couldn’t really decide how to start this blog. I’m a bit new to the business. I always assumed blogs were just a bit pretentious unless you had something terribly important to say, but now that I have to write one of these things for my Kiva fellowship, I think I’m growing into the idea. Maybe it’s because now I have something important to say. Was that a touch of prentention? Alas, let’s just hope that someone reads these… Ahlan wa sahlan! I’m JJ. I’m a Virgo, I like fitted hats, and I recently decided that the best way to put off making any major life decisions after graduating with my ever-helpful BA in International Relations was to save up some money, beg others for more, and fly to Beirut where I know nobody and have only a vague notion of what awaits me when I arrive. No, in all truth, I was extremely moved by the chance to get involved with Kiva in a part of the world that is very close to my heart and is so important for us all to better understand. I think I’ve been given a truly unique opportunity to get on board with Kiva– and the world of microfinance in general– at a time when the social entrepreneurship movement is really gathering strength. I hope that I can share some of what I learn along the way with those of you who are kind enough to read along with me.
I will be spending the next 10 weeks working with one of the leading Lebanese microfinance institutions, Al Majmoua, and soaking up as much of this incredible country as possible. I’ve been in Beirut now for about five days, and I’ve decided to decide nothing just yet. Beirut has been at various times terrifying, invigorating, frustrating, beautiful, mysterious, and hilarious.
Echoing a trend from the blogs of many of my fellow Kiva Fellows, my first exciting experience here was vehicular. Not vehicular homicide, nor even manslaughter but damn near close. You see, Road Rules don’t exist in Beirut per say: it’s more like, whoever is on the road, rules. At least that’s what every driver thinks. Taxiing from the airport, my cab driver proved his worth by skillfully weaving between oncoming mopeds and inter-city minivans who cared little for the appropriate direction of travel. Clearly my guy was from the mountains, because the ride was much more slalom skiing than it was driving. Most drivers here don’t hesitate to drive the wrong way down roads, drive backwards down roads, stop in the middle of highways to pick up passengers, blow through what few stoplights exist, or park in any direction or on every conceivable inch of open asphalt. And then, of course, there’s the incessant honking, which, roughly translated, could mean anything from: “Hey, good morning,” to “Do you need a taxi?” to “Are you SURE you don’t need a taxi?” to “You had better move because I’m probably not stopping.” There are of course variations in between, and its always an exciting part of any walk to find out who wins those epic showdowns between oncoming cars who meet on a one-way road.
I spent much of my first weekend in Beirut getting lost in order to get my bearings, as every good traveler knows to do when most streets don’t have names and addresses are described by the big buildings near which they are found. I ventured out looking for an apartment to rent and instead took a grand tour of the city. I walked down the sea hugging promenade of Corniche, through the center of Lebanese nightlife in Gemayzeh, around the luxury condos of Achrifiyeh, across the former Green Line into neighborhoods plastered with posters of Hassan Nasrallah, and eventually found myself standing in Place De Martyres, for many reasons the heart of Beirut, though nothing stands there now save a small iron statue and a tent-museum honoring Rafiq Hariri. The surrounding neighborhood of Solidere was left a wasteland after it had been the epicenter of the horrible violence of the nearly 30-year Lebanese Civil War. Now, it is an haute-culture heaven, paved with granite and infused with all sorts of chic cafes, alongside such traditional Lebanese shops as Salvatore Ferragamo, Porsche, and Dunkin Donuts.
This of course is the new Beirut. And though every block has its share of condemned buildings still bearing gaping wounds from decades of shelling, the center of this city is as far from the past as can be. It seems like that was the intention. As is the case in so many modern developing capitals, Beirut is full of contrast. This point was reinforced during my first field visits at Al Majmoua with Kiva clients, but I promise, I will get to that for the next post. I fear I’ve written too much already. Until the next time, m’aa salaama, with peace,
- JJ, fee Beirut
21 Days on the Road (Part I)
On August 24th I left Dar es Salaam for a 3-week trip to central Tanzania to train BRAC branches on Kiva in three other regions. Here’s a glimpse into the first 11 days of my 21 days on the road:
Day 1:
Seven hours on the bus from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma has kicked off with a traveling saleswoman making her pitch for soaps, toothpastes, and aloe vera at full volume to the entire bus for at least 30 minutes. Perhaps I would mind her hard-sell less if I were able to understand more than 1 out of every 12 words (I do learn, however, that “aloe vera” is the same in English and Swahili. Good to know). When I arrive in Dodoma I discover that the method used by the bus company employee to match bags to owners is to write in permanent marker on the front of the bag the seat the owner is sitting in. F-1 will forever be a memorable place for me.
The Branded Backpack
Day 2:
During an evening battle with hoards of mosquitoes I get to talking with the Dodoma Area Manager, a Bengali beginning his 5th month of a 3-year commitment in Tanzania. He comments on the number of mosquitoes here and compares it to the mosquitoes in Bangladesh. I mention that I am trying to avoid malaria and am taking medication at which point he interrupts me—there is medication for malaria???? At first I think he’s joking (after all, there is malaria in Bangladesh) and then remember I’ve never heard him make a joke. Attempting not to appear shocked, I try to explain that there are these things called prophylaxis that one can take while in a malaria-infected area to try to prevent contracting malaria. Unconvinced by this idea, he maintains a puzzled look on his face and says “malaria is not so bad. I’ve had it many times.” After our conversation ends I walk into my room and promptly take my Malarone.
Day 3:
After a successful training for one of BRAC’s Dodoma branches, it’s time to head into the field to begin collecting Business Profiles for the Kiva website with some of the Community Organizers (CO’s). As we prepare to leave, one CO asks me with little optimism if I know how to ride a bike. I respond that I do. The entire staff finds this extremely amusing (I’m not exactly sure why, but one week later I will have the same effect on another branch office when they learn I know how to ride a bike). Within 50 meters of beginning our journey in the abandoned, desert-like neighborhood, locals come out of no where to call in wonder at the muzungu on the bike. A muzungu on foot is one thing, but on a bike is a true novelty. Fifty meters later, I break the chain on the bike. Way to look like a bike-riding expert!
Day 4:
I spend the day visiting groups in a region more remote than any I’ve seen. The uproar my presence creates amongst children and adults alike is a distraction from the meetings we attempt to hold. Our first stop is at the home of a client next to an elementary school. Within five minutes of my arrival, the elementary school has emptied and stands outside of the house. Trying to be sociable, I go outside to say hi to the children who are eagerly trying to sneak a peak, but I miscalculate. The entire student body runs away in fear at my approach. With the help of some local women I coax them back and am able to speak with the kids a little, but none want to come within five feet of me, unsure what will happen. The awe at my presence continues as we walk to another client’s home. A small child sees me and asks if I am higher than God. Not sure what to make of a white person and having never seen one before, this particular child isn’t sure if I am worthy of worship. The Branch Manager and I quickly assert that I’m just like him and not to be worshipped.
Day 5:
Have you ever wondered what happens when you go through your closet and donate bags full of old clothes and shoes to charities? Well I have your answer. They go to Africa to be sold by small-business owners. The second lives of these clothes often come with a very different owner. The line between men’s and women’s clothing is erased as I see manly laborers spitting and pulling up their sagging pants, only to look at their shoes and find they are purple flip flops with sparkles and flowers. Men wearing women’s jeans is also a common occurrence. Other unexpected items have cropped up reminding me of home and making me wonder where the original owners are. Today it’s a BRAC client in a Harvard University t-shirt. Then one of the CO’s creates a stir in the office while we debate whether her new shoes are men’s or women’s. This is the first I’d heard any recognition that there is a distinction. When called upon to state my opinion on the white loafers I realize that they do look a little like men’s shoes. But then again, what’s the difference?
Day 6:
The contrast between the types of businesses BRAC’s clients own is illuminated. Visiting one business I am confronted with a fruit and vegetable stand brimming with every variety of both. I next visit a client’s vegetable stand that is located in front of her house and consists of no more than four tree branches supporting two planks of wood and shaded by a potato sack. She has some tomatoes and five bunches of bananas for sale.
Veggie Stand, V.1
Veggie Stand, V.2
Day 7:
Hit with a stomach bug, I do little poverty alleviation today. I have spent my week in Dodoma in a guest room at one of the BRAC branches here. On this, my last day before moving to another city, the entire branch staff comes into my room every few minutes to see how I am feeling. Unconvinced that constant company is the best way to rest and recover I want to be frustrated but can’t help but appreciate that there are people concerned about my well-being. Us lone-travelers rarely expect anyone to know or notice if something is amiss. In this case, the week spent with this staff has fostered a close bond. That, and I think they are a little freaked out seeing a foreigner sick. They try to convince me to go to the hospital, in part because no one wants to have my death on her conscience. The cook is particularly concerned as he frantically tries to feed me more food, despite that he is deathly afraid that his food is the cause of my problems.
Day 8:
Another bus ride—this time from Dodoma to Shinyanga. The bus departs two hours late and the ride lasts 7 hours. I begin panicking at the end of hour number 1 when we hit unpaved road. Fearing this means 6 more hours of intense bumpiness and massive wafts of dust attacking us through the windows (which we had to leave open or else we would roast to death) I trick myself into falling asleep during the most uncomfortable part of the ride. I wake up two hours later when we rejoin paved road and am thrilled that I’ve found such a constructive way to kill physically uncomfortable time.
Day 9:
It’s the subtle differences from region to region that reveal variances in inhabitants’ standard-of-living. Some generalizations based on my experiences: group meetings of the 20 individuals in a large group are all held at the home (or more specifically, in the yard) of the group chairperson. In Dar es Salaam, we attend group meetings where all members are seated on chairs in a circle. In Dodoma, the group chairperson brings out a large, immaculate woven mat on which all 20 members sit. In Shinyanga, groups squeeze onto tattered tarps not large enough to fit them all. Differences in the dress of the clients bear similar contrast. In Dar, it is not uncommon for the members to arrive in dresses, both western-looking and locally hand-made. In Shinyanga many women wear a combination of Kanga (local inexpensive died fabrics) and discarded t-shirts from America. There is a relationship between mat-style, dress, and the monthly income for each of these women. As we complete loan descriptions to be posted on Kiva’s website we ask what their monthly profit is prior to receiving a loan. In Dar it’s almost always above 150,000 Tsh (nearly $150) and even goes as high as 500,000 Tsh. In Dodoma, the women I meet typically earn a monthly profit of between 50,000 Tsh and 100,000 Tsh. In Shinyanga, most women I meet do not earn more than 20,000 Tsh per month (or $20).
Day 10:
“How old are you?” the CO and I ask one small group leader in Swahili. She confidently declares “31.” We proceed. “How old are your children?” Pause. Blank stare. Women sitting around the small group leader begin to try to puzzle through with her to identify the ages of her 8 children. She takes a guess at her oldest: 23. I let it slide for now, even though it seems quite unlikely that both of the ages she has answered could be correct. From there she tries to remember for how long she was not pregnant before having her next child: “21.” Then she says “19.” She pauses for a moment and asks how many she’s listed. Several minutes later, eight ages have been listed ranging from 4 months to 21 years. I hate to harp on this obviously difficult question but Kiva and its lenders find it implausible when they see ages listed that require the mother to have been under 10 years old when first giving birth. So I ask, “how old were you when you gave birth to your first child?” This she knows. “18” she says confidently. Ah, “so are you 41?” Hmmm. She’s unconvinced. She looks around. The women around her remain engaged in helping her deduce the answer. Finally a light bulb goes off as one of her friends says “yes, you’re 41!” Mystery solved.
Day 11:
When first looking up BRAC Tanzania clients on Kiva you may be struck by something: almost every picture is a group of women standing indoors against a blank wall looking miserable. I came here wondering why this is so universally the case for BRAC’s clients, and today I’ve found my answer. I’m training my 5th branch and for the 5th time, I see that the CO’s have never before held a camera. I’m trying to illuminate the nuances of making the subjects smile and arranging them outdoors so that they look more natural, all the while the COs can’t for their lives figure out how to get in the viewfinder the portion that they are hoping to photograph (I guide their hands to tilt the camera up slightly). Natural-looking pictures will have to wait—for now I’m more concerned with the heads of the clients making it into the shot.
Now, onto the next 10 days! To see all of BRAC Tanzania’s currently fundraising loans, click here.
Cochabamboozled
I have eaten more in the past six days than in my previous five weeks in Bolivia. Cochabambinos pride themselves on living in the eating capital of Bolivia, and the third question people ask you after “What’s your name?” and “Where are you from?” is usually “How do you like the food?” The local specialty is pique, a big pile of beef, chicken, sausage, hot dogs, tripe, chicharrones, hard-boiled eggs and udder (udder!) stacked 8-12 inches high on a bed of french fries. Ronny and Paola, AgroCapital’s Credit Manager and Kiva Coordinator, were good enough to take me out for a culinary introduction to Cochabamba soon after my arrival. Thanks to the pique, my planned envigorating evening jog turned into severe food coma and falling asleep at 7pm with all of my clothes on. This microfinance thing is exhausting.
Pique
I’m lucky enough to get a tour of Bolivia along with my Kiva fellowship, since I’m spending time at three different AgroCapital branch offices: a month in El Alto, a month in Cochabamba and a month in Santa Cruz. There’s a lot of tension between different regions in Bolivia, namely between the eastern, resource-rich “half-moon” regions that want autonomy and the western highlands, which are poorer, mostly indigenous Aymara, and back the Evo Morales government and its socialist agenda. El Alto is almost 100% behind Morales, Cochabamba is somewhat divided, and Santa Cruz is mostly against Morales. It’s painful to see how much time and effort is spent on regional bickering and political posturing in a country where there’s so much to be done in terms of infrastructure and development. And as far as I can tell there’s no easy solution in sight–though more than 60% of the country backs Morales, accoring to the August 10th referendum, the other 40% controls most of the country’s wealth and natural resources and doesn’t plan on ceding them any time soon. This rich-poor, east-west dichotomy goes way back, as does a tradition of corrupt politicians and dictators who serve the wealthy elite. Bolivia has seen 193 presidential coups in its history as an independent nation (an average of one every 10 months, according to Wikipedia), so many that the presidential palace is known as the Palacio Quemado (“burned palace”). I asked one of the loan officers what he thought of the current government and he responded, “Well, it sure has lasted a long time.” This made me smile–my government sure has lasted a long time too, but that’s not exactly on its list of merits for me 
.
Bolivia is a beautiful country, making all of the hard times it’s fallen on even more tragic. Weekend excursions have taken me on a glacier climb, hiking and eating trout on beautiful Lake Titicaca–this weekend looks like a climb up the world’s tallest statue of Jesus and a trip to the Tunari national park. And probably a few generous portions of meat and potatoes.
Climbing the Chica Colla glacier with Dan, Doug, Martin and Emmett
Lake Titicaca
Phnom Penh Notes: Sweaty Jeans, Magic, and Black Smoke
After 7 movies, 4 made-for-TV dramas, 1 documentary, 2 Sudoku games, 1 confiscated Swiss army knife, 1 – $70 extra baggage weight charge, 5 airplane meals of chicken, chicken, and more sai mouan (chicken in Khmer), and 3 different planes, I am finally in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I believe I am the last of the Kiva Fellow 5 Class reporting for duty, but don’t quote me on that, and I just can’t believe I am here after all those months of jealousy and admiration from reading the other fellow’s blogs and notes from the field.
I arrived yesterday morning around 9am to the smile and hand shake of Vichet, one of the Kiva Coordinators at CREDIT – MFI, the MFI I will be working with starting Monday. It was comforting to find someone meeting me since I had not been to Cambodia before. We hopped in the car unfortunately without my bags, and we drove directly to CREDIT where I met some colleagues, and exchanged names, ages, job duties, and aspirations of language acquisition (Sopheap and I think may exchange Khmer lessons for Spanish lessons. We’ll see). They then dropped me off at the guesthouse I will call home for the next 2 weeks or until I find a place to really call home.
My impressions of Phnom Penh have shifted and taken on new shape over the past 24 hours. If I had sat down to write this early last night, you would have read about the potential trash problem in the city with plastic bottles, cans, food items, and other things strewn along the sides of most roads. You would have read about the oppressive heat and humidity, and slight unidentifiable smell in the air. You would have read about the traffic problems brought on by lack of basic infrastructure and city planning. You basically would have read a big, cranky, grouchy, western-centric story since I had not slept well in the plane, and the airline had lost my bags leaving me sweating in jeans. Have you ever experienced 95 degree weather with nearly 100 percent humidity in jeans? I don’t recommend it, and I can guarantee, if you ever are, you will be cranky too.
To my relief, I called the airport and my bags came later in the evening. And of course when I went to pick them up, they were the last two to pop out from behind the conveyor belt curtain at the airport. For some reason fate always seems to enjoy teasing you when you are grouchy in sweaty denim.
I lugged my bags up 2 flights of stairs, grabbed the coolest outfit I packed and got ready for a late dinner. I headed out down the street, and all of sudden the street turned into a magical place with twinkling lights, warm breezes, kids laughing and playing badminton, tuk-tuk drivers playing cards waiting for the next expat needing a ride, all with lightning lighting up the distant sky. Seriously, it was like some magical fairyland had swallowed the city I knew only a few grumpy hours early.
Somehow my new world morphed with simply a change of clothes and the reclamation of my personal items. Beyond morphing without notice, Cambodia is simply another world, another culture, and I have a lot to learn.
Some small, but important things I have noted so far that I need to get used to. The light switches are opposite here (or at least in my guesthouse). Up is off and down is on. Your normal walking pace will have you sweating after 5 paces, so slow is good. Despite wanting to crank the air conditioner on, it will make you sick so just give in and acclimate. The water, despite it looking really clean and clear, can still kill you. And if the water doesn’t kill you, crossing a major road on foot might since traffic laws are non-existent here (But really, there is no correct side of the road to drive on, and it is insane, than add an elephant or two). The moto drivers will always enjoy charging you a little extra so honed bargaining skills are needed. Lunch is between noon and 2pm for a reason, it is simply too darn hot to move. When a drop of cool water falls from the sky hitting you in the face, it means to find shelter fast since the streets are about to turn into rivers. And last, but certainly not least, when you are eating lunch in a lovely open-air café, and you see black smoke rising out of the Wat (Buddhist temple) next to you and you think it is a slightly smelly mid-afternoon incense ritual that you will learn about later, hold your breath because it is actually a body being cremated.
I learned the last one the hard way, and I am still trying to work the smell out of my memory.
I start with CREDIT-MFI on Monday, and I can’t wait to share with you further when I do.
phnom penh traffic
How to adopt a child…..
As some of you might know there is the story about the Guatemalans being a bit scared of people taking their kids for illegal adoption; apparently there was once a Japanese tourist beaten to death when he (or she I don’t know) picked up a kid.
Myself I have had kids dropped in my lab to have them sitting there for a couple of hours during a bus ride where mama already careys two others. One in tied around her back in a cloth an easily mistaken for a small package. One holding her skirt and one carried into the bus while mama balanced a basket on her head. I have also made some good friends with the neighbourhood kids because I walk crossing the hammock bridge with them every day and when we do we try to make it swing as much as possible. This to the big fun of the kids: this crazy gringa….
With this in the back of my mind it is just só hard to not want to take all those naughty little menaces with their dirty faces home.
I am used to share my food with the kids living on the streets of Peru and Colombia; over there, the waiters in the restaurant will even give them a real seat and a good treat when you invite them to share your food with them. I did this with the two shoeshine boys who shine the Panajachel calle Santander shoes. I mean who can eat 4 (!) pancakes on his own? Myself I am 34 and had never the idea I needed to have kids. Dutch women are first of all not very much the marriage kind and kids is something you might do after 36 or later… I like to chat with all the people I meet; the woman on the street, the man next to me in the bus, my colleagues and the woman who takes care of the house I rent. There are always 4 questions to start with: where are you from, what’s your age, where do you live (in Guatemala red.) and: do you have kids? And I don’t have kids.
This raises eyebrows and I have even noticed women who don’t dare to ask me more about it because they think there must be a problem if at my age (!!!) you don’t have a kid yet!
Well…. This week I went to interview this woman who lives of her tamales sales.
While I walk up the hill at the outskirts of Sololá there is this little boy running around us asking us who we are looking for. We tell him we look for Juana and he says with the biggest smile; that’s my mummy!!
And I am sorry but every time I think of this moment and my interview where the story of the little boy is unravelled I still get tears in my eyes. I have the feeling he will be in my heart forever and we only met for 30 minutes! I feel I need to go back to just hug him but also his mother for adopting him…. I wish I could do more…
Read the journal following the link below, while I work on those rough peaces in my throat….
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=13728
Homeless in Dar
Fresh off the plane, I arrived in Dar es Salaam eager to begin work with Tujijenge Tanzania as a Kiva Fellow. First task: find accommodation for the year. Without Craigslist Tanzania, the whole process promised to be daunting.
It was. Here are some of the reasons:
Go to a real estate agent, he charges you $20 for a tour of available properties. But after showing you a gaggle of multiple bedroom apartments after you ask for a single room you get the sense he’s just showing you anything and everything to get his money. “I said my budget was $600, this place costs double that!”
In addition, Dar es Salaam traffic is as horrendous as the beltway around Washington DC, but without smog checks. A few places I’ve taken a fancy to might be only 5 miles from work, but without my own mode of transportation, I’d have to take a bus to the city center, then switch onto a bus heading back the general direction I just came from – with just a slight change in angle.
Then there are the too-good-to-be-true houses where rent is $500 with air conditioning and hot water. You arrive to find a hot apartment with cold water. They say they can install an a/c unit and water heater, but it will take two weeks and the rent will be $800. Good grief. With rent being paid 6-12 months in advance, chances are you’ll be sweating all year but at least you will have cold showers to cool you off.
I saw one house I really liked. I was told the rent was $500 so I thought I could bargain down to $400. When the owner saw that a Mzungu (white person in Swahili) wanted the place, the price quickly inflated to $900…way beyond my budget. Do you see a dollar sign on my forehead? All the landlords here sure do.
Then there are the “dalali.” These unscrupulous real estate hacks are known for pulling a range of stunts to scam you. Word spread fast around town that I was looking for a place. Subsequently I’ve been contacted by several dalali. As dodgy as they are, I am desperate. So I tried a few out. If they miss your call, they call you back and let it ring long enough so you see they called. That way you call them back and they save precious cell phone credit. They tell you to meet them somewhere and then show up late and stick you with their taxi bill. They could take a bus for much cheaper but they don’t care, remember the dollar sign on my forehead? Often, a dalali says he has an apartment to show you but when you get there, tenants who have paid through December are comfortably living there. Sometimes they drag you through several cafés desperately searching out the owner’s sister’s boyfriend’s friend’s mother who has the key. You wait half an hour then they say you must come back tomorrow, but in truth there is no apartment to see. Really they are just wasting your time … and theirs. I can’t understand why they do it at all, they don’t make any money from the whole shenanigan.
And as everything takes so long to accomplish, after an entire day of searching for housing, you realize you’ve seen only two places. But you’ve spent $10 of credit on your phone and $15 on fuel.
Oh yeah, and add the Swahili language barrier to all of this.
“Bado ninatafuta nyumba ya ndoto yangu…” (Still looking for my dream home…)
While I continue searching for housing, you can support the borrowers of Tujijenge Tanzania by using the following link: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=87&status=fundRaising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_tpg=fb
Malaria & My Trip to a Nigerian Hospital
Since arriving in Nigeria, I’ve mostly been hot. When I’m not hot, I’m comfortable. Cold is a word that I reserve for specifying how I would like my bottled water. When I became chilled and goose bumps started popping on Wednesday night, I knew something was wrong.
Within one hour, my forehead was burning up. I returned home from my friend’s house and went straight for my sweatshirt and thermometer. One hundred and two point four degrees. I popped some drugs, collected an arsenal of bottled water and went to bed, telling my Bengali housemate, Rafiq, that tonight I would not be locking my door and that if I did not emerge in the morning, he should come in. I had a sneaking suspicion that this Mac truck of an illness that had hit me might be malaria – the high fever, the pounding head, the aching bones, the fatigue.
Soon after closing my door, dressing myself in socks and my warmest lounge wear and wrapping myself in my silk sleeping sheet that was usually more than warm enough for these Nigerian nights, I began to shiver. I reached for my cell phone and called Rafiq in the other room. “Do you have an extra blanket?” I asked. He brought his blanket and spent the next hour or so brining blood to my extremities by squeezing my feet, arms and hands as well as calming the headache with pressure points and head massage. I fell asleep.
In the middle of the night (around midnight – I had gone to bed at 8:30pm), my fever piqued. I cast off the blankets, tore off my shirt and lay in a pool of my own sweat. I forced myself to drink the line of bottled water that I had gathered with great foresight. I thought I’d call and tell them I wouldn’t be able to go to work tomorrow. I popped more pills in hopes of calming the fever.
As the sun broke, so had my fever. Ninety-nine point eight, much better. I almost felt whole as I called Cynthia, the woman I ride to work with, to tell her I would be spending the day in bed rather than at my desk. She suggested that she still pick me up and we go to the hospital for a malaria test. I agreed, still tired and achy.
A little delirious and still half-asleep I prepared myself for my trip to the hospital. I took money and a bottle of water…I knew that these were the most important things. I didn’t imagine I would stay long and thought that if I had forgotten anything, I could surely purchase it. Other things seemed trivial – my phone, my computer, movies, a book, my iPod, toilet paper.
Hospital Entrance
We pulled up to the hospital. It was a private hospital – one of the best in Benin City. It was a large cement building surrounded by dirt. It almost looked as if it had been newly finished – structurally sound, but still a bit rough around the edges. The doctor was outside and greeted us with a smile, showing us through the front door where the nurses gathered in their white nurse uniforms, some with small white nurse hats. Their dress reminded me of Halloween more than it instilled confidence. They stared at me. I stared at them. One sat me down right there in reception, stuck a thermometer in my armpit and took my pulse. She flipped through a disorganized notebook to find a blank page to write my name on and recorded my data before taking me to the doctor in his office.
I sat down, staring at a large diagram of the female anatomy behind the doctor’s head. “When was you last menstruation?” he asked. What? I’m here for malaria, not a pregnancy test (Nigerians are obsessed with pregnancy, children, fertility, etc.)
“I don’t know,” I replied, a bit annoyed that he wasn’t getting straight to the heart of the issue. I had DVDs waiting for me at home.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know. Less than a month ago,” I replied. He pointed to the calendar and continued his questioning. I was not of the state of mind that I wanted to expend my precious energy on figuring out when my last menstruation was. I saw little to no relevance (at least not until he had determined that I needed some form of treatment that could endanger a fetus). I knew I wasn’t pregnant and threw out some numbers to appease him, “I don’t know…the 6th…or the 13th.”
“You know you really should know when your last menstruation was,” he said. “It is important to know so that you know when you get pregnant.”
“No, really?” I felt like saying, but bit my tongue. I just wanted my diagnosis and drugs so that I could go home.
“What is your blood type?” he continued. Another toughie. I knew I should know this one…I didn’t.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I know.”
“It should be in your passport.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s in all passports.”
“Not mine.” I pulled out my passport annoyed to be arguing over whether or not blood type is listed in American passports instead of him asking me about my symptoms.
“It is in all other passports. Look next time,” he said still trying to prove his point. “It is important to know your blood type because if you get pregnant and you are…blah blah blah blah…and your fetus…blah blah blah.” I couldn’t believe he was talking about pregnancy again. I could think of many better reasons to know my blood type. As my blood, whatever type it may be, began to boil, he began to ask about my symptoms and I calmed down.
“Fever, chills, sweating, headache, bone ache, diarrhea, nausea, fatigue,” I rattled off the list I had been waiting to share.
He asked a few more questions about other symptoms and jotted notes down in the book. “Sounds like malaria. I’d like to keep you here for 24-hours of observation,” he concluded in less than half of the time he had spent on women’s issues of fertility and menstruation. What? I wasn’t prepared for this! He must have seen the shock and disappointment in my eyes and said that, maybe, if I was doing really well, I could go home in the evening.
I went out to the waiting area and told Cynthia the diagnosis and the request that I stay. A nurse came over and requested that they find someone to stay with me as well as bring some food for me so that I could start my drug regiment. They walked me to my room. I went, first cutting the deal that if I had to stay past 5 o’clock that the driver would go to my house and pick up my phone, computer and some DVDs to keep me sane.
The room was basic. There were two beds with slightly shaky metal frames. The mattresses were covered first in a plastic sheet and then a blue and yellow checkered fitted sheet. There was a pillow and no blanket. A plastic chair sat next to the bed, as did a wooden school desk and attached chair. A small room was to the side blocked by a curtain. Inside was a bag of cement. I lay down.
The hospital was clean – I was grateful for that. I knew it would be basic, but was a little shocked at how basic. I hadn’t expected a TV or an intercom system and could deal with the fact that they brought a second fitted sheet to me instead of a blanket, but had assumed that a hospital (on the higher end) would offer things such as clean drinking water (essential for maintaining hydration), some sort of food (critical to have with some drugs) and toilet paper (do I need to explain?). With a full staff of nurses, it also surprised me that they insisted that I have a babysitter. The company was appreciated, but made me feel like a bit of a burden.
When my food arrived in a small cooler, I ate it up, ready to get on with the drug regiment. Grace, my babysitter for the day, got the nurse to tell her I was ready. She brought in a weathered IV stand. “I don’t want a drip,” I insisted. This sparked a big conversation and the doctor was called in. “Nope,” I shook my head. “I’d like to take the medicine orally.” At first they thought I was afraid of needles. Then I told them that my doctor at home had suggested that whenever traveling that avoid needles. They showed me their sterilized supplies in hermetically sealed wrappers and I politely declined. With a small crowd gathered I looked at the doctor and said that I will start with the oral treatment and that if I got significantly worse, that we could revisit the issue. The American-style medical self-advocacy was a bit foreign to the hospital staff, but went over fine in the end. I got my oral medication and began on the road to recovery.
When 4 o’clock rolled around, I called for the nurse and began my advocacy again. I was determined to go home and spend the night in my bed. The doctor came in and I pinched my cheeks, sat up and looked as perky as possible. “I’d like to go home.”
He smiled and agreed. He also said that my test results were back and that I had malaria (they had taken blood earlier – I had given in and allowed a sterilized and sealed needle for this purpose). We had a brief exchange where he said that even if the test result had come back negative that it would still have been malaria. He used some metaphor about Bin Laden – a malaria test can’t check every blood cell for the parasite, America can’t check every Afghani cave for Bin Laden…even if malaria or Bin Laden aren’t found, we still know they are there. I wondered if he would have used this metaphor had I not been American. I hoped that modern science in Nigeria was more accurate than American intelligence in Afghanistan.
I took my 6 bags of pills and headed home.
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