Archive for December 12th, 2008
The Urban Field of Benin (Au Terrain Urbain du Bénin)
Maurice, Alidé’s loan officer, and I ventured into neighborhoods even dirtier and more fly stricken to visit Alide’s clients. On Monday we visited the most intense location ever – the lake country. It reminded me a little of New Orleans. The houses were built on mud and some directly over the lake, the log slats spaced almost wide enough for a foot to fall through. The area was muddy with lots of flies and very poor. We interviewed one of the few male borrowers, Moise Dossa. He was a happy, attractive man wearing robes of flowing colors. In his bare feet, he led us into the church. M translated my French into Fon; and Moise talked about how he had been forced to quit fishing due to a stomach or lung problem (cancer?) and had sold nets and logs with the help of an Alidé loan. He offered me a beer. It looked a little dirty at the edges, but it was impossible to decline. I could feel my stomach bubble suspiciously as I started to drink it. When we went outside, I tried to ditch it, but Moise admonished me in Fon, Maurice in French as if it was a cardinal sin. We took his photo in a pirogue, a small distinctly shaped boat.
Moise Dossa, a Kiva borrower
Time to leave. Most of the village had assembled, and I met the priest. But before we could go, I had to finish my beer. I tried to farm it out, but everyone simply watched me. I finally finished it, and tipsily mounted M’s motorcycle, and we zoomed down the road filled with muddy sad pits and kids yelling YAVO (foreigner) furiously at me as I went by.
Maurice and I entered a house not far from the lake, and were soon blinded by the smoke, which came from fish being grilled over huge black pots. The fish had to be imported due to the lake’s pollution, and the women were cooking hundreds of fish along with the help of at least 15 children who were surrounding the pots helping and staring at me. Flies were pervasive, and the host pulled up three chairs for the borrower, Maurice, and I. At the conclusion of the interview, we needed to show Daniel, one of the borrowers, in the lake at his place of business as opposed to at home. (He had finished fishing early in the morning). The three of us trooped down to the lake, Daniel with his basket, net, and oar, to get on a pirogue. The lakeshore was littered with mountains of trash. Pigs, chickens, goats, and birds scavenged through it. Daniel offered to buy me some bananas by the lakeshore, but I declined as politely as I could. When we went to a café to do his interview, I asked him if he had a problem with fish yields due to pollution, which he seemed to deny. However, a lot of the smoked fish were imported according to M, so either Daniel was in denial or I couldn’t understand his French well enough.
Ayoyoa ADANMITONDE, a Kiva borrower
M and I stopped by a client’s hair salon business where he had an identification verification to follow up. The lady’s husband sat in a chair, she was attaching light blond hair extensions to the hair of a woman sitting in the chair, who was nursing. As M talked, she turned on him all of a sudden, yelling in Fon. I had no idea what was happening, but abruptly M stopped, grabbed my arm, and said, “We’re leaving!”
“Wouldn’t tell me the date of her birthday!” He exclaimed as we got on his moto. “I don’t make the rules, the Microfinance Minister does!”
“Why was she so mad?” I asked.
“Forgot to call to say I was coming,” he said.
“Maurice!!” Her husband was running after us.
“Stop,” I said. Her husband ran up to us, handed over the identity papers.
“I don’t make the rules. . .” stammered Maurice, obviously upset, her husband was agreeing, saying he was sorry.
As we zoomed off on Maurice’s Roughrider moto, I eschewed the American shoulder pat in favor of a crisp French, “ça va?”
We stopped by another hair extension store. “Kiva?” I asked.
“Cherie,” (my darling) he answered happily.
A woman in bright yellow African pagnes (flowing outfit) stepped to the door. Unlike the normal pagne, this one plunged drastically low, and she wore purple lipstick and blue eyeshadow. She gave M beer, but I asked for a Coke, dehydrated as always.
“Do you have one my color?” I said, joking; indicating the hair extensions on the walls, some light but none as light as mine.
“Is she serious?” She asked M. “Does she want to look?”
I shook my head, sipping my Coke.
On Mange (We eat)
Maurice and I sat in the restaurant near his house where he knew everyone. In Benin, lunch breaks last from 12:30 to 3pm. To try to do something during this lunch break is a mistake. The first hour people usually eat, afterwards they sleep. Lights go off in offices, people bust out their sleeping cloths, and Alidé locks their doors. Before being seated, Maurice and I greeted people by shaking hands with a snap at the end. I got some fried igname (like French fries, but harder) and a light doughy pastry with spicy pepper dip. It tasted really good and was 100 CFA; cheap, I thought, and converted it to about 40 US cents. The other day I bought a loaf of bread that I have been eating for dinner and breakfast everyday for the grand total of 1 dollar, so at least I haven’t been spending money on food. Maurice got slippery-looking pate (ground igname flour) and a fish head with spicy pepper sauce.
At the field office
I am sitting in V’s office, Christmas music blasting in French and German. Like the Head Alidé office, this one is furnished with monk-like simplicity – not an extra decoration in sight. It is painted blue, with cardboard boxes holding Alidé’s records, a bulletin board, 2 computers, one fan, a faded yellow and blue shade over the window to keep out the tropical heat. The soaring music of “Ave Maria” makes me feel like I am in a Cathedral instead of this small room. Every morning mostly female borrowers wait in a covered area just outside where trainings are held. There is also a direct entrance to the counter where loans are dispensed at certain times.
I also got to meet some of the groups of borrowers who came to Alidé for consultations.
Alidé Borrowers and Me
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Sarah Lawson is a KF6 fellow in Cotonou, Benin . She is working at Alidé.
2 comments 12 December 2008
Time for a change
In the United States, my home country, our motto as of late has been change. I have been working at the Christian Rural Aid Network (CRAN) in Ghana for almost two months now, and I am just in time to witness some monumental policy changes of its own that will redefine the way CRAN does business and may even give President-elect Obama a run for his money.
Currently, CRAN has seven different branches in three regions of Ghana. Four of its branches are located near the main office around Cape Coast and Elmina, Ghana, two fishing towns that aren’t rural but aren’t urban either. On top of loaning to people in town, CRAN also lends to many rural communities around Cape Coast. About an hour away, CRAN has two more units running in rural fishing communities. Until June of last year, one of these units didn’t have electricity or computers. The other one still doesn’t. CRAN’s last unit can be found about a six-hour drive away in the Volta Region. Due to this branch’s distance from the head unit where a Kiva Coordinator uploads all the Kiva borrower profiles, none of the clients from that unit can be found on Kiva. This is something that CRAN would like to change sometime in the near future.
At each of the units, there is a manager along with loan officers, each of which has a portfolio of clients that he or she is in charge of. The loan officer is in charge of overseeing the loan and filling out all the paperwork. Since CRAN works only with groups, the loan officer talks everything over with the group’s president, secretary, and treasurer to make sure they know what is going on. The loan officer also visits all of the people at their workplaces to take photos in order to put the borrowers on Kiva. Other employees include the cashier and field officers in charge of collecting both loans and susu savings (a small daily savings).
As CRAN moves forward and attempts to make itself a sustainable financial institution, the employees are changing the way things are currently done to a new and exciting framework. Current groups have ten members or more, but from this month forward CRAN groups will consist of five members. This change is being made because right now many groups are scattered, hard to reach for loan collection, and hard to gather together. The loan officers often only know the president, secretary, and treasurer in a group and must rely on them to find the other members. Some of these groups have multiple family members or an employer and his or her employees comprising the group as well, so from now on group members must have their businesses located in the same area, and must not have any other family members in their group. Sometimes this is the case just because people find it hard to develop a group with at least ten people in order to receive a loan. A group loan is designed so that each of the members guarantees the other members—it is a lot more to take on with ten people.
The other caveat of any group’s membership is that every member must have health insurance. A National Health Insurance Bill that was designed by the governing New Patriotic Party and passed into law in 2003 by the parliament is an insurance plan designed to ensure that Ghanaian residents would have access to basic health care services without paying money at the point of delivery of the service. It has had some criticism, mainly by the opposing party that had implemented a cash-and-carry system. This cash-and-carry system, which was used since 1985 in Ghana, was replaced for various reasons, including a fall in clinic attendance. It required every Ghanaian to pay before receiving clinical care. Since implementing the new scheme in 2004, health care is free for children, pregnant women, and Ghanaians over the age of 70. There are also various plans for everyone else, costing as little as a few dollars and lasting for one-year increments. Because health care makes such a big difference in people’s ability to work, CRAN has decided that insurance is a must. Many Ghanaians get sick with illnesses such as malaria—a disease that can keep them from the workplace for a few days if treated but can even be deadly if untreated. This is, to make it economical, bad for business. A Ghanaian who can’t work can’t make money and needs to rely on help from others to sustain a business and a family. Health insurance will ensure that all Ghanaians who work with CRAN have access to the health care they need to be healthy.
Now, taking out a loan from CRAN is more than just taking out a loan. It is a commitment on the part of the borrowers that they will attend a pre-loan training that involves an introduction to CRAN and the loan disbursement. After receiving the loan, the borrowers attend a monthly training. It is not just one group of borrowers that meet, but many—totaling around 75 people, making it less of a time burden on loan officers to meet with their groups. During these trainings, they will make their monthly loan payments and also receive various lectures on topics such as health, fire safety, and money management. Near the end of the loan period, one of the trainings is dedicated to Kiva journals—ensuring that almost all of CRAN’s Kiva participants from this point on will have a journal. This will not only be a wonderful thing for Kiva lenders, it will also be great in terms of social performance. CRAN will have an opportunity to keep track of the people it loans to and the social progress that the loans make in their lives, which may also help CRAN to modify loans to make them better for the borrowers.
One of the biggest problems currently facing CRAN is high loan deferment rates—incidences where borrowers don’t pay back on time or at all. This new format will attempt to address this problem and will hopefully ensure that field officers aren’t constantly chasing down the people who need to pay—a waste of time, energy, fuel, and money for the organization. This new format—where attendance is close to mandatory in order to get a second loan later on—gathers the group on a monthly basis and gives the loan officer a perfect opportunity to collect the loan repayment.
One of the greatest strengths to this new system is budgetary. CRAN believes it will help the organization cut costs, which is imperative in CRAN’s long-term plan because it is a non-profit organization that runs off of loans. Any money loaned out to borrowers that isn’t from Kiva comes from loans from larger banks. Thus CRAN has interest of its own to pay, and when the borrowers don’t pay back, it negatively affects CRAN and how many other borrowers it can help.
My one big question as I have been introduced to this new system, which has been implemented at one of the units this month, is what will it do for the borrowers? I agree that it is best for the organization as it will hopefully lead to financial stability. However, in terms of borrowers, the recipients will be poor but probably not the poorest businesses in the area. The poorest people won’t be able to pay for health insurance and a susu savings (a small daily savings that is another new requirement of CRAN’s borrowers—so if borrowers don’t pay back CRAN will already have some money to take the repayment from).Thus, poor people will be helped, but some of the poorest won’t have the opportunity to develop their businesses through CRAN.
I do believe that this new system, especially the training, gives CRAN the opportunity to make an expanded social impact in the lives of its borrowers. And then once it is financially secure, it will be able to offer services designed for even poorer borrowers to help them develop their businesses.
This new system will involve a lot of change—from the organizational structure to what is expected of the borrowers, change in policy is revolutionizing almost every aspect of CRAN. These changes are being made in order to address and combat all of CRAN’s weaknesses as an organization and to put CRAN in a position to meet all of its future goals. While I am sure new challenges will arise with the new system, CRAN is working hard and intelligently to become a stronger organization.
ELECTION UPDATE: Ghana just had its presidential elections, which were very peaceful and well-run. Every other commercial on television the day of the elections (December 7) was about peace in Ghana. The country was praised by its African neighbors for doing so well. However, there will be a run-off taking place between the top two candidates on December 28. I will post an update following that in regards to the elections and whether Ghana is able to maintain peace.
2 comments 12 December 2008
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