Archive for November 1st, 2009
Walking Lessons
By Kelly McKinnon, KF9 Leon Nicaragua
I fell off the sidewalk tonight. It was bound to happen.
The sidewalks here are raised and tiled and narrow. No extra room is allotted for lamp posts or stoops or two-way traffic, all must exist in no more than four feet dedicated to pedestrian passages.
The rules to walking in Leon are thus: a gentleman passes on the outside, there is plenty of room, and greet passersby with a smile and an “Adiooos.”
My days begin with these passages. Rather, as I, dedicated tom-boy, wobble to work in high heels, these passages are the best things about beginning my days: I wave to the tour office and the guards outside the mill. I strut until I see Yader, he greets me with my daily kiss (on the cheek). On Yader’s corner, across from the park of poets, at the intersection with the stoplight, is the lady who grills corn. Every day she does something wonderful like wearing aprons with row upon row of frills. We bottle neck at her grill. (more…)
10 comments 1 November 2009
My Kiva Fellowship kicks off in 5 hours…
By Dennis A. Espinoza, KF9 Cameroon
Saludos Kiva Community –
My name is Dennis Espinoza and in a few hours I will be leaving for Africa to serve with GHAPE, a longstanding Kiva partner based in Cameroon.
Before I kickoff the 25 hour trip from Chicago, USA to Bamenda, Cameroon, a personal note about the reason I’m on this journey and what I selfishly hope to get from it….you know, beyond just a great way to meet great likeminded people, i.e. cute ladies (which it is for those of you who are considering applying to the program!).
9 comments 1 November 2009
Kyrgyzstan’s Windy City
By Rob Packer, KF9 Kyrgyzstan
In the middle of October I spent a week away from the Bishkek office of my MFI, Mol Bulak Finance, to see microfinance in action in their Balykchy branch. Part of the training as a Kiva Fellow is to complete an online course from the United Nations Development Program on microfinance, which seemed to tell me continuously that microfinance is a low-margin, high-cost business. No matter how many times this message is drilled into me, it still comes as a shock.
The town of Balykchy sits at the start of Lake Issyk-Kul, the world’s second-largest mountain lake after Lake Titicaca. The lake is a summertime holiday Riviera and a former Soviet naval testing ground far away from the prying eyes of the West. Compared with its more visitor-friendly lakeside neighbours of resort town Chopon-Ata and trekking or skiing centre Karakol, Balykchy suffers from a bad reputation in Bishkek. Bishkek was a sea of yellow leaves at the time, but I was warned that I would need warm clothes for the cold and sunglasses for the wind. As we drove out from Bishkek, the ever-present fields and mountains became drier and when we finally left the steppes and arrived in the massive valley of Issyk-Kul, the landscape looked more and more like a mountainous desert, camels included. During my time there, I never experienced Balykchy’s gale force delights but the wind’s presence seemed to hang over the town like a dragon in the mountains.
The modern-day Silk Road outside of Balykchy.
5 comments 1 November 2009
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