Kiva Stories from the Field

By Ed Coambs KF9 Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation

Tricycle driver from training weekend, read this post to learn why we have his photo

The morning starts early, its 5:30 and I rise to church bells and a new day’s adventure. At 6:30 I will be leaving with Raymond, Presy and Masa to introduce Kiva to five Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation branches (NWTF). NWTF partnered with Kiva in July of 2009 and is now expanding their program to more branches.

Today we will travel in a 1990’s vintage Mitsubishi van that has room for 12. The van is well worn with the character of traveling many roads. Our first destination San Carlos will take about three hours and we will pass over a mountain to the other side of the island of Negros. Like any good Filipino road trip starting at 6:30 we make a quick stop at Jollie Bee (A popular local fast food joint) to pick up coffee, hot dogs dripping with cheese and fries. Yes I know a strange breakfast to most but to each Filipino their own. Now that we have our fuel for the morning we hit the open road. Or should I say rough road.

Unlike in the States where a three hour road trip is accomplished on a 3 lane freeway at 75 mph, a road trip on the island of Negros is along a two lane road with repeating sugarcane fields. The road has been worn heavily due to the traveling of overloaded sugarcane trucks that look as if they should have died 30 years ago, but yet keep on going.

After passing countless sugarcane fields, we start to climb into the beautiful Negros Island Mountains, but not before stopping at latitude 37 for an unbelievable sight. You may be thinking scenic over look, wild animal, oh no Raymond, Presy and Masa have all told me that when we stop on the road at this location, the van or any car for that matter will roll up the hill backward. Skeptical of this possibility we stop. We put the car in neutral and sure enough while watching Raymond’s feet to make sure they are not on the gas the van starts to roll backwards up the hill. They tell me this is due to a negative gravitational pull. Ok, ok I know you are skeptical so here is the video to prove it.

Now that we have rolled up the hill backwards it is time to start over the mountain. We start climbing, then turning, then climbing more, then another sharp turn and as we bend around another turn a majestic waterfall is off in the distance. With me being the outsider Raymond pulls the van over so that I can take a couple of quick shots of this beautiful sight that seems to plunge endlessly into the river valley below. This amazing waterfall drops fresh blue water over the edge of a luscious green backdrop.

Climbing back in the van we drive NASCAR style to make it to San Carlos to start our training on time. Raymond knows the roads well having regularly traveled them for previous work. We arrive in San Carlos ready just in time to get the training started. The San Carlos branch has a small side room that functions as a training room. The room is equipped with three rows of blue vinyl benches splitting at the seams from years of use. Then two rows of plastic chairs. The extra rows are added to accommodate a second branch that has come to be trained on Kiva.

My role in the training is more observational, as this is a presentation that Raymond, Presy and Masa have put together to make sure that the branch staff understand their roles in supporting the addition of Kiva loans. Raymond leads with an introduction of Kiva that keeps all the participants laughing along the way. I am told by Masa who is acting as my interpreter that it is very important to keep the crowd laughing. After Raymond feels confident that the group understands Kiva on an overview basis and how it will impact them, he turns the training over to Presy.

Presy gets started diving into the details of Kiva with a power point full of images showing the group what they will be seeing as they work with the website. They learn about the loan cycles, and getting good information about the borrowers. Then out of nowhere the lights flicker and go out, it is mid morning and no one seems bothered. It is a brown out, thinking it will only be a few minutes we take an impromptu break.  After 10 minutes or so it becomes apparent that the power may not be coming on again for a while.

Not a problem due to the warmth of the training room without the numerous fans blowing warm air, we move the training outside to the front porch of the branch. For those of you used to air conditioning the fans circling warm air because there is no air conditioning for this building.  Presy seamlessly transitions to using a whiteboard to visually explain what she had put together in her power point. It is now late in the morning and I start to feel a rumble in my stomach. I drift off into wondering when lunch will be. My thoughts of lunch are interrupted by the smell of spaghetti wafting into the air. Time for spaghetti Masa tells me. At first I thought it was lunch, but no it is just snack. I am encouraged to get a plate. This is the sweetest spaghetti I have ever tasted, but only appropriate in the sugar capital of the Philippines.

After a plate of Spaghetti, training resumes with Presy finishing her presentation and Masa up next. Masa will be taking the group through capturing good photos. She spends time explaining basic skills like the rule of thirds, and exposure. This lesson is vital to insuring that there are photos for the website that people will be engaged in.

A few hours have passed since spaghetti and it is time for Lunch. We are all served a large buffet of beautiful local food, comprised of chicken, pork, mango’s and don’t forget the rice. We also each get a coke in a glass bottle served with a brightly colored straw. I only mention the coke in a glass bottle because I contend that is the way coke tastes best. During lunch a few stray animals appear with a glimmer in their eye for scraps. With a swift stomp of the foot on the ground they back away only to slink closer a few minutes later. Eating turns into a bit of a process of chew, chew, chew, stomp my foot, chew, chew, chew stomp my foot.

Lunch is wraps up uneventfully. Masa then brings the group back together to go out on a practice photo shoot. I am assigned to a group who needs to find a tricycle driver and sari sari (think mini corner store) store operator. We head out with camera in hand. I follow along with my group quickly finding a group of tricycle drivers sitting at the end of the street. Tricycles are a common source of transportation in the Philippines so they are pretty much everywhere. One of the group members explains to a tricycle driver that they would like to take his photo for practice. The driver agrees and the photo shoot begins amongst the girls giggling unsure exactly how they want to frame the shot. The driver waits patiently while the group figures out how they want to frame the shot.

Now that we have the photos of a tricycle driver it’s time to find a sari sari store. No problem there, as sari sari stores are on nearly every street and in some cases multiple stores on one street. We approach the store operator and explain that we would like her photo to which she agrees. However, in order to get an appropriate photo for Kiva she can’t be holding her baby, so one of the girls reaches for the baby and this woman who we have never met before easily hands over the baby. This seems a bit odd to me because in the states there is no way that someone would just hand over their baby to someone they just met, but in the Philippines it seems like it’s not a big deal.

The photos have been taken, and we had back to review our work. Along with three other groups that had been assigned to take photos of other business owners. We converge back at the branch ready to see each other’s work. As we review the photos fits of laughter burst out. I am not always sure what the group finds funny but it seems here in the Philippines people love to laugh and will find any reason to laugh. By in large the group understood the lessons that Masa taught on taking goods photos and now they will be ready to take photo’s to post to the Kiva website.

We wrap up training late in the afternoon finishing with a Jollie burger, fries and a coke. I am told that Filipino’s like to have breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and then dinner. We polish of the afternoon snack, pile back into the van and head for Tanjay where we will be conducting the same training tomorrow. Only we have a few extras with us now. It turns out the people that work at the San Carlos branch don’t live in San Carlos they live somewhere between San Carlos and Tanjay and only go home on the weekends.

The next three or four hours pass with light conversation and few stops to drop off are extra passengers along the way. Most people in the Philippines do not have their own car and so they are great full to ride in our van and not a big hot overstuffed bus that they would normally take home for the weekend.

As the sun sets and fades into the evening drive I begin to wonder in my head, are we there yet. The drive again is sugar cane field after sugar cane field down a two lane highway. Now we also have the pleasure of road construction that takes the highway in many places done to one lane. Stopping traffic in one direction so that passing traffic can pass through. At last we make it to Tanjay in the dark ready to check into the hotel and have dinner for the night. I go up to my room to settle in before dinner not knowing what to expect. The outside of the hotel looked ok, but I wasn’t sure what the room would offer. I step into the room and try to switch on the lights, nothing happens. Great no power in the room, wrong in order to get the lights to come on you have to insert your room key into a device that allows all of the electronics to come on in the room.

The rest of the night passes uneventfully. The next morning comes and we will be conducting the same training. This day we have three branches that have come together to learn how they will help support NWTF’s Kiva operations. Because of the size of the group for the day the training is conducted in a local small church. The day goes smoothly with no power outages. Having been through the training once now, I look forward to getting out and taking photos with one of the groups.

The afternoon comes and we get placed into groups. My group is asked to find a person selling fish in the market; it’s long before the overwhelming smell of fish drafts done the street. Never being to this city before and blindfolded I probably could have found the fish market.  As we are walking along today my group feels a little more confident talking to me. I am discovering that just because Filipino’s speak English they sometimes feel shy about talking with someone who is a native speaker such as me. The conversation revolves around me asking questions about how long they have worked for NWTF and how they got started. Many of them respond that a friend told them that it was a good job. They also like working for an organization that is working to alleviate poverty.

We make it into the market and there is fresh and dried fish everywhere. Never spending much if anytime in a real fish market my nose is not accustomed to such a strong smell of fish. Or maybe it is just that I don’t like to eat fish. None the less we find a lady willing to let us take her photo.

After capturing our photo’s the church then fills back in with the groups ready to share their photos and the lessons that they have learned about taking good photos. In both training sessions it has been emphasized that taking good photo’s really help to tell the story of the entrepreneurs and after two days of looking at practice photo’s of entrepreneurs I know that the newest branches to start their Kiva work will be brining photo’s that engage lenders in learning more about the entrepreneur and ultimately making a loan.

Two days have passed and there has been a lot of sweat, laughter, food, and some new friends it is now time to hit the road back to Bacolod. I am told that it will take five hours or so to get back. Raymond, Presy, Masa and I pile back in the van and get going it is going to be a long ride. Raymond explains that we will be going back over a different mountain range. As we begin to drive through the mountains we look back over the region where we had just been working. I am ah struck by the view of luscious green land that is complemented by cool blue water at the edge of the land. We pass through many small towns with kids running in the streets and fields that surround their houses.

Friends from day two of training

Friends from day one of training

The sun begins to set as we come down the back side of the mountains and as the sun sets new sights begin to appear. Sugar cane trucks start cropping up much like the fields they leave from. As the bumpy drive goes on the sugar cane trucks seem to multiple. I can’t help but ask Raymond why this is. He explains that the trucks wait till dark so as not to congest the road much.

After spending many hours in the van for the weekend I can’t help but wish that these sugar cane trucks weren’t on the road at all. They are slow, and many seem to emit endless plums of black smoke. But like any road trip you get to the point where you are ready to be back and I have reached that point. However is not meant to be. We are driving in the dark, on a two lane highway, overtaken by sugar cane trucks, that is under construction. The last leg of the drive drags on, mostly in silence as Raymond focuses on passing trucks when he can and swerving around road construction as it pops up.

At last we pull into Bacolod. Ah at last. I settle in back at room and I think about the weekend and all that I experienced saw. I know have a much better understanding of the resources that a micro finance institution has to commit to bring Kiva to their branches. The branches are not connected by interstate that makes travel quick and they don’t have consistent power, but they do have committed staffs that are ready to bring Kiva on as a part of their process.

Take some time to visit the Kiva website and enjoy the photos that are posted about the entrepreneurs of NWTF and if you like one make a loan.