Archive for November, 2009
The Most Beautiful Client Interview (Part 1 of 2)
By Eva Wu, KF9 Philippines
I experienced a lot of firsts during my week in the field visiting HSPFI‘s Camiguin Branch. Some good, some intense, all of it exciting. Amongst all these firsts, I’m convinced that I witnessed on Camiguin Island both the most beautiful and the most bizarre client interviews that I’ll get to conduct while here in the Philippines. This post is about the former – check out the latter at “The Most Bizarre Client Interview (Part 2 of 2)“! 
A bit of background on Camiguin – I had been excited about this outing for quite a while, because all of my HSPFI co-workers kept telling me about this “island of paradise” that has hot and cold springs; a walkway through an old inactive volcano with stations of the cross that Filipinos from all over visit during Lent; the sweetest lanzones in the Philippines; a sunken cemetery.
Camiguin - A View of the Volcanoes
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A Quick Break in the Oasis of America
By Josh Wilcox, KF9 Peru
Taking a brief recess from borrower profiles and repayment schedules at Kiva’s MFI pilot partner Caja Rural one weekend in Ica, Peru, I escaped to visit the small town of Huacachina, the “oasis of America”, located just a few miles outside the sandy metropolitan hub of Ica. Having become famous for its natural lake enclosed by sand dunes, the tiny city of about 115 people has become an immensely popular tourist destination not only for its aesthetic appearance but also the sandboarding and dune buggies.
For those unfamiliar, sandboarding is very similar to snowboarding except, yep you guessed it, it is performed on sand. First popularized in California in the 1980s, there are now annual Sandboarding World Championships held in Hirschau, Germany. Who knew???
My First Business Trip
by Jed Goldstein, KF9, Uganda
After a 10 hr bus journey to Kihihi from Kampala on bumpy dirt roads, it was Aaron Coplands Rodeo ballet that began to play in my mind as I stepped off the bus and began to explore the town that lay before me. Kihihi is the modern Ugandan version of the wild American west that Copland so effectively captures in his compositions. As I explored a bit, I could not help but compare the roars of dirtbikes rolling down the muddy thoroughfare to the click-clock sound made by a horse’s hooves. The expansiveness of the terrain, combined with the rolling, lush hills and the breathtaking vistas, still unspoiled by mini-malls and super sized wal-marts, is really a sight to be seen.
My Rwandan Children…
By Gavin Sword KF9 Rwanda
I know this is not the first time that I’ve mentioned that my children are Rwandan. We adopted Savilla and Christian in 2006 when they were both babies. Our girl turns 4 this month while our boy is a few months past 4. They are the cutest, most adorable little people one could ever hope to know. They are loving and friendly, kind to each other and to the people they meet. Part of the reason I wanted to come to Rwanda as a Kiva Fellow was so that they could have the opportunity to spend time in the country of their birth. To give them a chance to learn the language, make Rwandan friends and live in a land of people who look just like them (not the case in our current home, Vancouver, Canada). Our thinking was not that they would necessarily fully remember the experience, but that it could inform their identity and give them a sense of belonging. Well, this was the idea anyway. (more…)
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…)
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!).
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.
