Author Archive
Here at the End
By Megan Bond, KF15, Ecuador
My Kiva Fellowship is coming to an end. I will leave Ibarra and travel to Quito. An overnight flight will bring me to Atlanta and, finally, another flight will carry me to Dallas where I will resume my pre-Kiva Fellowship life. In less than two weeks, I’ll be back at Southern Methodist University, located in one of the most privileged neighborhoods in the city of Dallas. The juxtaposition of poverty and incredible prosperity I witness in my life is weighing on me as I think about my departure. I can find the lines between the so-called “haves” and the “have-nots” drawn heavily here in Ecuador and in my own US city where economic segregation is a daily reality. How do I reconcile what I’ve seen this summer with the luxury and lives of excess I see at home? How am I going to feel when I pay more for a cup of coffee at the Atlanta airport than I do for an entire day of room-and-board in Ibarra? These are just personal examples that illustrate an internal dilemma that many people, aware of the world’s most pressing issues yet not experiencing them, must comes to terms with. Where do I fit within all of this? And, the question I learned to pose when I was a student in college, “what, therefore, should I do?” stands out in my mind. What will I do with this knowledge and experience?
Saudades
Yesterday, as I left the office of FODEMI for the final time I felt as if I could not find the words to describe what I was feeling. Both the English and the Spanish languages had failed to provide me with a word that could capture the feeling of happiness and sadness that coexisted rather uncomfortably. There have been some serious ups-and-downs in my summer as a Kiva Fellow in Ecuador. I felt inspired and happy when I met some incredible Kiva borrowers, including an entrepreneur that I had helped fund. But, at other times, I felt frustrated or homesick or like an outsider in the organization and in life in this new country. Sometimes these opposite emotions happened in closer proximity that I’d like to admit. Yet, as I walked down the sidewalk in Ibarra, I wondered about these feelings and struggled to come to terms with how I felt. Was I happy? Yes. Was I sad? Yes!
Video Blog: For the Love of Fiestas
By Megan Bond, KF15, Ecuador
Music, parades, disguises, fabulous street vendors, dancing in the streets, dancing in the fields, dancing wherever you feel like it – the Ecuadorians I’ve met love a good party and there’s nothing like a traditional fiesta to generate the right mood for all of the above. Fiestas have been a great opportunity for me to join in and have fun with the locals. Villages and towns all over have their own festivals days and there are certain times a year when the entire country is celebrating.
Meeting “My” Borrower
By Megan Bond, KF15, Ecuador
Kiva provides a new lens through which we can view global problems and solutions. Just contemplating a concept like “world poverty” seems like an insurmountable task. It is overwhelming. It is daunting. Kiva helps us focus our concerns for the problems presented by poverty on a global level by allowing us to connect with entrepreneurs in need of a hand up around the world on a more personal level. A loan through Kiva is an investment in an individual or group, a business, and a community. We could take it as far as saying that a loan through Kiva is also an investment in a country, a continent, and a global effort to alleviate poverty.
Kiva lenders make these loans over and over again, choosing the characteristics of the borrower they want to invest in. Perhaps it’s their name (Personally, I like to search for women named Carmelita), their country (I know there are some “Country Collectors” out there!), or the fact that they sell fried food but something (tangible or intangible) connects each lender with each borrower. Kiva Fellows have written about it beautifully in the past. It’s an incredible thing to feel that connection and to invest in someone you will never likely meet in person. But, what if you could meet the person on the other side of the profile? What would you do? What would you ask? I had to think about this as I got the opportunity to meet a borrower I had lent to before I came to Ecuador as a Kiva Fellow.
Mud Walls to Mechanical Looms: Borrowers’ Stories
By Megan Bond, KF15, Ecuador
Eight years ago, Manuel told me, their house was very different from the one I was standing in. The walls were made of compressed earth and the roof was constructed out of dried straw. Manuel, his wife Cristiana, and their six children struggled on a daily basis to make ends meet. Looking for a change, they sought their first loan from FODEMI. Eight years and eleven loans later, I stood in their new house/factory. The floors and walls were solidly constructed out of cement and the roof was metal. In the spacious rooms, family members and two hired employees worked at multiple looms weaving thread into cloth.
New Partnerships in the Middle of the World, Part II
By Megan Bond, KF15 Ecuador
I arrived in Ecuador at night, took a two-and-a-half hour taxi ride to my hotel, and fell asleep in unfamiliar surroundings. It was dark and I saw nearly nothing of the country I would be living and working in for the next several months except for streetlights, headlights, and the many Chevron signs that guided the journey through the mountains. It was not until the next morning when I opened my hotel window in the strong daylight of 7 am along the equator that I caught my first real glimpse of Ecuador: the sunlit rooftops of the city of Ibarra and the Imbabura Volcano draped in smoky clouds rising to a dramatic point above the city. My first glimpse of Ecuador was more brilliant than I could have expected. In reality, I was not sure what to expect about this new country and this new role as a Kiva Fellow as I first arrived. My mental images of Ecuador and my conceptions of FODEMI, the new partner I would help initiate to Kiva, were cloudy at best, overcast with excited uncertainty. My true experience here in Ecuador as a Kiva Fellow began that morning I first saw Imbabura Volcano rising above the city and my real-life experiences continue to unfold in my everyday experiences as a Kiva Fellow in Ecuador.
