Author Archive
A good ol’ fashioned microfinance story
by Milena Arciszewski, KF8
I’m volunteering at Community Economic Ventures, an MFI in the Philippines. Today I prepared a journal update for a Kiva borrower that I liked so much that I’m posting it here, too.
I hope you enjoy it!
To lend to borrowers like Restituta, check out: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=125&status=fundRaising&sortBy=New+to+Old
Milena Arciszewski has a year-long Kiva Fellowship. She has already finished placements in Bosnia and Kenya and is now in her final placement at Community Economic Ventures, Inc. in the Philippines. You can reach her at milena.kathryn@gmail.com.
Should all kids want to be a doctor or astronaut? Maybe…
By Milena Arciszewski, KF8 – Community Economic Ventures Inc. – Philippines
The backdrop for my ah-ha! moment
Yesterday I had a thoughtful conversation with a CEV Loan Officer, over a bowl of soup. She told me about a recent interview she had with a young boy. She asked him about his dream for the future, and was disappointed when he answered: “When I grow up, I want to be strong so that I can carry heavy boxes like my father.” This boy doesn’t dream about becoming a pilot, or a doctor, or an astronaut. He dreams of becoming strong so that he can carry heavy boxes.
The Loan Officer looked at me and said firmly: “The worst part of poverty here is that it takes away people’s ability to dream.”
One of my favorite quotes is by Martin Luther King, Jr: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’ There is a strange beauty to that boy who dreams of carrying heavy boxes. He sees honor in the job and his highest aspiration is to be strong so that he can do the job well. And that’s okay. It is not my place to judge his dreams or expect them to match mine. I responded to the Loan Officer that I think it’s a fine for him to have that dream, as long as it makes him happy.
“No, you don’t understand,” she answered. “That boy isn’t dreaming about carrying boxes because that will make him happy. He dreams of carrying boxes because that is all he knows. He is so poor that he doesn’t know what else to dream about.”
I had my ah-ha! moment. That’s why microfinance institutions exist. It’s not just about giving poor people the ability to grow their business. It’s about giving poor people the chance to live a better like so that they have the ability to dream.
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- A CEV borrower with her recycled goods
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- A CEV borrower poses with her baby pig
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- A CEV borrower poses before her rice field
Milena Arciszewski has a year-long Kiva fellowship. She is currently on her last placement at Community Economic Ventures, Inc. (“CEV”) in Tagbilaran City, Philippines. She has also spent time with Kiva partners in Bosnia and Kenya. For a list of CEV’s fundraising loans, click here.
I am living in Kisumu, Kenya
I am living in Kisumu, Kenya. Here is a picture of the street where I volunteer, in the Nyalenda slum.
Walking around the slum, one quickly comes across evidence of the post election violence. Burned buildings are common. As are random herds of goats.
White people in Kisumu are usually in self-contained SUVs. Not too many ever enter the Nyalenda slum. As a result, as I walk, I am usually chased by children.
If I stay in one place for too long, they gather to stare.
In the slum, you find many teenage girls. Their stories show a lot of common themes.
I am 20 years old. My parents passed away when I was 14. A lack of school fees made me leave school. We were left 10 children. Everyone searched for places to stay but I was left alone and went to be a street girl. A guy hired me as a maid but forced me to have sex. Within one month he raped me and I was pregnant. I went to the Kenyan police and they did not take any action about that case. They wanted money but I didn’t have even a single cent to give them. I became a mother of a child but there was no job or anything to do. I wake up early in the morning to wash clothes for people. They only give me 50 shillings (*equivalent of less than $1USD) in order to get food to eat with my child. Without washing clothes, we go to sleep hungry. If I can get someone to take care of me and return me back to school, then I can be proud and be happy as some people are. Maybe my life can change and I can be someone different.
I’m a girl of age 20 years. I dropped out of school in 2005 because I did not have money to continue my education. I have been staying at home doing nothing. I have no money to start a business. I have no knowledge of anything. I tried to convince my father to look for money to take me to high school but he did not. I have been walking day and night to look for employment even as a housemaid but the salary is as low as 100 shillings a month (*$1.31 USD per month). There is a time I succeeded in getting employment in a rich man’s house. He promised to pay me well but was exploiting me sexually. When I threatened to report him he sent me away. I was frustrated beyond words.
I am 22 years old. I am the first born in a family of five. I live with my mother and step-father and dropped out of school. I used to go clubbing and really had a bad company. I got pregnant and now I have a kid, he’s 2.5 years old. Life has been so hard I even tried marriage to find happiness and comfort. I was married to a young man who gave me everything but mistreated me and my kid. I had no choice but to stay with him since he provided me everything. Nobody cared about me. My husband was cheating on me but there was nothing I could do. Now I am HIV positive.
A Sisterhood for Change participant posing with her child
Kisumu Medical and Education Trust (“KMET”) is one of KIVA’s partners. In 2006, KMET created a program to address the seemingly hopeless situation for teenage girls. KMET recruited orphans, single mothers, high school drop-outs, HIV/AIDs patients and commercial sex workers for a program called Sisterhood for Change. The stories above are taken from profiles written by the girls recruited by the program.
Susan teaches tailoring skills to an SFC girl
When Sisterhood for Change began, KMET expected that upon graduation, the girls would immediately get jobs in local communities. Unfortunately, Kisumu just… doesn’t have jobs. So even with their new vocational skills, the girls were still unemployed and relying upon men for income.
So KMET conceptualized an idea for Safe Spaces. KMET has purchased a building in the Nyalenda slum and stocked it with the equipment needed to run tailoring, hairdressing and catering businesses. KMET will train the girls in business and entrepreneurship, and then they will be free to work in the Safe Space for as long as they wish. The girls will be purchasing supplies using KIVA loans.
For a long time, I wondered whether it could work. We held a lot of preliminary meetings to discuss our plans for the Safe Spaces, and the girls usually yawned in indifference. I would smile. I would pump my fists in excitement. I would lure them with cookies. Still, they seemed disinterested.
But now it’s actually happening! They are working in the Safe Spaces, selling french fries, avocado juice, and sassy hairstyles. Training takes place from April 29th-May 7th, with the generous help fof the Child at Venture Foundation. I still sometimes wonder if they are ready. I still sometimes wonder if Muhammad Yunus would approve. These girls really are the poorest of the poor, and we are trained that microfinance is not always effective with that group. Will high school drop outs be able to run their own businesses? We’ll find out…
Would Muhammad Yunus lend to us?
Milena Arciszewski is a year-long Kiva Fellow. She has been in Kenya since January 2009, helping to develop the Safe Space initiative. She loves getting emails, and can be reached at milena.kathryn@gmail.com.
Unsafe abortions in Kenya
I am volunteering at Kisumu Medical Educational Trust (KMET), which began with the aim of breaking the silence surrounding high maternal mortality from unsafe abortions. In the Nyanza Province of Kenya, 42% of 15-19 year olds are sexually active, but only 11% use modern contraception. (Mitchel et al, 2006). Only eleven percent of sexually active teenagers use condoms, despite the fact that 15% of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS.
The KMET office has boxes and boxes of free condoms. I browsed the selection, impressed. I felt as though I was browsing the coffee options at the local Starbucks. Triple shot, no foam, tall skim latte? Meet ribbed, lubricated, vanilla-flavored, magnum-sized Trojan. I couldn’t understand why only 11% of teenagers would use condoms when they are so easily accessible, and in such a range of sizes and tastes!
Apparently, sex education classes are banned in Kenyan schools, so knowledge about reproductive health is scarce and largely inaccurate. Two KMET employees (Hesbon and Maureen) described some of the myths that circulate among teenagers in Kisumu:
- If you have sex with a condom, the condom will dislodge and swim through your body. The condom will come out of your mouth while you sleep.
- If you have sex with a condom, your body will react to the condom’s oils and your stomach will swell as if you are pregnant.
- If you have sex with a condom, you will acquire HIV. (Because supposedly companies inject condoms with the virus as a means of population control.)
- If you have sex with a condom, the female will feel intense pain.
Teenagers are largely ignorant about contraception, and as a result, 27% of 19-year old women in the Nyanza Province of Kenya are either pregnant or already mothers. (UNAIDS Report, 2006) These young mothers are usually thrown out of their homes and kicked out of school. They are left to raise their children alone, with no source of income or support from the government. In Kisumu, 100% of these teenage mothers earn less than $1/day.
The stigma and consequences of pregnancy therefore lead 252,000 15-19 year old Kenyan girls to seek abortions every year. (Kiragu et al, 1998) The problem is – - abortion is illegal, expensive and misunderstood. Girls are told that if they seek an abortion at a hosptial, the doctors will either sterilize them or block their vaginas so they are unable to have sex again. As a result, the majority of the abortions are performed in horrific conditions, often by the girls themselves. 1 in 10 women who obtain an abortion in Kenya will die. (UNAIDS Report, 2006)
Maureen told me about her friend Mary, who became pregnant at 17. In her bedroom, she took 12 malarial pills, strong juice extract, and an herbal drink she received from a back-door abortion clinic (which likely included turpentine.) While waiting for the drugs to work, she inserted a bent coat hanger into her vagina and scratched the uterus walls until she lost consciousness. Maureen found her, bleeding profusely and unconscious from the drug overdose, the coat hanger still inside her vagina.
Unfortunately, abortion is so stigmatized in Kenya that few clinics or hospitals will treat women who are dying from unsafe abortions. Maureen therefore had to find a car to take Mary to a special clinic 28 km away. It took her 1 hour to find a car and another 1 hour and 30 minutes for the car to maneuver the unlit, damaged roads. By the time Mary was admitted to the clinic, she was almost dead.
KMET is responding to the crisis by training and creating networks of health providers who offer women cheap post-abortive care. KMET has also established a Sisterhood for Change (SFC) center, which educates teenage girls about reproductive health. The girls (many of them mothers, orphans, high-school dropouts and/or commercial sex workers) learn about contraception, sex, pregnancy and HIV/AIDs. The girls then become advocates in their communities and are encouraged to teach others about safe-sex practices, particularly about condom use.
Where does Kiva come in? KMET has an extensive volunteer base of community health workers who visit the homes of HIV/AIDs patients to administer drug treatments and provide food. In gratitude for their help, KMET offers these volunteers low-interest microfinance loans, many of which are funded by Kiva. For more information about KMET, please see: http://www.kmet.co.ke/
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And for the newly-departing Kiva Fellows, I offer a Luo proverb: Ariango misalo kichuo piere piny.
Translation: A real traveler doesn’t stick his buttocks down for any length of time.
silly Western expectations
Today is my last day in Bosnia, the first of my Kiva placements.
I have committed a year to volunteering with Kiva, and I initially hoped to write a book about the experience. Last August, I imagined myself sitting on a street corner in Kenya, smoking cheap cigarettes. Poor children would laugh in the distance and I would sigh, reflectively, finally understanding the meaning of it all. I would walk down the street with a child on my back, high-fiving locals and getting a thumbs-up sign from the local nurse. My eyes would turn that perspicacious blue, seen only in the eyes of worldly travelers. I would return home and talk about my experiences in smoky cafes, always to a captivated audience. “You can’t understand what it’s like until you get out there,” I would say, wisely. “The experience changed my life.”
But since coming to Bosnia, I have barely written anything at all. My notebook is filled only with doodles. Even blog entries are a struggle. I don’t know what message to take from all this, only that it has made me deeply happy. My eyes may still be an unworldly grey, and I may not have learned the deeper meaning of life, but hot damn do I have memories.
I’ll remember the distinguished placement of teddy bears on living room couches.
I’ll remember listening to stories about love and romance in the time of war. I’ll remember the women who made love in tanks and fields of wildflowers, amid bombings and gunfire.
I’ll remember meeting Kiva borrowers, who offered me tea and smiles. I’ll remember their pristinely clean houses; their cows and pigs and chickens and vegetable gardens. I’ll remember the realization that they live on less than $200/month, and that despite their polished tea cups, they cannot afford visits to the doctor.
I’ll remember fried cheese pastries, with pools of oil that I eventually slurped with a spoon, like the sweetened milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl.
I’ll remember dancing in the discotheque, celebrating the cheapness of alcohol and the immediacy of the music. I’ll remember my soul being touched by the accordion.
I’ll remember meeting Nermina. During the war, a bomb went off in the market while she was holding her 4-year-old son. He was decapitated in her arms.
I’ll remember The Apple Guy, who would smile and slip an extra apple into my fruit bag. That extra apple was always the one that tasted best.
I’ll remember feeling stupid. Stupid in my interactions with people. Stupid in my expectation of self-enlightenment. Stupid that I thought I could contribute anything to microfinance, a field I know nothing about. Stupid for even writing this blog.
I will not be writing a book about my experience. In “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” Michael Chabon refers to “sentient apes.” And that’s how I feel. I am a sentient ape. But Bosnia has been fabulous. I’m off for a few weeks of travel, but will arrive at K-Met in Kisumu, Kenya in January. Perhaps my high-fiving, thumbs-up fantasy will still occur. Happy holidays!
You know you’re in Bosnia when…
In honor of the brilliant Tanzanian posts: http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/10/10/you-know-you%E2%80%99re-in-tanzania-when%E2%80%A6vol-iii/
You know you’re in Bosnia when…
1. Any healthy foods must always be accompanied by sausage.
2. Your coworkers refer to annoying things as “liver” because “they cause the liver to feel pain.”
3. People mix their wine with coca cola.
4. The most popular musicians are over the age of 40, and are usually accompanied by accordions.
5. Pizzas are baked without tomato sauce, but you are welcome to squirt ketchup over the cheese, if you like.
6. Men wear identical black berets.
7. Graphic pornography is sold at convenience stands, next to the candy bars and gum.
8. You feel physical pain when you walk outside in the winter, as your brain contracts from the cold.
9. Cocktails cost $1.
10. US lotteries use 6 numbers. Bosnian lotteries use 19.
Also, here is a borrower update that I recently prepared on Daliborka and Nevenka Javanovic.
Thoughts on the Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia
In 2004, the International Criminal Tribunal ruled unanimously that the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995 was genocide.
I visited Srebrenica last week. I put together a video with a little history, photographs, and an interview with a Kiva Borrower whose husband was killed in the war and whose life has never fully recovered. I hate to sound cliche, but the entire experience broke my heart.
Sassy Sheep Farmers in Bosnia
I made a video to capture a borrower visit in Bosnia. Learn about sheep reproduction AND witness an attempted dog attack!
First week in Bosnia
I am living in the attic of a blue house, which I share with fish farmers in the Bosnian countryside. I have a small kitchen (with a tea kettle and 6 espresso cups), a living room decorated with antique dolls, and a bedroom that smells like the suitcase of a grandparent. It is a musty and warm oasis. Behind the house are vegetable gardens and pools of fish and a guard dog (named Garo) who no longer pulls on his chain. There is a dirt path that I can follow for hours, past sheep and cemeteries and forgotten homes.
"Brijesnica Mala" translates roughly to "Small Place of the Fog"
I arrived in Bosnia last Thursday, so my experience at Zene Za Zene (“ZzZ”) has been an introductory one. ZzZ was set up in 1993 to provide the female victims of the war with financial assistance and job skills training. A micro-credit program was set up at ZzZ in 1997, and the organization started raising money through Kiva just 9 months ago. The women at ZzZ wear leather jackets and have aggressively highlighted hair. They are smart and talkative, and gaze at me curiously as they smoke their cigarettes. I have a hard time explaining that I am here on a volunteer mission to help capture the stories of their borrowers. I still have not met any borrowers, but I have been promised several trips into the field later this week.
These older ladies seem to run the show.
The Bosnian people are kind and insist that I eat. Constantly. At all times, I am either eating ‘burek’ (a meat pastry so greasy that its grease absorbs through my fingertips even before it reaches my lips) or sipping espressos, whose loose coffee grains stain my teeth black. I think I’m going to be happy here. Happy and fat.
Even when Sarajevo was under siege, people still came to this square to share their bread with the pigeons.
I spent the weekend with a girl my age, Emira. After hours of conversation about boys and school and our shared crush on Obama, I thought that I could ask her about the war. Wrong. She was 6 when the war began, and she says that she remembers everything. She changed the subject quickly. “I can’t let myself think about it. We live side-by-side with the Serbs today. I don’t want to think about how my neighbors tried to kill my family.” I stopped with my questions, and offered to buy her ice cream. I guess I am already learning the Bosnian way: when in doubt, offer food.
The Sarajevo Roses are concrete scars from mortar shell explosions during the war that were later filled with red resin. Each Sarajevo Rose shows a spot in which a person was killed. I found this one in front of a coffee shop.
I shall write more soon! Thanks for reading. 
KF6 Fellow in Bosnia says hello
My name is Milena Arciszewski and I will be serving as a Kiva Fellow for a full year in Bosnia, Kenya and possibly Tanzania and Cambodia. My first placement is in Zene za Zene in Sarajevo, which targets women affected by the genocide of the 1990s.
I have to say… I am so excited to be doing this! For two years, I have worked in a cubicle coated with pictures of giraffes and elephants, daydreaming of escaping the office to pursue a career in international development. The Kiva Fellowship feels like my golden ticket.
Training has been awesome. We eat curry pizza. Shoes are optional in the office. I am learning so so much. It is the first training session I have attended where “projectile vomiting” seems to be a part of the job description.
Hopefully by mid-October I will be blogging about the amazing ladies In Sarajevo! I will try to capture the small details.. the smell of the soup cooking in their kitchens; the dynamic between the family dog and cat. More soon!
