Author Archive
The Cows of Cochabamba
By Nick Cain, KF7 Paraguay
In Cochabamba, Bolivia, milk is quite literally the ticket to financial services and economic growth. Kiva lenders, meet CIDRE, your newest Field Partner in Bolivia. Last week I traveled from Asunción, Paraguay to Cochabamba, Bolivia to train CIDRE’s staff members on the Kiva platform, help them learn a little about the Kiva community, and make sure they had everything they needed in order to start connecting their borrowers to Kiva lenders.
- A panoramic view of Cochabamba
The staff was enthusiastic to get to work and learn more about Kiva, so Day One of my visit was all training sessions and PowerPoints. But on Day Two, CIDRE’s new Kiva Coordinator, Diego Cardona, and I set off for the outskirts of Cochabamba to meet some borrowers. Most of CIDRE’s loan products are geared to serve the region’s dairy farmers, a community of micro-entrepreneurs who own anywhere from 5 – 25 cows and earn income by selling milk to Pil, the region’s lone dairy corporation. Cochabamba’s dairy farmers are concentrated in a large swath of land behind the city’s airport. About 10 minutes after leaving CIDRE’s offices in the city center, paved roads gave way to a lumpy, dusty web of cinder-block houses and muddy cow pastures. Eventually Diego and I came to a stop, eye-to-eye with a couple of rather hefty bovines.
I Don’t Want to Stop Being a Kiva Fellows 7th Class (Welcome KF8!)
The members of the seventh Kiva Fellows class (KF7) recently received some rather startling news: Kiva is sending out reinforcements. The team in San Francisco rounded up a new bunch of smart, capable, passionate people (creatively referred to as KF8) to fan out across the globe where they will meet Kiva borrowers, write journal updates, post enriching and exciting material to this blog, raise awareness about the work of their respective host institutions, and take cold showers for two to four months.
Upon hearing the news, Brett Dobbs (KF7, Kenya) and I were overwhelmed with all sorts of emotions. What if everyone likes KF8 better? What if they write more journals than we did? What if they have stronger stomachs or figure out how to talk to a borrower without falling off a chair into the dirt? What are we, a group of rugged, field tested KF7’s, supposed to do when our Kiva-ness is threatened by some newly minted, probably-smarter-than-us KF8’s?
And…
Looks like even though I’m not taking the news well, Brett’s pretty confident that we’re the best ever. So I guess until KF8 starts out-journal posting, out-blogging, and out-awesome-ing us, I’ll hold off on finding a way to get rid of the KF7 Para Siempre tattoo I got last week.
Welcome, congratulations, and good luck KF8!
Shhh! Don’t tell Starbucks.
There exists a daily beverage that is more omnipresent and culturally dominant than Seattle’s most famous export. It’s a tea known as tereré and (hooray for American marketing) Paraguayans literally do not leave home without it.
Tereré is a loose-leaf tea that is always served cold. It involves no foams, whips, or syrups, and there’s definitely no decaf. Just mate tea, ice water, and, if you like, a mix of mint and lemongrass. As simple as it may sound, bringing these ingredients together is much harder than saying “grande coffee, no room” to the barista. Prepare tereré correctly (sift out the tea dust, crush the herbs to bring out their flavor, tilt the cup at the proper angle when you first pour your water) and you have yourself an incredibly refreshing, slightly stimulating, antidote to Paraguay’s absurd heat. Fail to do these things (or, alternatively, be a Kiva Fellow named Nick Cain) and you’ve got yourself a slightly bitter, mini-stew of floating tea. Like a good cappuccino, to get it right you’ve gotta finesse it.
But once you’ve prepared a good batch, you’re in business for at least a couple hours, and Paraguayans take full advantage of tereré’s staying power. Men, women, teenagers, police officers, grocery store clerks, construction workers, loan officers—everyone carries around a thermos (térmos) full of ice water and a tereré cup (guampa) as they go about their day.
Tea drinking authorities.
Thus, the tea has been ubiquitous in my daily routine as a Kiva Fellow. When I hop on a bus to head to one of Fundación Paraguaya’s branch offices, the driver always has his thermos by his side. Some buses even come equipped with their very own tea caddy: a person whose sole duty is to pass the driver his tereré whenever he requests it. By the time I arrive at the office and shuffle into the kitchen to prepare my morning Nescafe (I know, I know), one or two loan officers are already there crushing herbs and cracking ice cubes. And, of course, as is the Paraguayan custom, when I arrive at the home of a Kiva borrower for an interview I am always directed to take a seat in the shade and have a sip of tea (a custom that led to one particularly memorable moment).
Tea Caddy on Linea 11
When you’re handed a cup of tereré, it’s easy to see that all guampas are not created equal: some are made of wood, some of stainless steel, and others of the more traditional ox horn. But where they really diverge is in their decoration. Many are wrapped in leather, with the owner’s name or business emblem etched into the side. Just as common are those that come adorned with the logo of the owner’s favorite soccer club (also memorable: my soccer allegiance faux pas).
I’d guess that at least 90% of Paraguayans over the age of 14 own a guampa and térmos. Someone has to produce and sell them all, right? Hugo Ruiz, Cipriano Machuca, Graciella Grosella, and Mario Gomez are just some of the many entrepreneurs who have invested Kiva capital in businesses that sell a wide variety of guampas and térmos. Last week I spent some time with Alejandra Alvarez, a mother and an entrepreneur who manages her own business producing, decorating, and distributing guampas and térmos. Since learning the trade more than seven years ago, Alejandra’s business has grown steadily. Her profits helped her build a new, sturdier home on her property, and she currently employs five workers, one of whom is her son Cristian. On the day of my visit, Alejandra’s team was putting the finishing touches on a batch of Mother’s Day guampas so that one of her employees could load them up and deliver them to Ciudad Del Este, a town six hours to the east of Asunción. You can see more of my visit with Alejandra, as well as the guampas, in the video below:
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Nick Cain is in his 11th week as a Kiva Fellow working with Fundación Paraguaya. Based out of Asunción, he travels around the country meeting Kiva borrowers and sharing their stories. Feel free to send questions, comments, or requests for future blog topics to nick.cain@fellows.kiva.org.
The Feel-Good Line
I told myself I’d avoid writing a blog entry that involved too much rumination on the meaning of microfinance. Oops.
Before I left for Paraguay, I had a long conversation with Cara Gutterman, the first Kiva Fellow assigned to Fundación Paraguaya. In addition to giving me some insight into the food (fine) and the weather (very, very hot), Cara told me that many of the borrowers she met during her time in Paraguay didn’t seem to be lifting themselves out of poverty; in fact, they didn’t seem to be the poorest of the poor, but instead were a group of hard-working, above-the-poverty-line folks who used credit simply to maintain their level of income. (Cara wrote a great blog entry on this issue and what it suggests about the relationship between microfinance and poverty).
Now that I too have met some borrowers who fit this description, I spend a lot of time thinking about what they mean to the Kiva lender and to the Kiva brand—those familiar green leaves that stand for empowering the impoverished. (I’m definitely not the only Kiva Fellow to have tackled this or similar issues, as can be seen in an earlier post: Discussion on Microfinance). Questions abound: How would Kiva lenders feel if they got the impression that their money wasn’t going to someone who is impoverished, but instead to someone who might be considered a member of Paraguay’s lower-middle or working class? Are such loans misrepresentations of the Kiva brand? If so, where’s the feel-good line? At what point do we stop feeling good about the income level of the borrowers we support and start feeling worried that our money isn’t doing what we want it to do?
Kiva has facilitated more than $2 million of investment in the people of Paraguay, and each week that I spend meeting the beneficiaries of this investment, my feel-good line moves up a notch or two. Many of the borrowers that Fundacion Paraguaya reaches, especially the participants in FP’s Women’s Entreprenuership program, are extremely poor; and I’m still moved and energized when I meet a low-income borrower who, by combining capital with entrepreneurial instinct, starts making enough money to send all of her children to school. But I’m equally pleased when I meet someone like Jorge Romero, whose 18-year-old barber shop provides a solid, steady income for him and his family. Kiva money didn’t lift Mr. Romero out of poverty. Instead it strengthened an already stable business, supported a popular, visible storefront in the small town of Ita, and probably gave Mr. Romero, his partner, and his daughter the financial resources they needed to live just a little bit more comfortably. These aren’t the type of results that caught Oprah’s eye or made Kiva “The only non-profit that matters”, but they are the results that healthy communities are built on.
Jorge Romero at work in his barber shop
That’s because a loan to Jorge Romero isn’t just a loan to Jorge Romero. In any given month, he might catch a ride in Benedicto Gonzalez’ taxi, ask Juan Carlos Cardozo to build his daughter a new bed, or purchase tobacco sold by Maria Ines Bordon. These connections stir the economy and, more importantly, create opportunities for other Fundacion Paraguaya entrepreneurs to enter the market and start the climb towards financial stability. Were we as a lending community to reject borrowers like Mr. Romero because we didn’t think they were “poor enough,” we would mitigate Kiva’s ability to bring about larger scale, sustainable change in the communities where we invest our money.
So I think the brand is safe. Yes, the green leaves stand for the fight against poverty, but they also stand for growth, and if leaves are to stay vibrant and strong, they need an environment that nourishes the saplings along with the sprouts.
And where is the feel-good line? Let me put it this way, if one day Kiva changed its mission statement to read: Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty and strengthening the middle class across the globe, I’d feel great about it, and I’d argue that you should too.
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In Caacupé They Make Chipa
In Caacupé they make chipa. This mellow Paraguayan town, ensconced between beautiful green hills and canyons, is known for the small, biscuit-shaped snack, which is made with mandioca flour and cheese. You can find plenty of chipa in Asunción as well, but here it grows on the shelves of every food stall and floats through the streets on the heads of
Basilica de Caacupé
hardworking saleswomen. A soft, porous piece of bread chipa is not. If you tossed one in the direction of Caacupé’s other main attraction, the beautiful Basilica de Caacupé, you’d be putting the building’s structural integrity at risk. Nevertheless, they sell like hotcakes. Have one with a cup of Nescafe, and you’ve got a fine snack on your hands.
If Caacupé is the country’s chipa-duct, then its source is Barrio San Francisco (an appropriate name for a hub of Kiva activity), a neighborhood where almost all of the residents, and numerous Kiva borrowers, dedicate themselves to churning out hundreds of little bagels-in-disguise every day. Loan officer Freddy Bordon of Kiva partner Fundación Paraguaya (FP) took me to Barrio San Francisco this morning to meet with Francisca Burgos, President of the Kuña Aty Women’s Group. Francisca told me that she and her family members make about 900 chipa each day, working for hours next to the oven’s tremendous heat in Paraguay’s already oppressive summer sauna (when we chatted at around 9:00 am it was already over 90 degrees). It’s hard work, and microloans from Kiva allow the women of Kuña Aty and many of their neighbors to purchase their ingredients in bulk. Bulk purchases mean lower prices. Lower prices mean a higher income when sales are good, and breathing room when sales are slow. Pretty basic, but it works.
When we finished talking shop, Francisca was nice enough to walk me through the chipa-making process, which you can watch below (apologies for the quality of the sub-titles; they didn’t transfer to YouTube well. They’re a little better if you watch in full screen):
And a few more photos of Caacupé:
Taken outside the home of a borrower.
Drive-up service. Employees in uniform. It's the In-N-Out Burger of Chipa.
Freddy takes the moto through a stream on the way to Barrio San Francisco. I stayed dry on a bridge.
To keep an eye on what’s happening here in Paraguay and to learn more about Kiva’s partner, Fundacion Paraguaya, please join our rapidly growing lending team, Team Fundacion Paraguaya!
See You In Asuncion!
Kiva training is done. My bags are packed. I’m about as ready as I can be to make it from San Diego, to LAX, to Houston, to Buenos Aires, and then on to Asuncion, Paraguay. So, here I am, ready to depart for another meet and greet with customs officials, and it seems appropriate to spend a little time thinking and sharing about why, exactly, I’ve decided to hit the road again. On Kiva’s website, each lender creates a profile by providing his or her name, location, picture, and answer to the prompt “I loan because…” My lender page says that I loan because I believe in the power of empowerment. This idea, more than anything else, describes why I’m going to work for Kiva and why I wanted to learn more about microfinance.
Last year, when I was in Rwanda working for Orphans of Rwanda (ORI), it became very clear to me how microcredit could fill a critical niche in a developing economy. While ORI focuses on using university education to empower a small number of talented students to become competitive members of the country’s educated workforce (very important work in itself), I knew that thousands of young Rwandans would never have access to the type of support that ORI provides. Instead, those who cannot afford secondary or tertiary education struggle to find a foothold in their local economy–some will succeed and others will not. The women who sold fruit and vegetables on my street, the drivers of the local motorcycle taxis, and the owners of the small specialty shops that line Kigali’s downtown are all examples of people who have found a way to involve themselves in the local economy. But without access to credit, even the most entreprenurial-minded folks may not be able to endure setbacks such as a missed product delivery, a broken engine, or the appearance of new competition. A small loan can help those people stay afloat and out of poverty. When times are good it can help those entreprenuers grow their business, better support their families, and give themseleves the cushion they need to weather hard times. The concept is incredibly compelling, and the fact that Kiva lets individuals from all over the world empower one another by directly offering a loan to another person piqued my interest even more.
But does it always work the way it’s supposed to? Are there other benefits that we should pay more attention to? By serving as a Kiva Fellow in Paraguay, I hope to find out. Over the course of my four-month fellowship, I will meet over 100 borrowers. I’ll learn about Kiva’s partner in Asuncion, Fundacion Paraguaya. And, most importantly, I’ll do my best to share what I see, hear, and experience, with the rest of the Kiva community.
See you in Asuncion!
