There is a lot of wealth at the top of a palm-tree. Many would like to reap the benefits it possesses.
The palm-wine taper wants the palm-wine, the palm-oil producer wants the palm-oil, the mats designers and broom makers want the palm-leaves – even the snakes and rats want to feed from the palm fruits.
There are no rules about who is allowed to try to climb and reach the top of the palm tree to get what they want, but it is clear, because of the difficulty of getting to the top, that adhering to the policies of the palm-tree is crucial to success. There should be no thoughts about possible cunning ways to get to the top – one needs to begin from below and then work to the top. When one reaches there, one can reap whatever benefit there is.
At the beginning of April, Grace and I began an effort to decentralize the Kiva process at Pearl. This is the formal way of saying that we planned to visit the branches and carry out a training program that would make the Kiva process such that we would no longer be required to rip our skirts, miss spending time with our families and friends and spend 4-8 hours per day bumping along the roads of Uganda in taxis (the minibuses that Grace wrote about in a previous post).
Central branch is the closest to head office – it takes about 15 minutes to get there on a boda boda. It is in a busy area of Kampala but it serves a huge area around Kampala. Although getting to the office is quick, getting to where the loan is being disbursed can take hours.
Lugazi is about an hour east of Kampala by taxi (that is most days, some days it is more like two hours). Lugazi is a small town but the clients that Pearl serves in that area are often nestled in the countryside around that area.
A Group in the Lugazi Office
Jinja is across the Nile about 2 hours east of Kampala. It used to the in the industrial center of Uganda but now it is a sleepy beautiful area with many far-flung clients.
There have also been occasional loans from 3 additional offices located in Mukono, Mubende, and Mityana. The Mukono field office is in a medium sized town 45 minutes east of Kampala. The loans in the Mukono portfolio are often made to people in the surrounding countryside.
Visiting a borrower in Mukono
The offices in Mubende and Mityana (Mityana is the place I decided the interest rate Pearl charged was reasonable) are the only offices that we post loans from that are west of Kampala. Mubende is a branch office about 2.5 hours northwest of Kampala and Mityana is the field office associated with Mubende and it is about 1.5 hours northwest of Kampala.
Up until this past month, if Grace, the Kiva Coordinator, wanted to post a loan on Kiva’s website she would have to wait to hear about a loan. After hearing about a loan she would make a plan to travel to that site to do an interview and take the photo necessary to post the loan on Kiva’s website.
To be successful, she has to make it in time for the loan disbursement, meaning the moment at which the client or clients actually receive the money. This is because as soon as the clients receive the money they want to get back to work. They will not hang around the office waiting for someone from head office to come interview them.
Making it in time is rarely the problem – more often delays come waiting till the loan is ready to be disbursed. The money from head office needs to be transferred into the correct bank accounts in order for the loan to actually be disbursed. Unfortunately, the central banks often delay the transfer to the branch banks meaning that clients, and Grace, wait around all day for a disbursement that never takes place.
If this is an individual loan, sometimes it is still possible to capture the loan for posting on Kiva’s website, we just have to change the expected disbursement date, but if it is a group loan we will just have to return another day. Many clients wait to hear that the money has reached the disbursement site before coming to collect their portion. Because of this, there will be four or five people in the office waiting to see if the money really comes in. As soon as word goes out that the money is not coming at all the clients present leave and no one else ever comes. If all the members of the group are not present to be photographed we cannot post the loan on the website.
Needless to say, these processes create a bit of frustration for Grace and me.
Thus the trainings. Some wonderful person donated cameras to Kiva. Kiva sent them on to Pearl. Suddenly, we had the resources to empower the branches to capture the loans on their own. We could train 6 branches. We decided that in addition to training branches that we had been posting from like Central, Lugazi, and Mubende, we would train Kayunga, Bushenyi, and Ibanda. Kayunga is about 1.5 hours outside of Kampala and we have posted loans from them a few times.
The hillside in Ibanda
Bushenyi and Ibanda are both about 6 hours west of Kampala and have never before been seen on the Kiva website. These two places are completely different than any part of Uganda I have ever seen. They are unbelievably green, the farms people own are enormous, and the milk is plentiful and so fresh. I made a little slide show that you can view.
The trainings are now complete. We have already received what we are calling loan packages (meaning all the forms necessary to post a loan on Kiva’s website) from many of the trained offices and the staff at the branches are very excited about Kiva. Many of the credit officers will be watching eagerly for comments on their posted loans and reading all the information they can about the people who loan to their clients.
I thrilled about the improvement to the experience you all will be able to have making loans to Pearl clients. I am also thrilled that Grace will be able to work more regular hours allowing her to spend more time with her family (she has two young kids!). And selfishly, I am excited that now I will only need to spend hours of hair raising travel on various forms of public transportation risking my neck (and my skirts) a few times a week rather than every day.
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A photo of me at one of the farms in Ibanda!
~ Stephanie Koczela is in her eleventh week of her posting as a Kiva Fellow at Pearl Microfinance in Uganda. Join the lending team for Pearl for more updates on the borrowers at Pearl and the organization itself! ~
Sometimes, when interviewing the entrepreneurs from Pearl Microfinance, Uganda, I am startled to discover how many businesses they have. They are teachers with a few milk cows on the side, or used clothing salespeople who also keep pigs, or farmers who also raise cassava, matoke, and chickens! These ‘super entrepreneurs’ amaze me, but I am always left wondering why do they choose to have so many businesses. Wouldn’t it be better for them to focus just one? Each cycle they could inject all their loan money into one business and it would take off!
As is typical when I am making observations in a different culture, when I leave my assumptions behind and listen to the people who actually live here, they patiently show me that, of course, they know better…
The Balikyewunya Group
A few weeks back, I met a borrower named Margaret at a group meeting. Margaret told me all about being a furniture materials saleswomen. Where she sells, where she buys, and the profits she makes. She told me that the profit she makes is enough to pay school fees for her children and grandchildren. After telling me about being a furniture materials saleswomen, she told me that with her last loan she had invested in a broiler chicken business! I was really excited for her and she seemed really proud.
After I had finished interviewing Margaret, and Florence the florist (a demonstration of how long we have to wait for the members to gather for the group pictures we post on the Kiva website!), there was still a little time before the official meeting began. Margaret asked me if I wanted to “see her business.”
I love the literal meaning of this question. She was not asking me if I wanted to see her business meaning her office building or some report about her annual returns, she means do I want to come experience her business, do I want to step into the chicken coop.
Margaret with her new chicks!
It smells a bit, which I expected, but I was startled by the amount of energy in the little room. All the chicks were hopping about and peeping at loud as they could. As she started to feed them, I noticed that either these chicks really trusted Margaret, or chicks are smarter than goats.
Goats seem to have decided that, when being fed, the best strategy is for all the goats to try to eat the same exact food at the same exact time. As soon as the farmer throws the first hand full of food, all of the goats form a rugby style scrum, pushing each other and climbing on top of each other to get the food in the middle. They completely ignore any other food that is set down unless the farmer forcibly shows one of them at which point they all pile on top of that food! This is clearly not the best of plans and inevitably, some poor goat is left on the outside of these scrums bleating and hungry! Margaret’s chicks seemed smarter… they (mostly) waited their turn.
I left this visit amused with the chicks and impressed with Margaret’s dual businesses.
Last week I got the chance to visit Margaret again. This time I met Margaret alone, so she showed me all of her businesses. I was surprised that she had more businesses since I remembered that she had already told me about 200+ chickens and a furniture business. Little did I know…
Margaret showed me her farm, where she grows enough food to feed her family, and all any others who might come around. She has enough matoke trees (matoke are the bananas that are used to make the staple food here) on her little plot that if the rains are good, she can sometimes sell her surplus matoke in the markets. She has a number of cows that she uses for milk and a few that she fattens for the meat. She also has a few goats, a few pigs, and a few ducks.
Margaret's other businesses, her farm, one of her cows, and some of her pigs
As we stood on her farm, she explained to me that these home businesses (her farm, cows, pigs, goats, and ducks) together with her furniture business provide enough money for her daily life. She is able to feed her family, buy a few outfits of clothes (this can be a sign of middle class, as the poor often only have one outfit and the very poor may not even buy one for the smallest of their children), pay school fees, pay rent on one of the farming plots that she rents, and have a little pocket money.
If all her daily needs were met by these businesses and her existing business were clearly a huge amount of work, I wondered why she had started a new chicken business?
“The chickens are for when the rains don’t come,” Margaret explained. The rains in Uganda delayed this year. Both of her farming plots produced very little food. She was unable to feed her family and she had none left over for selling. But, she anticipated this and took a loan to start up the chicken business. Because of her profits from her new chicken business, she was able to support her family and she became a critical customer for those people who choose to put all their efforts into their farms instead of having any other businesses.
Brilliant.
PS Look how much her chickens grew!!
With her chicks a few weeks later!
~ Stephanie Koczela is in her seventh week of her posting as a Kiva Fellow at Pearl Microfinance in Uganda. Join the lending team for Pearl for more updates on the borrowers at Pearl and the organization itself! ~
Thank you for all the loans you make to Kiva. As a Kiva Fellow, I get the joy of receiving the gratitude that is truly meant for all of you.
A few weeks back I had the pleasure of meeting Florence Musola at a loan disbursement for the Balikyewunya Borrower’s Group. She was one of the first members to arrive at the meeting, so we were able to carry out a lengthy interview while the other members trickled in. It was fortunate that we got started early because Florence had lots to tell us about being a florist in Kampala, Uganda.
Balikyewunya Group
She started off by explaining that when you work with brides it can be a headache because they are sooo particular. But, it is not just brides who are complicated, she continued, when you are a florist you have to know that people from different religions want specific colors and flowers at their various ceremonies. After making sure we were getting all of this down, she explained in infinite detail that there is a huge difference between a flower arrangement for a center table and one for a side table. Who knew?
The whole interview was far from what I expected when I first started doing Kiva Borrower interviews… I spent half of my time amused at what I imagine are similarities between her clients and floral clients all over the world, and the other half trying to wrap my mind around the concept that I was interviewing an upscale and very knowledgeable florist who happened to be mixed in with the poultry farmers, dairy farmers, and pig farmers of Gayaza (the town where she lives).
Her Shop Sign
Today, I managed to visit Florence at her place of work. (I made a short video during my visit.) Her shop was bustling and busy. It turns out there are many other florists who work out of the same location. The smell of her shop transported me back to the floral shop where I used to buy flowers before high school dances. It was one of those moments where if I had closed my eyes, I could have been in a floral shop anywhere in the world.
While we were there, Florence showed us albums of the work she has done for weddings and birthday parties. Her work is amazing, full of color and creativity beyond what I have ever seen in the USA. Anyone planning to get married, or have any kind of party, in Uganda should definitely hire her!
Some pictures of the flowers she uses in her arrangements
At the end of the visit, she gave me a beautiful red rose. I had had such a wonderful visit, I wished that I had something to give her. Now, writing this, I wish I there was a way to pass my beautiful rose on to all the people who made loans to her. She was giving me the rose because I represent those people and really all the people who make loans to Kiva!
Florence and I (and Grace with the bouquet she bought!)
Although I can’t pass my rose, I really want to pass on the gratitude she expressed. Thanks for making Kiva loans possible for Florence, and for all the poultry farmers, dairy farmers, and pig farmers who may have somewhat less glamorous stories.
To understand the interest rate that Pearl Microfinance charges its clients takes more than a brief look at a few numbers.
If you ask someone at Pearl what the interest rate is on Pearl loans, they will tell you “2.5%.” This means that there is a 2.5% per month interest rate. 2.5% interest is charged on the original loan amount rather than the balance remaining – in technical terms this is a flat interest rate rather than a declining interest rate. With a flat interest rate, over in a year, the clients would be charged 30% of the original loan size, and with the declining balance interest rate, they would be charged 16.25% of the original loan size.
These seem like very high numbers, but since the vast majority of the loans that are posted to Kiva’s website have 3 or 4 month loan terms the total interest paid ends up only being between 7.5% and 10%. To me, after a long motorcycle ride last Monday, this seems reasonable.
The Borrowers gather to receive their loans.
On Monday I went to visit the borrowers of Mityana, Uganda. Mityana is a mid-sized town that is about 50 km west of Kampala.
A few minutes after reaching the office, the credit office (CO) who was to take me to the field that day roared up on his motorcycle and came rushing in, very apologetic for not being there to greet me when I arrived. After welcoming me, greeting me, asking after my family, and all the people in Kampala, the CO asked me, “Are you really coming with me to visit the group today?”
This should have been a warning signal of what was to come, but since many Ugandans fear that I will not be able to manage things like carrying my own bag I tend to insist that I can do whatever people are asking of me (yes, this does result in me trying to do things that I definitely can not do – like chop an onion with a dull knife while holding the onion in the palm of your hand, but who can do that?!?).
The CO insisted that we take lunch before going because the place we were going was “very far!” So we took lunch and then sat around in the office waiting for the executive members of the group we were to visit to finish getting the money from the bank. At PEARL, the executive members of the community banking groups are responsible for carrying the cash to and from the groups. While we sat around, I played with the youngest member of the office, the 3 month-old baby of the office assistant.
About 45 minutes later, the CO started preparing me for the journey. He insisted that I wear a huge raincoat that he must borrowed from a local muscle-builder – and a helmet that looked as if it had been through a few crashes. I got on the back his motorcycle, and we set off.
After about 10 minutes on the road, the CO pulled over and asked me if I would sit “like a man.” I was sitting side saddle since I was wearing a long (cream colored) linen skirt, but I feared that he was asking me to sit “like a man” for my safety, so I swallowed my pride, hiked up my skirt, and tried to find a way to throw my leg over the side without traumatizing the children who had gathered to observe the scene.
A view from the road early on.
Usually before getting on the back of any motorcycle I tell the driver – “Mpola mpola – kale?” Which roughly translates into, “Go slowly, ok?” This usually has the effect of making my driver practically fall over since almost no white people who live in Uganda take the time to learn even a few words of Lugandan, but more importantly – it usually does makes the driver go slowly. Since the CO was a co-worker, I did not feel that I could tell him to go slowly – and he did not.
For the next hour, we traveled up and down hills that were at about 45 degree slopes on roads that were not only unpaved but seems to be covered with about 4 inches of dust. There were a few brief periods where I did not fear for my life. Eventually the road flattened out, which meant, much to my dismay, that the CO increased his speed.
Then we came upon the “road repair”…
The “road repair” was an area where HUGE piles of sand, that I am assuming were going to be flattened later, had been dumped in the middle of the road at about 8 foot intervals. The piles were about 6 feet high (I could not see over them), and they spanned the entire width of the road, except about 1 foot on one side – and the side where there was small passable area was not always the same side, which meant that was virtually impossible to continue down the road. The CO tried to drive his bike very slowly, often having to put his feet down and push off the side of the heaps of sand.
We kept almost falling over but the CO seemed unconcerned. I was very concerned.
When my skirt ripped, I was even more concerned, and when the back wheel skidded out beneath me, I got off – that is the graceful way of explaining how I ended up off – and started walking.
We eventually did reach the group (the Lubajja Traders), and it was wonderful. The interviews were fantastic, and the scenery was stunning. There was a school next to where we were meeting was having music class so they were singing and dancing around. This combined with the sight of the lake near by, and smell of the tropical greenery almost made me forget that I would have to make a return journey similar to my first experience…
On the way back to town, the CO seemed to be driving even more recklessly. After almost completely wiping out a few times, we came upon a large obstacle, and I told the CO to stop so that I could walk around it, and he drove off eventually going out of sight…
I wondered if he had misunderstood me. Maybe he thought that I had had enough, and that I thought I could just walk the rest of the way. There was a truck up ahead, maybe he thought I would just try to hitch a ride with the truck. I wondered what exactly I would do if he had left me here to find my own way… I was hours away from town by foot and there was no way I would make it before it was dark.
So… I just kept walking, hoping that he would come back… I walked trying to hold the tear in my, now filthy, skirt closed, with a huge helmet squeaking on my head, sweat soaking through my shirt under my oversized rain coat, and limping slightly since my sandal had broken and cut my foot one the times that we had fallen. From under my helmet, I could still hear the children’s voices calling out, “Bye Mzungu!” and although I knew it would make me look even more crazy – I couldn’t help it – I started laughing out loud. I could not stop laughing. I kept thinking what a funny picture I must have made. I am sure that the story of the Mzungu who thought she needed to wear a helmet to walk in Uganda will be told for weeks.
Then and there I decided that, had there been a way to make a video of that day without killing myself, I would have made the phrase “10% interest” scroll across the bottom of the screen.
The cost of bringing financial services to these borrowers is incredibly high. In addition to the financial and physical cost, the CO’s are incredibly stressed by such work. The CO was clearly exhausted at the end of the day – by the way, he did come back for me and he had found a short cut that allowed us to avoid the “road repair” section – but he missed his evening classes at the university he attends. It is important that the staff at PEARL feels appreciated for the difficult tasks they undertake! 10% interest seems a reasonable charge.
In order to make a judgment about the interest that PEARL charges, it seems you must take a good look at the numbers, meet a lot of borrower groups, and then go for a ** insert an adjective that properly describes the above experience** ride on the back of a motorcycle. Then, and only then, can you begin to understand the complexity of PEARL, at least in terms of interest.
Note: Mzungu is what many people in East Africa call Whites.
~~ Please join the lending team for Pearl Microfinance. Our hope is to use this team to help you connect more to the borrowers, staff, and Kiva Fellows at Pearl Microfinance! Watch the video below to see some of the sights along the roads of Uganda (none of the footage is from my trip to Mityana…)~~
In a previous post, I mentioned that many clients of microfinance pledge real items not just their reputations as collateral on their loans. (Please see “A message from Uganda” for a more in depth discussion of the idea.) A comment was made that asked a few interesting questions. I started to directly reply on the post, but realized that the answers were long and that they might be interesting to others.
(As a side note — those of us who are writing on this Blog love hearing your comments on our postings. Please comment if you are so inspired, especially if you have questions, we would love to write about what you want to know about!)
Before attempting to answer the questions asked, I want to respond to a well-deserved critique that the comment made, which is that the situation that I described is potentially only relevant at Pearl Microfinance Limited where I work. This is totally true.
Kiva Fellows, as people who are trying to understand and evaluate Microfinance as a concept, write about our microfinance institutions and post them on the Kiva Fellows Blog so as to create a group of voices talking about the particulars of our respective institutions. Hopefully, reading this Blog in totality allows people to gain a sense for what Microfinance is like in different countries, and even within the same country at different institutions.
I forget to be careful in my posts to be clear that what I see and observe at Pearl Microfinance may only be the case here. Please consider that stated for the rest of the post.
Grace, the Kiva Coordinator, in front of the Pearl Microfinance field office sign in Lugazi
Ok – on to the questions.
Where does the microfinance institution keep such collateral? I was describing clients who pledge things like sofa sets, cows, goats, and fridges so this is a very relevant question.
(I wish the answer was, “there is a corral in the back of the office where all the animals are kept and a very comfortable lounge with dozens of sofas,” that creates a very amusing visual.)
Pearl Microfinance only seizes the collateral if the client cannot repay. Under these circumstances the client’s bicycle, stove, dish set, stock of chickens, is sold, and the money made off the sale is kept by Pearl. The glitch in this plan is that if clients go into hiding because they are unable to pay, they know that the sale of their possession will be their punishment and thus they run away with all their possessions. This leaves the other thing that they pledged to serve as their collateral – their friends. In the case that the client goes into hiding, the remaining group members are required to pay on behalf of the defaulting client if the defaulting client’s collateral is in hiding as well.
Many of our borrowers here at Pearl have small stands like the ones in this photograph.
(this is rephrased) Do the items pledged have worth that is actually equal to the loan amount?
This is something that is decided by the credit officers at the time of the loan request. When a group loan is requested a credit officer goes and sits with the members. Each member then comes and sits with the credit officer and tells him/her how much they are requesting and what the items they are pledging are. From there, it is up to the credit officer to determine if the value of the proposed items is enough. My impression from conversations that I have had with credit officers and branch accountants is that the worth of the collateral is usually equal to the amount of the loan. If the borrower defaults and the sale of the items does not cover the outstanding balance than it is up to the group members to cover the balance.
Hope that answers the questions!
I am currently pondering is the extension to all of this – Which is that since the microfinance institution that I work with does group loans primarily, the contracts they sign are essentially with groups rather than individuals. Since Pearl earns 10% interest (or 2.5% monthly) on any given loan, and most groups repay the full amount one way or another, Pearl seems in a position to make quite a bit of money off of their loans. It seems like an ugly, although perhaps necessary, set up for the borrowers. They have to cover all the loss but they receive no gain for the excellent credit rating that most of them as groups have.
In many of the business profiles that Pearl posts, we talk about matoke. The green bannana bunches shown here are the main ingredient in this wonderful local dish!
Last week I had my first trip to the field. I traveled with Grace, the Kiva Coordinator here at Pearl Microfinance, to two branches in western Uganda, Lugazi and Jinja. Lugazi is about 2 hours away from the office and Jinja is about 40 minutes down the road and across the Nile from Lugazi.
The area between Kampala and these two areas looks shockingly like New England. Having spent many of my summers driving through the wooded areas of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, I found myself drifting back to blueberry pancakes for breakfast as I sat sweating from the heat and close proximity to other passengers on our crowded bus.
All reference to similarities between what I would expect to find at a loan disbursement in New England and a loan disbursement in Uganda are found above.
When I got off the back of the motorcycle that was carrying me to visit one of the borrower groups, I was left on the side of a road with no formal buildings in sight. There were cows grazing across the road, children playing in a field in front of me, a youth group playing soccer in the same field, and under a mango tree all the way across the field sat Omunamku Khama Group. The group had come together to sign their names (stamp their thumbprints), exchange pleasantries, receive their cash loans, and then head back to work to grow their businesses.
The credit officer in this area, Carol, told me that two of members, who came to the meeting laughing and clearly full of jokes, always “abuse her.” (This is a way of saying that they tease her.) They tell her “you may have gone to school, but we have more businesses than you.” Carol, who has worked with Pearl for over 10 years, seemed delighted that these women took such pride in their accomplishments.
Just a Note:
Something I had not fully realized about group loans, at least at Pearl Microfinance, is that the members do put down security that guarantees their repayment. Members pledge things like their radios, furniture, goats, bicycles, and cows. For some reason the way that microfinance group loans had been explained to me, I assumed that borrowers pledged their reputation rather than their material possessions.
Help fund loans for hardworking borrowers like these ones on the kiva website!
After years of international travel riddled with complications, I think that I have just experienced my most dramatic journey yet. About two weeks ago, I left Boston to travel to work with Pearl Microfinance in Kampala, Uganda. I had planned to land in Nairobi on Tuesday and then spend three days in Nairobi before traveling to Kampala Friday evening.
All went as planned. As I have lived in Nairobi before, my time there was spent visiting old friends and meeting all the new babies! Despite my happy time in Nairobi, as I headed to the airport Friday evening I was thrilled to finally be on my way to Kampala. I boarded the plane and sat down next to one of the heroes working on AIDS in Africa; listening to his story made the plane ride go by very quickly.
About 10 minutes before landing, I began to pour sweat and a sharp pain in my stomach began that scared me, despite all my years of stomach ailments from travel. After landing, and some chaos on the jet way, I met my waiting, and now very worried host family, who rushed me to the hospital.
Thus began a long night in a hospital with cockroaches in the bathrooms, ants under the beds, and staff who seemed unconcerned about me, and my insect company. Somehow, despite my lack of local currency and a phone that let me make international calls, I spent the night wide-awake on the phone with Kiva, our wonderful medical insurance program MEDEX (who had a doctor from the US consulting with my doctor within an hour), and my increasingly worried family.
The following morning, I was medically evacuated to a hospital in Nairobi where a series of tests revealed that I had had a cyst on my ovary that had twisted causing the severe on set of pain. However, it seemed to have untwisted, and I was feeling better – the pain had subsided over the day and my spirits has been revived by the awesome experience of being medically evacuated. (First, I rode in an ambulance with no lights and no sirens, which they compensated for by continually beeping – and then, I was put in a little tiny airplane where I was tied down to a stretcher, my IV bag was clipped to the light socket, and I had so many machines attached to me I felt like Dr. Octopus from the Spiderman.)
After determining that I would not need emergency surgery, the doctors sent me home with a friend of mine who is currently living in Nairobi. I rested for a week, went back to the doctor a few times for various tests which eventually showed that the cyst had dissolved, and after being given the go ahead – planned my trip to Kampala for a second time.
This time during the landing, my only stress was that the location of the airport in Uganda is such that you are quite sure you are going to land in Lake Victoria! You lean forward in your seat hoping that your forward momentum will encourage the plane to stretch a little further.
So far, Kampala has been wonderful – it is a bustling, hot, friendly place, that is clearly filled with adventures waiting to be had! I have only been at Pearl for about a day and a half, and so far, my days are filled with meetings with very impressive people, reading amazingly organized manuals, and other tasks that go along with the first days at a great new job. I head to the field tomorrow to meet with some borrower groups. I hope to have more news of microfinance soon!
During all my chaos – Grace, the Kiva coordinator here, was working tirelessly to prepare borrower profiles! Watch in the upcoming week for new loans from Pearl Microfinance!
Hello Kiva Supporters! My name is Stephanie Koczela, and I am ecstatic to be headed to Uganda to spend three months with an MFI called Pearl Microfinance Limited. I am writing to you today from a bus traveling from New York to Boston. I am amused to be writing to you from this bus as it is running on a smooth road, has plugs for computer cords in each seat, and even has high speed wireless internet – it seems a far reach from the conditions I imagine I will be living in the upcoming months…
I am traveling back to Boston, where I currently live, to finish up a few last packing chores. I take off Monday to head to Nairobi, Kenya connecting through London. I will spend a few days in Nairobi and then travel to Entebbe, Uganda where I will be greeted and taken to Kampala by a wonderful family that has agreed to host me during my stay.
Despite the looming unknowns, I find myself very ready for this adventure I am setting off on. I think credit for the ready feeling must be given to the wonderful training that the Kiva Fellows are given in preparation for our department. Before taking off, I wanted to share with you my reasons for being delighted with this opportunity.
Two years ago, with a group of women from Mathare Slums in Nairobi, a friend of mine from Chicago, and two community organizers, I started a small fair trade bag company called Witethye. This business was possible because of a $40 loan that my grandmother sent to us. When the group began the women could barely ensure access to meals each day for their families – now, two years later, they are able to send their kids to school and some have moved out of the more standard slum housing (iron sheet roofs on top of walls make from mud and sticks) into apartment buildings made from cement. This business has shown me the power of a little bit of money when put in the hands of entrepreneurs in the developing world.
Naturally, my experience with this business led to an intense fascination with the idea of alleviating poverty by investing in small businesses in developing countries — thus the discovery and love affair with Kiva. Working with Pearl Microfinance Limited will be different than my own small company, because I will get to meet and interact face to face with dozens of business men and women all over Uganda. Not only will I get to meet them and hear their stories, but I will get to increase the connections that you all have with entrepreneurs in the developing world.
I can’t wait.
Join Pearl Microfinance Limited’s lending group on the Kiva website to connect with others who are excited about the entrepreneurs in Uganda!
