Like the windshield on a motor-taxi in Phnom Penh rush hour, transparency is vital to Kiva’s survival. To give interest-free loans, lenders deserve to know that every cent of their money is being distributed exactly as promised, whilst borrowers have the right not to be misrepresented.
An important aspect of this transparency, and one which Kiva takes very seriously, is the integrity of the data on its website. Allowing inaccurate data is the first step towards encouraging fraud on the site, which would have severe reputational consequences for Kiva.
A key data check is performed between the time the loan is posted by the MFI, and when it goes live on the website ready for funding. At this point every loan is reviewed by one of a team of over three-hundred online volunteers. These language gurus work from all over the world to translate loans posted in foreign languages and edit those posted in English by Kiva’s field partner microfinance institutions.
This is a crucial link in the chain of events, not only because it ensures that Kiva lenders can understand business postings and thus make informed choices, that lenders are represented with dignity and clarity, but also because it is the one time that every single loan is scrutinized. Editors can, and often do, flag issues ranging from missing information in the loan description, double-postings, loan amount discrepancies, inconsistencies or problems with the borrower picture, to potentially controversial loans, such as a loan for a cockfighting business.
The Editing and Translation volunteers range from a high school microfinance club, to returned Peace Corps volunteers who want to continue contributing to the country where they were stationed, to young mothers home with their children who want to reach out to make a difference, to retired English teachers and technical writers. They are located on six continents around the world.
In my last blog I posted a video which followed a loan from London to Cambodia (A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story Of A Kiva Loan). The client that featured in the video was the smiley and exceptionally accommodating Van Makara, whose loan was posted by field partner AMK and selected by Danielle Lieu and my other ex-colleagues in London to be the recipient of their $25.
When the loan was posted to the Kiva website by Sophanith at AMK, it landed in the work-queue of Lorne Warwick, a retired high school english teacher. He immediately got to work checking the loan posting and editing the English to make it easily comprehensible (perhaps he should have edited this introduction too). His edits can be seen below.
Lorne Warwick has edited over six hundred loans in the past four months alone. And while no-one will ever really understand the complex algorithms running within Danielle Lieu’s brain that made her pick Mrs Van Makara for her first Kiva loan, it’s certain that Lorne’s edits did a fantastic job of making the loan posting infinitely more readable (ideal for people who are sifting through Kiva loans in the office when they should really be working).
Lorne Warwick: An Editor and a Gentleman
Lorne, a keen blogger himself, kindly agreed to write about his involvement in Kiva and what goes into the editing process. This is what he wrote:
Entry by Lorne Warwick, Kiva Volunteer Editor
As the editor of the loan to Mrs. Van Makara, the subject of the excellent video, “A Fistful of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan,” I have been asked to write briefly about my involvement with Kiva and what goes into the editing process.
A retired high school English teacher, my path to Kiva was largely serendipitous. In my first year of retirement, I purposely avoided making any commitments that would impose specific structure on my day, since structure was something that had defined my professional existence for 30 years. Content to take each day as it came, I busied myself with small home-improvement activities (never quite finding time for that major renovation needed in our basement!), an education research subcontract, and some sporadic writing.
My second year found me with a desire for a little more structure, so I began volunteering at a local food bank sorting and shelving donations. The very immediate results wrought by strictly physical effort were and still are quite gratifying. However, as time went on, I began to want to be of more service to others, never forgetting how fortunate I was to have been able to retire while still in my fifties, healthy and financially secure. The thought of paid work held no appeal. After becoming a lender with Kiva, one day I noticed a button on the site that said “Do More,” and to my delight found that the organization was seeking editors. The rest, as they say, is history, and I have now been editing loan descriptions for the past year, usually assigned two sets (with an average of 12-15 per set) each week by Kristy Harrison, one of Kiva’s volunteer coordinators living in England.
Perhaps the most powerful inducement for me in editing loan descriptions stems from my work as a teacher. I always had a special respect and admiration for those students who came to me, not to complain about their mark or try to wheedle a few extra points out of the old man, but rather were genuinely motivated to try to better their academic results. Essentially, they said, “I want to improve my work, and I want you to help me to reach that goal.”
Expressing such a desire meant I was at their service, and, in partnership, as long as they maintained that attitude and commitment, progress invariably ensued – progress not sudden and spectacular, but instead slow and steady. At the end of term, students would sometimes thank me for my help, but I would tell them that they had done all of the hard work – I had merely provided a framework and structure for their efforts.
This is precisely how I feel about Kiva, its mission, and my small role within the organization. The people seeking loans, already vetted and assessed by local Kiva financial partners, are the ones who bring the commitment, the motivation, and the goals to the deal – we are merely the conduit by which those goals can be achieved. Like the students I worked with for so many years, they have my deep respect and admiration, and I am happy to be of service to them.
Which brings me to the other aspect of Kiva that I find so immensely appealing: its model does much to renew the human spirit. I am convinced that the desire to help others exists in most of us, but this spirit of philanthropy needs regular cultivation. For example, many people have specific charities to which they regularly donate, and are quick to respond to pleas for money when natural and human disasters happen. However, these contributions are often made to large and seemingly faceless organizations tasked with dispersing the funds in a responsible and ethical manner. Our involvement in assisting the lives is thereby quite limited. The Kiva model, however, invites on-going participation in the lives of the borrowers, first as we select the region, the entrepreneurial activity and the borrower, and later as we can track the success of the loan through its repayment. The entire process is a steady reminder that we, as individuals, can indeed have a positive effect on the lives of our fellow human beings.
Kiva is an organization powered by a vision that is ideal for the times in which we live. While the events of the world and the actions of our leaders may frequently invite despair, Kiva is a vital reminder of the good that still exists, indeed thrives, in the heart of humanity. I feel privileged to be a small part of its efforts.
If you or anyone you know would be interested in becoming part of the Volunteer Editing and Translation Team at Kiva, visit http://www.kiva.org/about/opportunities/ and follow the appropriate links.
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/
***
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.
Dedokpo
Moise, the loan officer at Alide- Dedokpo, and I drove into the neighborhood of Aglas Hlazountas. In the mid-afternoon, the local market was pretty quiet, but we needed to scarf up some Kiva clients to interview, so Moise alerted the leader of the group, the woman selling charcoal. Evidently the word spread fast, because soon the Kiva women were upon us, joined by their entire group. Moise explained that the entire group consisted of 50 women who all shared the collatéral of the loan. Only a few of the 50 women were Kiva. They came ready to see us with baskets of wares on their heads. I asked for the honor of their photo.
Moise explained to the leader of the group that only some of the women were to be interviewed. This caused some panic amongst the clients ; they assumed that the rest would not receive loans. Even though Moise assured them that they would all be receiving loans, some milled around, still upset.
The first woman interviewed appeared a little suspicious of me during the interview, but after her photo, Mouhïnatou Kadiri was ecstatic.
Mouhinatou Kadiri
She left to go sell her articles, trumpeting to the market that now she was sure to receive a loan because of the interview. Beninese ladies generally do not smile when photos were taken, but when I asked Chantal Akoutey if we could take a picture together, she got a kick out of it.
Chantal Akoutey
As I relaxed during the interviews, I found the women more open with me. One of the other women sold soy cheese. I explained my family at one point had grown soybeans. We finished up the market interviews and went to make house calls for the women who sold out of their houses or stores. Moise and I paid for cooked soy cheese from Madeleine Agbedevi; it was delicious, and very Californian.
Madeleine Agbedevi
By the time we concluded our last interview, late evening was falling in Aglas, and Maurice and I sipped our bissap, hibiscus flavored tea which tastes like cranberry juice, out of icy cold bottles and jumped on his Chinese motorcycle to head back to town.
Alide and Kiva clients and me
Voodoo
At the Alide head office the electricity was cut again, and I asked Landry to explain the key concepts of Voodoo to me. I was having trouble making sense of what I had seen at the biggest Voodoo festival in Benin on January 10. Why did the dancing practitioners cut themselves with long knives?
Landry explained that the Voodoo priests, or féticheurs, chose January 10 as a day of prayer, communion with Gods, jubilation, and initiation. Like Catholics, Protestants, and evangelists, Voodooists have different groups such as the Sakpata, Dan, Lissa, Hebiosso, Djaguidi, Zangbeto, Oro, and Egoun. The Zangbeto police catch bad members of the community; The Djaguidi are those that communicate with their god through or cutting themselves. The Oro do not allow women to witness their ceremonies, and the Egoun represent the African dead, brought back to life. According to Landry, originally Voodooists used fetishes to protect themselves against evil. Certain groups also injure their fetishes to cause pain to others. Many Beninese practice voodoo, but it is hard to pin down exact definitions of the religion.
Voodoo Dancers putting on palm paint
When a group of ex-pats and I headed to the city of Ouidah, the old capital of the Beninois slave trade on the Atlantic Ocean, for the January 10 Voodoo Festival, we were certainly not initiated into the practices of voodoo. We had no idea what to expect. What we saw seemed chaotic and difficult to understand. The dancers were half-naked men and women wearing straw skirts and coated in palm oil and sand, which looked like wet yellow paint. They carried long knives, with which they cut themselves repeatedly, mainly on the legs and arms. Although many of the dancers were young, they had deep scars on their bodies. Blood ran freely as they danced, and sometimes Beninese who were not dancers would become possessed by the spirit and throw themselves into the group of dancers, who would encourage the possessed as they hurled themselves into the sand. As the dancers cut so swiftly their knives became blurs, I grabbed my friend’s wrist, unable to watch, but willing myself to remember that this was a sacred ceremony. Because there was no discernible boundaries, the watchers, a mixture of Beninese and a smattering of tourists, stood around the dancers, but had to run quite frequently as the dancers changed direction and ran towards us. Periodically men who were not clearly affiliated with the dancers would demand money from people taking photos. The dancers never used knives against each other or against the watchers, but as they were possessed it was best to give them some room.
Talk softly and carry a long knife
Caroline cut into Landry and my discussion. “The majority of Beninese are Catholic and don’t like voodoo,” she said, “Voodoo has been commoditized to sell Beninese culture to tourists.”
Landry protested that it was still an important part of the culture. There were some tourists at the event, but the vast majority of the people at the ceremony were Beninese.
“Do you want to be initiated into Voodoo?” Landry asked me a little jokingly, who was not initiated. “Voodoo will bring you peace.”
“Don’t listen to him!” called Rosalyne the secretary firmly from the other office.
As my group departed the ceremony, deciding not to stick around to wait for other groups, the Voodoo cortege arrived, men and women dressed in white, the religious leaders of Voodoo in the country.
the VIPs
Another Festival
Next Friday night was Alidé’s annual party. All of Alidé staff was invited. Our emcee joked that he would auction off tickets to Barack Obama’s Inauguration. For the loan officers, head office, and I, it was a night of bonding. Potato salad, spicy fish, fruit salad, and Castel beer mixed with pineapple juice competed for our attention until midnight. Afterwards, there was West African tunes, salsa, and zouk, combined with a few Beatles songs. Alidé staff hardly ever go out and work long hours, but on Friday we danced until six in the morning.
Clement, a loan officer at Alide- Santa Rita, and his date
Sarah Lawson is a KF6 Fellow working at ALIDé, a microfinance NGO in Cotonou, Benin.
The sale of used clothing is one of the top micro-businesses in northern Mexico. The transport of used items across the US/Mexico border keeps some families fed and clothed.
There are those who dabble in the market and may have just a few items. The items might be for sale in front of their house on a clothesline or a blanket on the ground. The individual may have another business going on- a store, food sales or the like. Their items come from a range of sources- maybe their children outgrew it, maybe they need the cash more than the item, maybe they saw a deal and are now looking for some extra profit.
There are women- used clothing sales tend to be women- who have a greater commitment to the industry. They work the markets. Communities throughout Mexico, typically have their market days. Tuesday and Friday mornings could be in one location. Maybe Wednesday evenings are held in another spot. Saturdays they might head to another town altogether. Typically there is a registration fee to be paid to the group running the market of $M100pesos depending on the size of your stand. Some markets are more informal with fees paid each time a table is erected. These women have been putting up stands in the same markets for years. In addition to the casual customer, they have a loyal client base who has come to trust their selections.
Some women may purchase items in “pacas” or bulk. They may buy a hundred pounds or so sight unseen for the markets. With the average American tossing 68lbs a year, there are lots of clothes to be had. Pacas come rated by quality that also varies the price. Items that were discontinued or otherwise never worn receive the highest rating. Brand names- like Levi’s or Hilfiger- in good condition also can increase the cost of a paca.
The final stage is the woman who invests in a store front. She has a greater grasp of the small business market. Typically she can more quickly engage in a more advanced discussion about earnings vs operational costs beyond what is in the cash box. Some refuse to buy in paca. They don’t like putting their resources into this grab bag approach of items unseen. They prefer to cross the border and select item by item what they are going to take for sales back home.
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon is a mere two hours from the Texas border. Shopping across the border is so common that there is even a verb “McAlleando” used when somone is off to McAllen, Texas shopping. Although this is typically used in reference to the wealthier families of Monterrey who go to the malls in Texas in the same way that someone from Nashville might go shopping in Atlanta.
Used clothing venders might some may head to the state of Guanajuato, the most enterprising sellers of used clothing travel to the border markets or cross the border into Texas. The Texas market was particularly lucrative back in the early fall when it was $10pesos to the $1. We are currently closer to $14pesos to the $1- that takes a huge bite out of a small profit margin. Before the currency fluctuation, people claimed they could make double. Buy a shirt used in the US for $2 and sell it for $4. The more experienced sellers talk about the market like a long term investor about his portfolio. There are good times and bad. These are some of the bad times.
Back home, items collected by local charities, but not deemed worthy of local resale are boxed up and either sold directly in lots at stores or even auction style at rates ranging from 37cents to 55cents a pound. Many of the items are taken to market with their original Goodwill or Salvation Army tags. By one estimate 50% of donated clothing is sold back to the same workers who made them.
Typically those who cross the border for clothing sales have documentation. Following a rigorous application process that centers around current employment and a vague assessment of your likelihood of returning to Mexico, a ten year visa can be granted. These folks cross the border to bring items back in for resale. The Mexican government has laws against the import of used clothing for resale. The number of items is vague. The customs agent tries to establish a sufficient number of items for the length of your stay in Mexico. Anything else can be heavily taxed.
The government believes the import of such large quantities of used clothing is hurting local manufacturing. The government hasn’t necessarily acknowledged the importance of cheap clothing to poor families. An quick look at the Sears at Monterrey’s Liverpool Mall is a good example. For the most part the items have approximately the same prices as any Sears back home. Same can be said for the Palacio de Hierro, a high end mall in Latin America’s swankiest zip code, San Pedro. This mall targets family incomes of $250,000 and higher- that’s dollars. A shirt for $1.50 or shoes for $3 can go along way to stretch the meager earnings- items not available at Liverpool or Palacio de Hierro.
My Dominican co-workers wore sweaters to work when temperature fell below 70 degrees in December. “Winter is cold here,” friends and employees told me. While I stuck to my t-shirts in the day, I did cut short my nightly unheated showers.
Mujeres Necesitades outside the Hato Mayor office: these bank members finished a loan in December and took out another, expecting that December would be a better month for sales. Numerous community banks reported throughout October and November that they had seen an economic downturn in their areas. Many credit the worldwide economic crisis. Most expected improvements as the new year approached.
At Esperanza International, offices in El Seibo and Hato Mayor recently worked through a large number of loan cycle renewals. Many community banks successfully wrapped up their six-month payment plans in early December, and promptly transitioned to another round, taking advantage of the annual rise in consumer demand around Chritsmastime and New Years. Not only was it gift-giving season, December also marks the start of the zafra, the sugarcane cutting season. Notoriously brutal, sugarcane has a legacy and a reality that falls somewhere on the “excessively exploitative” industry spectrum. One colleague calls the trade “a 19th century system that has just stuck around.” Undocumented Haitian migrant workers both survive by and suffer under the sugarcane economy. Sugarcane plantation communities, bateys, are strikingly isolated, resource-poor, and under-served. Bateys are also home to many of Esperanza’s community banks.
During a December interview, Cloreta, a Kiva-funded entrepreneur explained her situation simply, “this loan lets me keep food on the table.” While most of my Kiva interviews touch on hopes to pay school fees, open full-service stores, or repair individual homes, this conversation centered on a battle for subsistence. Many of the challenges facing Cloreta relate to living on a batey.
The Caribe Tours bus stop in Santo Domingo. Getting around the Dominican isn't too hard. These 60-some person buses go to all major cities. Smaller 25 person vans, taxis, motos, and other vehicles make up a wide array of transport options. Any combination of these methods gets you almost anywhere.
Away from the plantations, it is easy to gather an optimistic impression of economic development in the Dominican. Bus companies, motos*, guaguas*, carros publicos* and decent road infrastructure allow access to many nooks and crannies of cities and countryside. Motorcycle and scooter businesses fill streets with thundering packs of personal transport. There are innumerable dance clubs. Free trade zones in several cities employ thousands of workers, and the government seems to enforce some basic employment rights. Semi-rural towns have restaurants and motels. A significant number of young adults attend a battery of urban universities; degrees in medicine, computer engineering, accounting, and tourism studies are popular. Cable television, DSL internet, and Playstations regularly
Cheap, easy, and crowded city transport: the carro publico. Cram in six perhaps seven passengers. About 50 cents a ride.
Example of starting small: a bag's worth of clothes to sell. This entrepreneur hopes to expand over time.
appear in middle-income homes. Entrepreneurs are able to access large inventory vendors to buy in bulk. Entrepreneurs in rural and semi-rural areas can access main roads, and streams (although sometimes small) of clients who both live and pass through their communities. A good number of Esperanza bank members from all of these areas show convincing progress over time: a small food stand advances into a variety-goods colmado, a clothing seller goes from selling out of a backpack to setting up her own home-side storefront. These same entrepreneurs also talk of changing their tactics and strategies and adjusting their inventories and in order to fit into the best local economic niche. There is both flexibility and possibility.
Entering a batey is a distinct experience. Generally, long tire-pounding dirt roads wind their way from main thoroughfares into seas of cane– tall, stiff, and green. Austere cookie-cutter housing (built by the government or
private companies), sits secluded on cleared-out land somewhere amidst the green. Plumbing is rare. Some bateys have schoolhouses, others have no sanitary water. Some cane companies have abandoned the bateys themselves, but the crop still grows and locals harvest and sell it on their own. Bateys still under commercial control may have company stores, chunks of wages paid in “store credit” rather than cash, and rules forbidding locals to vend similar goods in the batey. Much like undocumented immigrants in the United States, Haitians cross the Dominican border in great need of work, and form the backbone of the most physically demanding and poorly paid workforce in the country. Human rights groups narrate a story of slave-like conscription and labor conditions, (local Dominicans may agree or disagree with that characterization). Migrant workers’ vulnerability, however, goes undisputed. The communities generally speak any mix of Kreyol and Spanish. If families have come “illegally” from Haiti**, they lack legal status, along with their children.
Sea of cane (Credit: Kayla Villnow)
Children of Haitians born in the Dominican stand in a citizenship void: unrecognized by either government. Dominican officials periodically round up illegal Haitains for mass deportations– another reason to remain isolated in the cane. Dominican radio talk show hosts may engage the topic of the “Haitian problem” from time to time. Rosy is not the word for the Haitian-Dominican relationship. The roster of issues is long.
UN peacekeeping in Haiti (credit: www.pbase.com) See postscript.
Cloreta lives on a company-owned batey. She is a Haitian immigrant, as are the majority of her neighbors. She sells modest foodstuffs—crackers, sugar, and coffee, oil and flour. She explained that she’d like to sell more diverse products, but this would conflict with the rules of the company-owned store. At the time (early December) she pointed out that the first wages of the
Some bateys have basic community infrastructure, such as school houses.
season would arrive in about a week. When cane cutters get paid, the batey economy gains liquidity, and Cloreta can take in cash. As she said, right now her income really only allows her to subsist and pay back her loan. The Esperanza payments, however, include mandatory savings, so at the end of her loan she will end up with an additional cushion.
The cane season will continue until the summer. Perhaps the six-month period will allow Cloreta to add to her savings, and allow her to reach beyond the “food on the table” goal. Cloreta plans on continuing with her microloans, she sees this opportunity as completely worthwhile. Other community members clearly have taken notice: the bank was training at least ten new members that day. During our interview, one of Cloreta’s colleagues was busy at work translating the loan officer’s information into Kreyol, since several knew no Spanish.
Fruits of much labor: a Kiva-funded bank gathered in a colleague's convenience store. A good example of successful growth over time.
I can’t decide if it’s fair to say that the cane season makes December and entirely “sweeter” month than others. Regardless, the batey clients certainly are skilled “lemonade” chefs, given all of the “lemons” they get.
Hasta la proxima,
Kalie, Kiva Fellow-Dominican Republic
(written from Los Alcarrizos)
*guaga: a van or truck, usually smaller than a 60 person bus. May also refer to buses. Motos: motorcycle taxi. Usually $1 or $2 a ride. Carros publicos: run down recycled cars that run designated routes in cities. About 50 cens a ride.
** Postcript on Haiti: Haiti today is considered a “failed state.” In the fall of 2008, hurricanes killed hundreds of Haitians, and completely destroyed entire communities. The latest of a series of UN peacekeeping forces has been stationed in the country since 2004 (UN-Haiti missions date back to 1993), in response to continued political violence between the Haitian government and other forces vyying for power. Many Haitians who attempt to leave the country cross over to the Dominican Republic (a rather pourous border). As undocumented workers, much like in the United States, they become the cheap-labor source for cane-cutting.
The racial and cultural divides between Dominicans and Haitians is palpable. A textbook might narrate the complexities of Haitian history from its birth via the famous country-wide slave uprising (Haiti is the world’s oldest black republic) to years of occupation, dictatorship, violent political instability, and today’s profound poverty. Meanwhile, day to day life in the Dominican reveals deeply seated ideas of race—the common phrase“black as a Haitian” is one way to call someone unattractive. As a Catholic-dominated country, many Dominicans also come up with wild stories of Haitian Voodoo practice: from baby-eating to witch-curses. Concurrently, many Dominicans emphatically reject the idea that racism partly defines Dominican-Haitian relationship.
“Idhi tich?” Nelson, my compound’s askari (guard), asked as I made my way to the gate. “Adhi tich!” I replied with complete enthusiasm, slightly mangling the Dholuo phrase, but hoping that maybe, just maybe, today I had said it well enough to be understood.
With an encouraging, patient smile, Nelson had me repeat the phrase that explained I was going to work until it was intelligible to him, if not anyone else who might have to suffer the misfortune of hearing my rather hopeless, though enthusiastic, attempts to speak Dholuo.
Masaeko, the K-MET askari, received a dose of it when I arrived at the office. At my bright “Oyawore! Ichiewo nadi?!” (Good morning! How have you woken up?!), complete with eager smile and the panting of a puppy just waiting to be petted, he exclaimed “ah!” and laughed with the friendliness that I have become accustom to each morning. He replied in Dholuo, and I positively skipped into the office, happy to be at work.
I work on the second floor of the K-MET office, in what is known as the library. I love this room. People wander in and out, using the photocopier and stopping to chat for a few moments. I can hear the roosters from the backyard chicken coop crowing (an activity they do not restrict to only morning, choosing to share their talents at any time they please), the call to prayer from a local mosque (which is in possession of some powerful loudspeakers), and the children at the Josanna Academy down the road.
Light breezes bring warm air in through the window, making the white net curtain wave lazily, brushing against the window’s sea-colored trim in a sleepy caress. From my desk, I can see the road out this window, which shows signs of having once been paved but is now dusty and rocky – when I get home from work I rinse my feet and my newly acquired tan slowly drips down the drain.
I usually share the library with my co-worker Debrah, who has long ceased to be just a co-worker and has become a good friend, as I consider everyone at K-MET to be. On this day, she is giving a demonstration on how to make a garden in a sack. Reason being, Debrah is a volunteer and works on the Food Security Project within K-MET. The Food Security Project is a division of K-MET’s Nutrition Program, both of which act as components of K-MET’s Home Based Care initiative.
K-MET’s Nutrition Program started in 2003 with the goal to improve the nutritional status of the patients that K-MET’s Community Health Workers provide home based care for. The program was initiated when the health workers (who are all K-MET trained volunteers) realized that many of their patients did not have enough food and that this fact drastically affected both the health of the patient and their ability to properly adhere to any medication course they may have been prescribed.
K-MET began training their network of Community Health Workers in the area of nutrition so that they may now counsel their patients on eating a healthy diet. In a region where lack of food and hunger are common, K-MET understands that knowledge of good nutrition may not be the primary problem, but rather lack of access to food. Many of the patients living with HIV do not have a steady income, thus getting enough food is often extremely difficult. K-MET works to address this issue by distributing Nutriflour – a corn flour blend mixed with various vitamins and supplements. Located in the room adjacent to the K-MET Health Clinic is the Nutrition Center, where K-MET owns a poshomill (a machine which grinds the maize into flour) and creates the Nutriflour. Packets of Nutriflour are sold here and also distributed to the Community Health Workers to give to their patients during their visits. Members of the community can also bring their own maize to be milled here.
young women milling flour at the K-MET Nutrition Center
Recently the Nutrition Program has swelled and is expanding to meet the community’s needs. Brought on board to assist Ken, the director of the Nutrition Program, Debrah focuses on addressing the need for food security in vulnerable families in the area. She holds training workshops for K-MET’s patients that cover a variety of food issues, with a focus made on growing your own food in order to assure food security. Using the demonstration garden in K-MET’s backyard, Debrah instructs local women on gardening techniques and teaches them tips to maximize their small garden space. Many families, however, do not have enough space to have a garden for personal food production, even a very small one. So Debrah recently held a seminar to instruct women on how to make a “garden in a sack.”
A group of about 12 women gathered in the K-MET compound to learn how to use a small amount of space to grow healthy vegetables like Kale by creating a miniature garden within a basic, large sack. The women come from the St. Rael Support Group, a K-MET organized support group for women living with HIV/AIDS. The group meets every Friday and takes part in a variety of activities. From KMET, the group receives education, information on nutrition, technical advice and items such as seeds in order to build up their families’ food security. St. Rael Support Group, with an enrollment of 28, is still a young group, but K-MET hopes that as the group becomes more cohesive and established, that the women will be able to be introduced into the microfinance program. With loans from K-MET, the group may be able to purchase farming implements and start large scale farming as an income generating activity.
the wamama wait for the demonstration to begin
Some of the women had walked quite far to get to the K-MET office, so they sat in the shade to rest and wait, while Debrah finished preparations for the demonstration.
As you may have guessed, the first step in creating a garden in a sack is to get a sack.
You then fill said sack with dirt until it is almost completely full.
have sack, will fill
The next step is to nestle an open-ended box (or tube, if you will), made of either metal or plastic or cardboard, in the dirt within the sack and fill it with stones. This is used as the watering system for the sack garden. Water is poured into the box and it slowly filters through the stones, gradually watering the vegetables without flooding them.
the array of materials-stones, dirt, and sack
The demonstration was lively and the group was very active, laughing as they worked and arguing over the best methods. Well, at least that’s what they told me they were talking about. As I only know various Dholuo greetings, I’m not much use in understanding gardening conversations. The process moved along quickly, and I was eager to see what the final product looked like.
it's almost done!
After the stone watering system is in place and the sack is completely filled with dirt, holes are poked into the sides of the sack and seedlings are planted within. With water and sunlight, they will grow out of the sides of the sack, providing a vulnerable family with needed healthy vegetables. Kale, the popular leafy green vegetable that is sautéed and called “kisuma wiki,” is one of the most appropriate vegetables for the garden in a sack.
Debrah and Masaeko plant the seedlings
the finishing touches to the Garden in a Sack!
After the garden in a sack demonstration, the group took a well-deserved lunch of stew, ugali (a cooked mix of flour and water that forms a kind of paste that is a staple carbohydrate in Kenya) and, of course, kisuma wiki.
a cheeky chicken finds its way into the K-MET office, pauses, checks out the scene
Oh and those roosters I hear in the backyard each day? Well, they too are doing their part in K-MET’s Food Security Program.
Find out more about K-MET’s programs on their website :www.kmet.co.ke and keep an eye out for new K-MET loans on the Kiva website!
Day in and day out I swerve through Honduran shanty towns, isolated hovels, over exquisite landscapes and into ditches. I can’t open my eyes wide enough, and at the end of everyday I have more questions than the day before. The questions are complex and every one leads me down a rabbit hole. Its starts like this: To begin with, how do we really measure poverty here in Honduras? And once I identify the poor, I wonder, does Prisma reach the poorest of the poor? If not, is it enough that they reach the middle poor, and by virtue of growing small business opportunity, they grow opportunities for employment of the poorest of the poor? Given the global economic crisis, is encouraging debt responsible? Is it more important for the borrower to just feel less poor? Or is that just an enormously arrogant view? And once we move into the realm of feelings, we lose all measurements. But lets say we wanted to measure feeling poor, is that something we should do? And how? My head is swimming.
All my questions really crystallize as I write journal updates. Let me stop asking and begin.
Sometimes I meet people whose situation is dire. They live in garbage. As we drive up, dirty children come to greet us. Big, haunting stares. As we talk I find it hard to focus for the sheer quantity of flies in their open homes. This was the case of Doña Reina Marina Fernandez. She lives in a tiny isolated village. To get there I rode on the back of a motocycle for over two hours of dirt road. We stopped twice to push it through rivers and sludge. We arrive to find the majority of her property totally destroyed by the recent flooding that has decimated the southern region of Honduras. The flooding has changed the shape of her land and her oven is about to fall off a cliff. She is trying to figure out how to move it since she makes her business baking bread and other sweets.
Flooded Property
Her smiling son of about 15 comes to greet us. I give him a hearty greeting just to find that he is mute. Like an idiot I say, “hello, how are you?” in sign language. First, signing in Spanish is as different as speaking in Spanish. Second, of course he didn’t go to sign language school. This person has no communicative ability, because he was never taught to talk. He smiles and gestures and Manuel, the saint of a loan officer that has been taking me around, understands him. Or pretends to. For several months this year, the flooding isolated this town. Most of the crops of every person, including Doña Reina, were destroyed and there is little to eat. They take the bus in now to Danli to buy basic goods, and try to sell them in an economy, that for all appearances, is hardly functioning. It should be stated clearly that she is open about her circumstance and is honest about her difficulties but she was honorable and resolute. She has a quick wit, and asked me interesting questions about the US. She wonders how many people are farmers. I could only tell her that my family was a family farming and my dad still works in agriculture.
Surely, this is “the poor”. Right? But who are the children I see out of the corner of my eye as we whiz through pueblo after pueblo, and in the shadows of Tegucigalpa? They raise their heads out of giant dumpsters as we pass by, faces covered in flies. Are they being reached by microfinance? If not, can they be?
And in my journal updates how can I represent the poverty here. Telling one person’s story is satisfying, and its my job, but really its not about one person. Its about a system. I write the details of one person but on re-reading every update they seem flat and one-dimensional. I find myself wanting to highlight poverty for Kiva lenders. Then they can feel like their loan meant something. They can feel they are helping. I feel horrible when on my visits find myself looking for the saddest part of their story. Preserving their dignity is important to me, and I try to stop myself. I do, but its hard. I so badly want to see an extreme transformation that I have to make sure I’m not fabricating it. Progress is so incremental, often non-existent.
Sometimes I have a totally different problem representing the borrowers. Sometimes the borrowers don’t seem nearly as poor. They definitely needed it, accordingly the loan was helpful, but in no way life altering in the Muhammad Yunus sense. This was very true on a recent visit.
I meet many people like Victor, who really make me question the system and the goal of microfinance. He is a former professional football player in Honduras. He played 10 years in the professional soccer leagues of this country and for many teams. I’m told that 10 years ago soccer players didn’t make the money that they do now. Still- this seems to indicate a level of opportunity Doña Reina can only dream of. He now operates his own taxi business. We talk on his outdoor patio while workers finish painting his two-story house a nice new shade of vibrant yellow. His lovely, stylish wife passes through on her way to visit friends, high-heels clicking past my filthy, dusty tennis shoes. He owns his taxi, and his personal car, and needed a loan to fix a broken transmission. This sounds like the kind of debt I have. He supports two children who live in Tegucigalpa while the attend University. As an unpaid Kiva Fellow, with little to no plan about how I’m going to finance my life in the U.S when I return in 5 months, saddled with student loans, I wonder if Victor is actually richer than me. Surely not. Right?
Victor
Though this doesn’t feel like the microfinance of my imagination, the Victors of Honduras are a crucial cog in the microfinance machine. In order to reach the poorest (assuming that they do) Prisma needs him. Before they are a development organization, they are a bank. Their technical abilities, and sound internal policies make the humanitarian arm of their business more effective. Obviously this is a simple concept, but will Kiva lenders feel emotionally fulfilled when they learn the true details of his life? Is this a breakdown in the system? I want to accurately describe what I see here, really shedding light on the whole system, and thereby foster true understanding. But something about Victor’s loan doesn’t feel like microfinance. Still, it was a small loan, so that counts. Right?
Understanding what poverty looks like here, how microfinance fits, and whether it’s addressing the real causes of poverty, where cultural differences begin and end, how to speak to truth, and where I am in the whole system is hard. I’ll admit freely: right now, I am lost.
My life has turned into a bunch of “lasts.”My last time seeing friends I have made here, my last time gathering around the table with what has become my family, my last time going to my favorite market where they know me by name, my last time swimming in the warm and oh-so-blue Indian Ocean, my last time laughing with others about my attempt to speak and understand kiswahili, my last time holding on for dear life on a daladala (city bus), my last time climbing those 3 flights of stairs to the whitewashed office that is SELFINA (the partner Mico-Finance Institution I am assigned to), my last night sleeping under a mosquito net, my last Monday, my last Tuesday, my last Wednesday….the list goes on…
If I had to sum up what I have learned in this experience, it is to be patient and flexible (well, as much as my Type A personality will allow!).Working on an internet based system when internet is haphazard and sometimes non-existent for periods of up to 2 weeks, one has to be patient and flexible.Having malaria far from one’s home base and still having to achieve certain goals in a short period of time, one has to be patient and flexible.Driving for up to 2 hours, swerving through traffic on the main roads and then trying not to smash one’s head on the roof top on some of the bumpiest dirt roads I have ever seen only to arrive to a location to find the client you are looking for not there, one has to be patient and flexible.Trying to make sure when journaling that information does not get lost in translation (sometimes the client will talk very expressively for 10 minutes and the Kiva Coordinator will simply tell me the client is doing well), one has to be patient and flexible.Understanding SELFINA’s capabilities and the Kiva requirements and making that relationship sustainable, one has to be patient and flexible.
Without a doubt, this experience has been very unique and inspiring.Being invited to these women’s (SELFINA makes loans only to women in order to empower them in society) business and homes and learning about their struggles and their future dreams and plans has given me a peek at the strength and potential Tanzania possesses.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve explained the concept behind Kiva to family, friends, and people I’ve met along the way, but each time my explanation is slightly different.
This is because Kiva is really quite difficult to explain. It incorporates frightfully odd concepts such as microfinance, acronyms such as MFIs, faux acronyms (“what does K.I.V.A. stand for anyhow?”), frequently confused verbs “lend” and “borrow”, crossovers between banking and charity, international flows of money, interest and yet no interest, is it a tech start-up or is it a non-profit? It’s both Jim, but not as we know it.
I used to start with the basics: “Kiva is a website…”. But then I thought that makes it sound a bit, dare I say it, cheap, like hamsterdance.com is a website, so then I switched to “Kiva is a web-based non-profit organisation” which is the signal to most people to stop listening immediately and start planning an escape route to the bathroom.
I like to tailor the explanation depending on who the person is, how interested they seem, whether they know terminology such as microfinance or even the internet – in some Cambodian villages knowledge of the former outweighs knowledge of the latter whilst back home in England the opposite is true.
But when it comes down to it, does anyone really understand the Kiva process from start to finish? Well sure they do! But will we ever meet these mysterious people? Probably not.
So before I left my job at Credit Suisse in London, I decided it would be great to try and follow one loan through the system from start to finish, for the benefit of my colleagues who I coaxed into making a loan, and for myself, and for anyone else who is interested.
Three months later and my little project has reached fruition and dropped right off the tree in a sticky mess. An eleven minute video that I’ve effectively been married to for twelve weeks. It haunts my dreams. I’ve developed repetitive strain injury in my left arm from sitting at my laptop.
But I’m thoroughly glad I did it as I’ve discovered a new passion for making and editing videos to add to my long list of hobbies-to-take-up-and-then-drop-months-later. And I’m right-handed anyway.
I hope that you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it.
Note: To watch the video in full screen (recommended) please click on the four arrows in the bottom right-hand corner of the video
To see all of the AMK loans currently fundraising on Kiva.org please click here
Additional note: To link directly to the video please use the following URL: http://www.vimeo.com/2769845
Why is it that when you’re just starting a job, you always introduce yourself to the CEO with spinach in your teeth, or rip your pants pocket, or spill toner on your shirt?
My finest hour was when I was starting on the copy desk at a newspaper, trying to make a good impression as a head-down, able worker, and the copy chief gave me a big story. I had my take-out dinner on my desk. As I stared intently at the screen, trying to be the model of a journalist who’s so totally engrossed in the task at hand he can’t even be bothered to look at his food, I gave my Orangina a vigorous shake, as instructed on the bottle. Forgetting about the cap. Which was off.
The guy sitting next to me said he couldn’t believe his eyes: me just shaking this bottle, the bright-yellow fizzy drink flying everywhere. And it took me a second to catch on, too: even as I felt myself getting I drenched I think I was in disbelief at the sheer stupidity of what I was doing, so I kept right on shaking the bottle for another second, soaking my clothes, dinner, and workstation in sugary goodness.
Yeah, I’m awesome.
So I’m on Day 2 as a Kiva Fellow at XacBank, here in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. XacBank is the first microfinance institution Kiva has partnered with in this country, and I have been given specific instructions to make a good first impression as a Kiva representative because Kiva is super-excited about the partnership. And I am, too: I’ve been pumped to get to Mongolia ever since I heard Kiva would be starting operations here.
In Azerbaijan, where I spent about two months as a Fellow before coming here, each of the MFIs I worked with rents a few rooms and has a few employees in their main office. I got to know the CEOs personally. We all wore sweaters to work most days. The employees were tight, like families.
XacBank (pronounced haas-bank) is like — well, a bank. It’s a microfinance bank, but it’s definitely a bank. Gleaming marble floors. ATMs. Currency exchange. An HR department. Fatigue-wearing security guards with guns. Suits and ties. A conference room with snazzy rolling chairs.
So, of course, Day 2, I break a mug right in the hallway by the stairs, the most high-traffic part of the office. I’m actually thinking, as I put the mug down on the blatantly-neither-flat-nor-level Hyundai water cooler (see photo): “This sure seems likely to fall, as this is not a flat surface.” I’m actually thinking that.
This is not a flat surface.
And this is not a new experience. I’ve been down this road before, either thinking “if I back up any more, I’ll put my tail light out on that fire hydrant,” or “if I flick this cigarette butt that way, it’ll hit that dude’s Harley,” and then proceeding to do it anyway.
So, yeah, I’m setting down the mug, figuring it will fall, but as I do I get distracted because this bracelet I bought it untied, and for some reason that takes priority over the mug — as if tying the bracelet cannot wait, but the mug can be put back together again once its shattered — and I sit down on the plush leather sofa to tie it and I hear a crash.
So now I’m picking up broken ceramic shards and apologizing to whoever walks by. And I’m having a lousy day — I’m new to this country, it’s freezing cold, there’s bad news coming by e-mail from home and I’m too far away to be of help, I feel lonely and jet-lagged — and I’m experiencing wave after wave of let’s-call-the-new-guy-’butterfingers’ shame.
So this co-worker, no idea who he is, walks by. He sees what’s happened. He stops.
“In Mongolia,” he says, “it’s good luck if you break something. We say that if you break a glass, all conflicts will go away. So now, any conflicts people were having with each other on this floor will be solved.”
I’m not sure if this is true, or if he was just feeling sorry for me and decided to make something up. It made me feel better, though.
It is the last day at HKL today and I’m heading back to my country-Japan. So I am reviewing what I did in Cambodia. Maybe my contribution is a little different from other fellows due to different background-I’m from Asia.
The reason I became Kiva fellow is to learn Kiva and micro finance and then try to localize Kiva since language barrier is very high for Japanese people unfortunately. Many of my friends don’t loan even if they are interested in Kiva.
Let me note how I reached Kiva. I had a experience to stay in Cambodia 10 years ago. one day, I and my friends went to the Mekong River to see the sunset. But I had some trouble with them at that day and I sat down river side alone.
When I lonely watched the sunset, some local children came near me and found me crying. And then one firl without one arm wiped my tear. At that time there were some children whose parents made them disabled on purpuse in order them to beg money as well as many land mine victims, I heard.
I decided to do something for Cambodian in some ways since she comported my spirit. But I found many of Cambodians got used to receive something by developed countries at the same time. Therefore, I thought they needed something helpful to their independent efforts. That’s why I have been interested in micro finance but unfortunately there was no chance to learn it in Japan.
I didn’t tell my interest to others for long time due to some critical trend for charity and volunteer as hypocrisy. Through I change little by little through charity activities for an orphanage in Philippine with my friends. When I started to tell my friends my interest to micro finance, one of them told me she watched some TV program about a unique NPO in USA. That’s Kiva. I couldn’t reach Kiva if I yet hesitated to talk about my interest, and if I didn’t keep the charity activities. I soon started to think to sell Kiva to Japanese as I have some kinds of confidence I can do it due to my charity experience and network.
So far, I keep a Kiva fellow blog in Japanese as well as in English to introduce Kiva fellow’s activities. Moreover, I have joined a Kiva fan’s community in Japanese SNS. And then, fortunately I have found some camps who are willing to start up ‘Kiva Japan Project’ – a small group to aim at starting up Japanese version of Kiva. We sometimes have meetings by Skype and one day some of them showed me a demo site of Japanese version. I, by myself, am so surprised at this movement! I have never imagined my idea would be real in such a short time. I know we have a lot of issue to try from now. But it’s important keep taking action even though we don’t have enough resource and knowledge. And then we eventually find good chance or somebody’s help. I’m excited to forge ahead the project now.
I have learned never-give-up spirit through fellowship. Actually my life here was not so easy as well. I often felt sick and got cheated. Some experience made me very depressed and unhappy as I post last fellow journal. But I knew even terrible experience is necessary to test myself. Good and bad experience made me think what is my real goal and how much passion I have.
In order to achieve something, I need to overcome some conflict between the ideal and the real. But I believe every experience in Cambodia will open up my future.
I’d like to say special thanks to Kiva and Hatta Kaksekar Limited(HKL). I’m so happy to work as Kiva fellow at the wonderful MFI! I extended my fellowship for 1 week because I found the most favorite time in Cambodia is not visiting some famous places but talking, joking and laughing with HKL staffs.I cannot explain how much I love HKL! There is a full of joy, warmness and happiness.
I hope the more and more Japanese become a part of Kiva and become Kiva fellow in the future.
In the field, I always asked borrowers ‘What’s your dream?’
So, this time, I answer the same question, ‘It’s to connect more friends in the world and help each other.’
This is my last Kiva fellow blog. Thank you very much for reading!
Abozu with Abby and I of "Why I can't give Abozu my Camera" blog fame
I spent the weekend in Lomé, Togo with Abby Gray, another Kiva fellow at WAGES. Wages is basically like Alide in a few years: larger, and with a deeper relationship with Kiva. To get to Togo, I had to cross the border from Benin to Togo alone, which was just a little bit more harrowing and stressful than was necessary between two small, relatively stable countries. I decided to go to Togo on the spur of the moment. Spontaneity: definitely a new quality for me. At 2 pm on Friday I left the office. I should have left at 12:30. In Africa, one should absolutely get to their destination before dark. It is not just convenience, but safety. Abby once crossed the border into Togo from Ghana at night. Chaos ensued at the border after a man was hit by a truck. They put him in the car to drive him to the hospital, then returned almost immediately as he was already dead. There are no traffic laws or lanes: huge trucks, smaller cars and taxis, motos, darting sellers plying their wares, and border crossers all vie for command of the center of the road. The result is anarchical.
There were a few options for crossing the border from Benin to Togo: a bus, a bush taxi, or a private car. Ideally I would know someone with a private car going to Togo that weekend, but as I did not, this left the bus or bush taxi. A taxi seemed safer because there are less people, and buses are known for a high rate of theft.
I found the bush taxis waiting by the Jericho Post office. Right away they tried to charge me over twice the usual price, but I bargained it down. I sat in the car while the brother of the driver stuck his head through the permanently open window and harassed me. None of the men, including the driver, paid any attention. He wouldn’t leave me alone, so I finally got out of the vehicle and contemplated going home completely. Not exactly an auspicious start, but I decided to stick it out. I was sitting in the front seat and the driver asked me if I wanted to “pris 2 places” or pay for two seats. I didn’t want to, until I found out that full capacity in a bush taxi is not 4 passengers, but 7 passengers: 5 in back and 2 in front. I paid for 2 seats (about $8).
There weren’t any other women, and I felt very nervous. The drive was slow and I could feel every bone in my body vibrating with apprehension and a little bit of fear. Was this smart? Getting into a car with five men alone? Near the edge of Cotonou, we picked up another passenger: a woman. I was relieved. There were now 5 in the back, and I could feel the guy behind me stick his elbow into the back of my seat to try to get some traction as we were thrown around on the potholed roads. The heat and dust were intense. I was soaked in sweat from the ride and my face was covered with a thin layer of red dust.
About two hours later we bumped into the actual border. Everyone else got out, and the driver kicked me out of the car because none of the other passengers were going on to Togo. He found me another taxi driver headed to Togo. I appeared to be the only passenger, but he didn’t want me to get out until we got up to the actual border. I suppose he thought I had no idea where I was going (which was true) and also didn’t want to lose a passenger. He kept asking me if I was married (I lied and said yes) and whether or not I would go out with him. Then, he tried to drive through the actual border when he should have let me walk and get passport checked. As soon as he drove through, the patrol became very angry and opened my car door and pulled me out of the car, not roughly, but just forcefully enough that my Beninois cell phone fell out of my hand and I lost it.
The driver accompanied me to passport control. I realized I didn’t know the exact address, just the neighborhood, of the place I was living at in Cotonou, or the area I was going to in Lome. Addresses in Africa are much more fluid. Finally the driver supplied, “Grand Marche?” or big market, which is the main market of Lome. The customs officer wrote it down on the form.
The driver left and I went to see the visa officer. The visa officer did what almost every Beninois man, married or single, does to a foreign girl: relentlessly hits on them. As he asked me pertinent questions, he kept up a constant commentary of impertinent questions – “You don’t know where you’re staying? At my place?” and “I will marry you even if you have two sisters to take care of.” I couldn’t believe the border officer was hitting on me now, wasn’t he supposed to be a law officer? I was so tired and having trouble understanding him. I felt like crying, but realizing it wouldn’t help, I instead looked gamely at him and said, “I have two sisters, and they’re very expensive.”
I walked across the no man’s land, searching for the driver, but couldn’t find him for a good 10 minutes. When I finally found him, he led me to a dirt road behind a few houses. Were we actually going to a car? I was starting to feel a little irrational. Several men followed us, all pointing at me and saying “yavo.” By this time I had just realized my phone was gone, but it was on the other side of the border. Everyone was staring at me. The “flee” instincts in my brain were already engaged, but where to? Not to the visa officer. I told the driver I would pay for two seats.
“But every place is already taken!” he announced, sounding scandalized.
Five men got in the back. The driver, myself, and a younger guy climbed into the front. The car was dead silent, and I could feel the tension radiating up my legs. The guy next to me and I were ignoring each other although we were ear to ear. As the driver downshifted into my left thigh, I wondered if the stupidest thing I had ever done, or the most interesting.
Then the driver put a tape in. The music played in tinny spurts. I could make out English, French, and what was probably Mina. Everyone began to sing along to the reggae tunes, some of it Nigerian English. The music segued into love songs. The men sang along softly in Mina, and a nice breeze came through the window as we sped through southeastern Togo. I began to notice the graceful coconut trees on either side of the road, the actual cleanliness of the environment, a pretty lake. It sort of looked like the Caribbean, and as everyone continued to sing, I began to relax, or as much as I could in my current cramped position. I smiled goofily to myself, laughing at my previous fears. Definitely the most interesting thing I have ever done.
The best moment during my weekend involved another round of music. Abby’s homestay brothers decided to teach Abby and I how to dance Togolese-style. They took Abby’s computer outside. One of the young men began to swirl his arms and jump around like a duck. “The Chinese duck dance!” he trumpeted. They put on Togolese music: hip hop, tribal tunes, reggae. We tried to move like they did. I recognized a song from the taxi ride. We hopped around on one foot, and we taught them the slap-hands game and shadowboxed. We sweated a lot, and finally formed a four-person dance train and jumped up and down the hallway of the outdoor courtyard, singing and panting as we tried to keep up with the beat. The rest of the family stared at us from below as they washed the house and we danced up and down the stairs like a bunch of hooligans. There it was again: the power of music.
Sarah Lawson is a KF6 Kiva Fellow in Cotonou, Benin with the NGO Alide.
It’s 5am and the electricity has just come back on here in my Khujand apartment.I know because the sheet metal of the‘70’s era space heater plugged into the wall has started to creak and crack as it warms.I’m not typically up at this hour but it’s D-day – my departure – and I’m anxious to get started on the 3 day, 5 country journey back home.Today Tajikistan to Uzbekistan, tomorrow Uzbekistan to Moscow to Amsterdam, and finally Amsterdam to… America.
I’ve grown accustomed now to calling my homeland, ‘America.’Early on here I didn’t know what to make of the blank stares when I told someone I come from the US or the United States.I later learned that the term ‘United States’ connotes the former Soviet Union and its dozens of republics.Even before I arrived, I contemplated the reactions I would get considering Tajikistan is the northern neighbor and close cultural cousin of Afghanistan.“What do they think of Americans?” my aunt asked me before I left.I was stumped by the question but I knew I would soon find out.
I still remember from a decade ago the hordes of students in Europe with Canadian flags stitched into their packs.More than half were Americans in partial disguise, otherwise given away by the ballcaps and Tevas.You could always out them by trying to start a conversation about the Stanley Cup finals that year.I also remember resolving myself to avoid hiding who I was and where I was from and instead act as an informal ambassador to those I meet on my travels.Here in Tajikistan I was true to my pledge.Mostly.
The reaction I received as an American was absolutely 100% unwaveringly positive.In fact, it was so positive I had to wonder why.We hadn’t provided them any aid, hadn’t liberated them from an occupying power, hadn’t established close diplomatic ties, and they didn’t even have Coca Cola.Sure, they knew Chuck Norris and Michael Jackson but was that enough?After enough time here I finally figured it out.
Tajikistan is living proof of communism as a failed experiment.That conclusion isn’t based on any economic analysis or survey.It’s based on the overwhelmingly wasted talent of the population.The country has a 99% literacy rate but you don’t need to read to drive a cab.Doctors make the equivalent of $100 a month.Mothers of five sell gum and cigarettes on the street corner.It’s a long story, but the Soviet plan designated Tajikistan to produce cotton and the country was bred for just that purpose.The government here halfheartedly clings to the notion that there is such a thing as a cotton superpower, but deep down it realizes it has no viable industry or economy.Mostly what people want is the freedom to earn a living and pursue their talent.
Consider the fact that we ask our children, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’(Some of us are still pondering that question well into adulthood.)We ask because it taps into what every child in America has; possibilities.When I talk with teenagers and young adults here about their future plans, inevitably they tell me it’s their dream to go to America.It’s not based on some infatuation with Levi’s and McDonald’s.It’s because in America they have possibilities.
As much as my ego would enjoy it, I realize it’s not me they love when their eyes light up upon hearing of my nationality.It’s that, in their mind, they instantly associate the word with every spark of ambition they’ve ever had in their short lives.Growing up I wanted to be a truck driver, a veterinarian, a metallurgist and a filmmaker.Instead I ended up a Kiva Fellow, but every one of those options was a real possibility for me.Some probably weren’t the most prudent career paths, but they were mine if I wanted them.Everyone else wants to be able to dream the impractical dream if they choose – and therein lies the appeal of America.
With sincere thanks to the good people at MicroInvest and all the friends I’ve made in Tajikistan, I’m signing off from Central Asia… for now. After the holidays I will be working with CEVI in the Philippines.
After finishing my Kiva fellowship with EDAPROSPO last week, I moved out of Lima and into the province of Junín in the sierras of Peru. My time with Microfinanzas PRISMA is quite short and so I’ve engaged in a whirlwind tour of meeting entrepreneurs, collecting their stories, and posting journal updates. As the PRISMA office in Tarma services the entire northern half of Junín province, the clients are very spread out and thus long hours are a given. The following video is a snapshot of my day on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008. I had to split it into two parts because the upload process is long and with the internet out here, there’s not much worse than waiting 40 minutes to upload a video only to have the internet cut out with 20 seconds left (happened three times). If you go to the YouTube site, you can watch the videos in higher-quality.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy the insight into what a typical day of a Kiva Fellow entails (at least in Tarma, Peru for Microfinanzas PRISMA).
A Day in the Life of a Kiva Fellow… Part 1
A Day in the Life of a Kiva Fellow… Part 2
Josh Bull, Kiva Fellow to Microfinanzas PRISMA Peru.
To view their currently fundraising clients on Kiva’s website, please click here.
Christmas in Honduras sunny and delicious. Christmas parties are everywhere, and come with very royally dressed women and scantily dressed girls. Office beauty pageants. The days are a warm 80 degrees, toasty not humid. I’m eating Tres Leches cake like my heart is made of iron, not soft, susceptible tissue.
I can’t get enough of the Christmas trees. Like everything here, color is supreme.
Christmas Tree in Prisma's Office
Don’t forget that they don’t grow pine trees here, and that these are all fake.
Always Popular Ribbon
The center of town is grungy as ever, but filled with bustling shoppers wiping sweat, not snow from their brow. The main Christmas tree of Honduras is clearly adored.
Downtown Tegucigalpa
I have seen one living tree- in the home of a Kiva borrower. It is my personal favorite.
Iris and her Children
Christmas to me smells like sharp pine mixed with musty paper as we unwrap the ornaments. I love to decorate the tree. Each ornament bought in a different year. Many older than me. In Honduras, trees are new every year. New ornaments. New beginnings. I helped build the tree in my home here.
Sierra Lends a Hand
Giant metallic globes compete with gold garlands and plastic bunches of grapes. Each sparkling piece is attached to the wire branch and polyester needles. I adore it.
I had been planning for today’s lasagna lunch since the second week of my fellowship when one my colleagues asked if I could make his favorite dish from the U.S. How could I say no? This man had picked me up at the border, arranged my housing, and even helped me secure a SIM card and cell phone, among countless of other tasks. Lasagna was the least I could do, right? Right? In the end the lasagna required more than 10 trips to various stores and the efforts of approximately 12 people, in three countries.
When I made the commitment, I did not understand how difficult it would be to find the necessary ingredients. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find fresh mozzarella or ricotta cheese – I couldn’t find cheese, period. After many rounds through the market and trips to supposedly ‘Western-style’ stores, I came to the harsh realization that this dish was going to require some serious effort.
Luckily, I managed to secure some guests during my fellowship: I asked my boyfriend to bring a box of lasagna noodles and Jenny, who was visiting from Kiva, to bring along a bottle of Kraft parmesan – the kind that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. While in Uzbekistan, I scored a can of tomato paste and a packet of dried tomato sauce, which would replace the non-existent basil and oregano – all they have here is cilantro. I had planned to make my own ricotta, arguably lasagna’s key ingredient, but without a thermometer or buttermilk I was forced to give up on that plan as well.
So, as you can imagine, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about my opportunities for success. I stopped trying to find ingredients and started planning excuses to weasel out of the obligation. Feeling guilty, I decided to give it one last shot and wandered into a market not far from my office. I could almost hear the heavenly choir pouring down as my eyes rested upon a pile of ground beef (ground beef!) and two blocks of cheese: gouda and edam! It wasn’t exactly mozzarella and ricotta, but it wasn’t the Tajik salty soft cheese either.
Unfortunately, Western conveniences do not come cheaply and I only had enough money in my wallet to purchase the cheese. I also figured that, if I had been forced to eat meat for 10 weeks, it wouldn’t hurt them to eat vegetarian food for once. Proud and excited, I headed home to prepare the sauce and fixins…..that’s when it really got interesting.
1. I have one electric burner and no stove, which makes it pretty tricky to bake lasagna. It took a few tries, but I finally found someone to bring their stove, as well as a pan, into the office today (it’s not too big, don’t worry).
2. I don’t have a can opener, so I had to borrow one from my neighbor. After several minutes trying to figure out how to use it, I had to walk back across the hall, with my tail between my legs and ask for help. It’s never very empowering to ask for help in using a can opener. She clearly felt bad for me because, five minutes later, she sent her daughter over with a bowl of soup and some chocolates.
3. When I got to work this morning, my coworker asked what kind of meat would be in the lasagna. I explained that I had run out of money while shopping and had been unable to purchase the ground beef . Before I knew it, all of the men in my office had plopped down 5 somoni each (enough to cover the cost of the meat), saying “we want meat”. So, I ran back out to the store.
4. A coworker then arranged for the driver to take me home so that I could pick up the rest of the ingredients and cook the beef on my stove top. When I got there, the electricity was off – of course.
5. I headed back to the office to set up the stove and start baking the ground beef. Thank God that I made an obnoxious quantity of sauce the night before and thank God they made me go buy meat because the pan that my colleague had lent me was huge!
6. I got the lasagna into the oven at 11:20, which gave it just enough time to bake before the electricity went off at noon.
Well, somehow my ‘thank-you’ present for one of my colleagues turned into a celebration for the whole office. Everyone came – I ended up making lunch for over 30 people. Sadly, I didn’t get to take a picture of the final product because I got shoved out of the way so that someone else could serve it. But it was absolutely beautiful….and yummy! It didn’t taste exactly like lasagna, more like fancy cheeseburger lasagna, but it was wonderful! Everyone, including myself, had such a good time sitting around, eating, and chatting. Sitting there, looking out at my coworkers who I would soon say goodbye to, I started to fight back tears. Tomorrow is my going away party – but it couldn’t possibly be better than today’s event!
Thank you everyone for your support during this fellowship. Thank you for letting me share some of the amazing experiences and stories – I hope that I have inspired some of you to keep learning about this region.
Signing out……Carrie Ferrence with IMON International in Khujand, Tajikistan
Storm clouds are gathering in Eastern Europe. Ukraine, Hungary, and Iceland share the news headlines as the wold’s foremost victims of the global financial crisis. Political infighting and tensions with Russia, along with a severely declining steel industry have deepened the effects across Ukraine. There is a silver lining, but more on that later.
In the western world, “political tensions” essentially mean that 24-hour cable networks switch to all politics, all the time. In Ukraine, due to “political tensions” between local officials, last week many districts of the capital city of Kiev lost heat and hot water. These are government-controlled commodities – the local goverment can literally shut off your apartment building’s gas heating at a whim. In sub-zero temperatures and bitter continental winter conditions, losing heat for a week is a hardship to pale at. People couldn’t even wash dishes, because the water was literally freezing out of the tap. Even now, three days after the heat was turned back on by these same officials, radiators are merely lukewarm, homes are still freezing, and people are sick with colds and flu.
In addition, the value of the UAH (or “grivna”) has fallen from 5.05gr to $1 on October 1 to 9.45 to $1 on December 17 – a loss of nearly 50% of its value in two and a half months. This has a direct impact on many citizens, since half of all bank loans and most rents are denominated in either dollars or euro, but most people get paid in grivnas. Imagine that your rent was 2,525 grivnas ($500) per month on October 1. At current exchange rates, your rent due on January 1 is now 4,725 grivnas.
Banks are feeling the crunch most keenly, since most of their own debts are denominated in foreign currency as well. Informal reports from Kiev state that it is nearly impossible for individuals or businesses to get dollars out of ATMs or money changers – banks are holding on to all foreign currency reserves and refusing to sell them. One source attempted to find USD from over 20 different ATMs and exchange kiosks, with no luck.
Add to the mix the near-collapse of Prominvest Bank, one of the largest in Ukraine, earlier this fall. To prevent a bank run, they froze all depositor accounts until at least January. People and companies can see their money sitting in their account, but cannot withdraw it, and cannot use the bank to transfer funds or make payments. As of December 16 a Russian bank has been in negotiations to buy the troubled bank. Many Ukrainians view this nervously as Russian attempt at economic, rather than military, takeover of their country. Ukraine is in a vulnerable position, as its GDP is expected to decline by up to 10% in 2009. Consider that the predicted 3.4% decline in the US is considered a deep recession, while a generally accepted definition of a “depression” is a GDP decline of more than 10%.
This is particularly hard on financial institutions – like Kiva’s field partners.
Kiva’s business model is more complex than it appears at first glance. When a lender sends $25 through Kiva to an entrepreneur, that money is received and disbursed by our field partner in that country – in this case, HOPE Ukraine. The field partner is a microfinance bank which is authorized as a financial institution in that country. They do the leg-work of finding clients, performing due diligence to ensure the borrower is solvent, writing profiles, and handling the transactions between Kiva’s lending community and the local entrepreneur. Critically, they also handle foreign exchange risk.
When Kiva sends $300 to an entrepreneur, it’s exactly that: $300. So we’re expecting that same $300 back, regardless of the value of the local currency. Imagine that HOPE Ukraine had raised $300 on Kiva on October 17 for an entrepreneur named Tanya. They would have converted it into grivnas at 5.05, and given Tanya 1,515 grivnas on a 10-month term. Her principle payments are 152 grivnas, which is what she gives to HOPE Ukraine each month, and HOPE Ukraine promises to convert it and send it back as $30. However, when HOPE Ukraine converted Tanya’s monthly payment back into dollars on December 17, that 152 grivnas is no longer worth $30 – now it’s worth only $16. HOPE Ukraine must then pay $14 out of its own pocket in order to send Kiva lenders a $30 repayment.
That sounds pretty grim for HOPE Ukraine, doesn’t it? But we promised you a silver lining, and here it is:
Due to the crisis, none of the big traditional banks will give out loans anymore, so everyone is coming to HOPE Ukraine. They have as much business as they can handle, and more. And because the grivna is worth less, they can lend out in higher amounts. Since Kiva has a $1200 per entrepreneur loan cap, back in October no Kiva clients could borrow more than 6,060 grivnas. Today that $1200 loan cap is worth 11,340 grivnas – so they can service clients who have a greater range of financial need. And they can use the extra income they’re generating on all these new loans to pay that $14 on Tanya’s loan.
Microfinance institutions in these circumstances begin to seem, if not recession-proof, at least recession resistant. Even as the value of their loan portfolio declines on international markets, the volume of loans they service can increase, because traditional banks tighten their lending habits. This is particularly true for loan-only microfinance banks like HOPE Ukraine. Because they don’t take deposits, only give out loans, they did not have money sitting idly in their coffers to be used for foreign investments. They stayed out of the mortgage-backed securities and the short selling, and were thus insulated from many of the shocks that traditional financial institutions suffered.
Conditions on the ground, particularly for the poor, are still harsh and uncertain. Unemployment is skyrocketing, inflation is at 25% and rising, and the government is deadlocked in political infighting. Tanya, and everyone else in Ukraine, may or may not have hot water, or a job, or a savings account tomorrow. But despite the gloom and instability, and in some cases because of it, Kiva’s field partners are standing strong.
Yesterday I met Mr. and Mrs. Phung, their two children and their granddaughter.The Phungs run a bicycle repair shop.It is a small shop on a partially paved, pot-holed street on the outskirts of Thanh Hoa City, Vietnam (150 kilometers south of the capital, Hanoi). Had it been a few houses further down the street, Mr. and Mrs. Phung would have enjoyed views over the rice paddies.
Bicycles are repaired on what would be the pavement, if one existed.As with many homes, the front room not only acts as a sort of living room but also as a place of business; in this case a store room for bicycle parts. Bicycle tires and tubes hang from the ceiling and brakes, brake cables, pedals, baskets, etc. are stored in cubby holes on the wall.Even with the entryway wide open, one’s eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark inside.
Mr. and Mrs. Phung had been warned in advance of this foreigner’s arrival and welcomed me into their home.We were there with one of the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women’s loan officers to distribute a group loan.
While each borrower was lent almost 3.1 million VND (~ US$181), they all said they wanted to borrow much more but couldn’t. I’ve heard this complaint many times as I usually ask borrowers what they like most about the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women (“FPW”) and where they’d like to see improvements. As I knew, FPW restricts the amount that individuals can borrow by reference to their credit history, and 6 million VND (~US$353) was the absolute maximum loan amount.So I wondered why borrowers wanting more money didn’t borrow from the bank.After all, it is not uncommon to hear FPW’s borrowers such as Mr. & Mrs. Phung say they expect to make a profit of 2 million VND (~ US$118) per month on a 12-month 3.1 million VND loan.
Now many poor borrowers the world-over can’t borrow from a bank because they have nothing to offer as collateral.But this appears not to be the case in rural Vietnam where most people own their houses and the land on which their houses are built. Which raises another very interesting question: how poor are these borrowers?
I know the answer to the first question is much more complicated than I’ll ever learn but from my few short weeks in Vietnam, here are two pertinent discoveries: many borrowers don’t have title deeds to their properties and some who do aren’t willing to risk losing their homes on a business loan.Being told the latter by Mr. Phung (while Mrs. Phung tended to her granddaughter’s needs) was particularly revealing.Here was a borrower who was willing to borrow money from a loan shark at an <a href=”http://www.mftransparency.org/”>APR</a> of 188% but they wouldn’t mortgage their house to obtain a more favorable interest rate (fortunately for Mrs. Phung, FPW loans carry an APR of only 24%).On the other hand, maybe the Phungs were more clued-in than I give them credit for as I’m sure many small business owners in the US will rue the day they gave their bank a personal guarantee on their small business loans.
I also wonder, in light of the aforementioned discovery, how poor FPW’s borrowers really are. Now I really am tip-toeing into a mindfield.So let me skirt around the edges.<a href=”http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/aboutus/“>CGAP</a> (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor), the leading independent resource for objective information, expert opinion, and innovative solutions for microfinance, defines the <a href=”http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/530/”>poor</a> as those living on less than $2 dollar per day per capita. I haven’t yet investigated how this definition takes into consideration real estate ownership.The fact that FPW’s borrowers benefit enormously from such small loans (particularly given the alternatives) is good enough reason to lend to them.But are they really that poor? It is a question that many Kiva Fellows I’ve spoken to ponder.And it is a question I will continue to research and think about.
Postscript: Today, at the opening ceremony for FPW’s fifth branch, the local People’s Committee member welcomed FPW into his district saying, among other things, that he hoped the provision of loans to women in his district would prevent them having to leave their homes to search for work elsewhere.He went on to say that some who did were “stolen into China” – which my interpreter translated to mean sold as wives to Chinese men.Indeed, my translator told me that one of her parents’ neighbors had been sold to China, only to return 10 years after her disappearance.A sobering thought which puts theoretical questions related to “poverty” into perspective.
It was very first time in my life I confused so much what is common sense.
I went to Immigration Office in Phnom Penh to get my passport with newly extended visa a few weeks ago. But an Immigration Officer said there wasn’t my passport. I couldn’t believe what she said. She said an officer whom I submitted my passport to the day before that day, wasn’t the officer in charge of visa extension, and she had no idea with my passport. What?! The guy was not officer in charge of visa extension? Why could that horrible situation happen? It was too hard to believe.
One day before that day, I couldn’t find where Visa Extension Department in Immigration Office and asked one guy I met there. He said’ OK. Come here, please.’ And then he asked me ‘Which country is your passport?’, ‘Japanese’, ‘It costs $55 and you would receive new visa after 2 o’clock tomorrow.’, ‘ It should be $45.’, ‘ No, $55.’
I had no choice at that time since my visa was almost over. I had too little time to give up to apply that day. The guy somewhat dubious but I thought the price maybe changed. It often happens in Cambodia. Finally I paid $55.
When I was at a loss to hear no my passport at the Visa Extension Department, one other Officer in charge of Visa Extension, said to me the guy I submitted my passport to had my passport. But he didn’t know where he was at that time. Why was it possible that he went out of Immigration Office with my passport? The officers knew the guy had my passport, it means they knew the guy cheated me. Why didn’t they accuse the guy and try to get my passport back to them? I was almost dead of anger to everybody in Immigration Office. It’s really unbelievable. What should I do without passport here? I started to feel insecure.
Fortunately I had the guy’s phone number just in case, called him and got his answer. He said ‘ Why you didn’t come to the office at 2 o’clock?’
That was true he had said my visa would be ready at 2 o’clock the next day. But I didn’t think it was a appointment with him. Did it mean after 2 o’clock visa is ready as I should have gone there at 2 o’clock? Why was I blamed by him? His word made me really unhappy. Anyway, he said he had my passport and would come back to Immigration Office. The only one thing I could do was to wait for him back. I didn’t know he would really come back or not. My worry became bigger and bigger.
While I was waiting for the guy, the officer in Visa Extension Department told me this was my fault since I didn’t go to Visa Extension Department. I got mad to hear that again. Is it my fault to ask an officer in Immigration the way in Cambodia? Was it a common sense here? But I couldn’t show my almost bombing indignation because I needed his help to ask the guy giving me back $10. Yes, the guy cheated price as well. Actually it cost only $45. He cheated $10.
Unfortunately the officer said ‘It is out my business. If I say so, my colleague would get angry with me.’ His words made me really mad. ‘Don’t you have any pride of your job, terrible man?’ I refrained the words in my mind. They don’t care for non-Cambodians, but their folks.
Actually I found some Cambodians never care of such kind of moral. They seem to think non Cambodians should pay money for them in any ways. They always charge expensive price to non Cambodians. Of course I truly understand this country is so poor that people need help. But I feel annoyed with their attitude of getting used to just get receiving something by foreigners. When they see foreigners, just ask us money. In this country, we have no choice but to obey this culture heavily tainted by corruption.
Even though I asked help many times to the officer in charge of Visa Extension, he went back home leaving me alone finally.
I didn’t know whether the guy would bring my passport or not and whether I could get my money back. I was so nervous and uneasy. I wondered whether to get my passport stolen?
I really needed someone beside me to make me easy.
Although I asked a HKL staff who took me to Immigration Office by motorcycle to wait for more 5 minutes, he also left me alone. I couldn’t explain how sad I was seeing of his motorcycle going. But I knew he wanted to go back home. I just needed to accept it.
The waiting time alone made me become so anxious and uncomfortable. I felt quite alone. No energy with my body. Eventually, I couldn’t keep standing.
I’m sure my face at that time was so terrible and ugly. ‘I came here for Cambodian people. Why did they treat me like this? I would never come back to this terrible country, never, NEVER!!!’ refrained negative words in my brain.
The waiting time seemed forever. I tried not to think negatively and to do something. I checked the time quite often with mobile and then tried to call somebody, but didn’t finally since I felt nobody could help me.
Nothing to do in front of Immigration. Just watching cars and motorcycle were coming and going with empty feeling and disappointing at Cambodian society.
After my million-times calls, the guy miraculously came back to Immigration Office with my passport. The visa was completed the procedure fortunately. He didn’t show any guiltiness and didn’t give me back $10.
‘ Why did you cheat me. Give me back $10.’
‘ I don’t have $10′ now’,
‘ Liar! You should have.’
‘ You can check my body!’
Childish talk. But I was so serious.
Actually, $10 wasn’t so big money for me, but I didn’t want to obey this terrible society with bribe.
I suddenly remembered some Cambodian friend had told me when I get cheated, I should think to have made donation or paid lesson bill to learn Cambodia. In the case of my $10, should I think so? No, I’d love to help Cambodian people, but not in these ways!
Never ended talk with the terrible guy, finally I started to cry getting frustrated by him and myself.
‘I work here to help Cambodian. Why do you cheat even such people doing their best for your country?!’
He looked around others looking at us and said, ‘I’ll pay it tomorrow. Don’t cry.’
Of course I didn’t believe his word. But I had no choice. There is no help and it was getting dark. I could not check his body and check how much he had. Finally I got back to the office without money back.
After 2weeks from this horrible day, I was cheated again and lost my money. Although I truly know not everybody cheat me, the horrible experiences impacted my motivation very negatively. To work for developing countries is much harder than I expected in my country. And then I found I need to complete my mental preparation and never give up to achieve my goal no matter how horrible experience I would have.
To keep working in Cambodia, I need to overcome my experiences and never lose my motivation for this beautiful country.
(with apologies to Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King)
1. Cats are great city animals.
Cat on car.
At one time, Baku was rat country, so I’ve been told. Someone decided to fix the problem by either introducing cats to the streets or firing all the cat-catchers. You don’t see many rats around nowadays.
Cats are everywhere. They stand guard outside the markets, scurry beneath the tables inside the posh furniture stores, sleep atop parked BMWs, pick through garbage, and mew in the hallway of my apartment building. A friend here started adopting street cats and now has seven in her flat.
Coming from New York, I’ve always held up pigeons (and to a lesser extent, squirrels) as the best city animals. And I’ve always taken rats for granted. But cats, quiet and clean, are, to me, the new gold standard.
2. Traffic laws are outstanding.
So THAT'S what a seatbelt is for...
As a car owner, I have some ambivalence about traffic laws. I hate parking tickets. Sometimes I find a 65 mph speed limit to be — idealistic. And I’ve sent the occasional text message at a red light.
So I write this fully aware that I am a hypocrite: traffic laws are outstanding.
I’ve been in countries with bad drivers before. The drivers of India and Pakistan and Bangladesh don’t deserve any medals. But there, because it’s generally poorer and warmer, the streets are jammed with every sort of vehicle: hand-pulled, bicycle and motorized rickshaws, scooters, buses, trucks and cars, not to mention a variety of livestock.
So bad driving is mitigated by 1) self-preservation (as you can get thrown from a rickshaw pretty easily) and 2) weak engines. It’s hectic, lawless traffic, but it’s not that fast.
Azerbaijan, in contrast, has hectic, lawless, fast traffic. People are generally driving cars, buses or trucks, and good cars, too, not Tata Nanos, but Benzes.
And because cars are the only thing on the road and cars are expensive, if you’re driving at all here, you’re a big deal. That, in turn, means you shouldn’t have to break for any commoner on foot. Nor should you approach a blind turn through a narrow, residential alley at less than 50 mph.
It’s not that right-of-way is ambiguous here: the cars have it. I guess I’ve been spoiled living in places where cars break for pedestrians, but I find the traffic here beyond aggravating. Everyone uses their car horns constantly to express anger, and tricked-out horn upgrades (the “air horn” and the “Godfather theme” being ubiquitous) are mandatory.
What’s optional? Seatbelts. Headlights at night. Child safety seats. Staying within the solid double-lines on a highway. Most people with kids have them ride on their laps in the front passenger seat, their little faces pressed to the windshield.
On a recent road trip, we passed a roadkill horse (!), two dead dogs, and a brick truck that had lost its bricks on the way out of Baku. On the way back, we saw a dead person in the road (!!). No wonder everyone stops at the mosque just outside of town to make an offering to Allah thanking Him for a safe ride!
3. Russian is hard.
Three genders? Six cases? I’ve been studying for two months and still don’t know what a case is.
4. All politics is local.
So said Tip O’Neill, long-serving Speaker of the House.
Case in point. In America, we fought a “cold” war with Russia from the mid-1940s to 1991. There is still hatred and fear of Russia in some parts of our political sphere (ask Sen. John McCain how he likes the Russians).
We also have as our enemies the “Axis of Evil”: Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iraq, of course, is now are ward. North Korea is flirting with giving up the bomb. But Iran appears to be carrying on as a threat, with worried talk in the news magazines and Sunday morning talk shows over when it will get nukes and what it will do with them.
So here I am in Azerbaijan, sandwiched between Putin and Ahmadinejad. Azeris don’t care. There’s nothing too frightening about either. They may not always have nice things to say about their neighbors to the north and south, but Americans aren’t always that charitable with Canada and Mexico, either. Anyway, Azeris have reserved 100 percent of their negative energy for their neighbor to the west: Armenia.
The cause is a dispute over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which took the form of a war in the late ’80s and ’90s and now is the source of much saber-rattling, but little fighting. Some 800,000 Azeris were displaced by the loss of the territory, and bettering their lives is a major part of microfinance here.
It’s less of an axis and more of a singularity of evil. And, sadly, it’s no exaggeration to say that dislike of the Armenians is nearly universal and is strong. I don’t know, there’s some axiom here that fits, one man’s jelly is another man’s jam or something…
5. Bribes suck.
I finally paid one, last week. Sixty manat (about $75). It wasn’t, like, spiritually degrading or anything, but it was 60 AZN that I’m not going to be spending on candy and DVDs.
On December 4th, I had the wonderful opportunity to accompany Prisma employees to the Premio Impulso Microempresarial 2008.
This was an event put on by a Honduran Magazine called Micro Empresas & Finanzas that seeks to unify and inform the microfinance sector here in Honduras. Prisma was a recipient of the Premio Impuslo Microempresarial, which recognizes their contributions to the microfinance sector.
Orbelina Valeriano, Prisma Director, Holds Award
There were a variety of speakers that addressed changes in the country, and gave inspirational words to those in the audience, encouraging them to continue to have faith despite worsening global economics and recent flooding which hit some communities in Honduras.
By the time we got to the last speaker, I was struggling to keep my head up, and look as though the concept, “We want to thank you and thank God for the successes micro-enterprises has had this year”, was exceedingly interesting the 6th or 12th time around. However listening to the final speaker, Emilio Santamaria, the conference magistrate, re-ignited some of the idealistic vigor I brought with me when I came here. He gave a long powerpoint presentation that began with a story:
“There was a man that walked to the local pulperia to get some mantequilla and there was a dog sitting out front crying. Not barking, not whining, but truly crying. The man went into the store, saw a friend and ended up chit-chatting for a while. Nearly half an hour later, he left to store to find the dog still crying and crying away.
The man asked the dog’s apparent owner, ‘why is the dog crying?’ and the owner said, ‘he’s crying because he’s sitting on a nail’. ‘I don’t understand’, said the man. To which the owner replied ‘the nail hurts him but still, he does not move.”
This story caused murmurs throughout the crowd. Magistrate Santamaria then went on the eloquently explain that Honduras shouldn’t be like the dog, crying over its pain, but should instead move itself. And move itself forward. “Technology is the wave of the future! And we Honduras must take hold of it! Harness it! It used to be a crime not to teach your children to read, and now it is a crime not to teach them to use a computer!”
“YES YES YES!!” I wanted to stand up exclaim.
By the time we left the event, everyone from various microfinance organizations were comparing how they use their computers. Everyone seemed to have a pretty good system for data management and bookkeeping, but I was surprised by how few viewed the Internet as a crucial resource. Not even all of Prisma’s field offices have Internet, which creates an added challenge for them as they implement Kiva.
Nevertheless, I think Prisma feels proud to be ahead of the curve, and I’m proud to work with them. Its wonderful to work in an environment and in a country that isn’t crying, but is moving itself.
Prisma Staff
I am a Kiva Fellow, Class of KF6, serving three months in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and three more in La Paz, Boliva. Please check out my current MFI, PRISMA, and see all of their fundraising loans here!
In May 2008, Salone Microfinance Trust (SMT) launched an agricultural loan product to clients in the remote farming villages surrounding the city of Kabala, Sierra Leone. The agricultural loan product is designed to stimulate the agribusiness sector. The loan provides subsistence farmers with a capital infusion into their farms for the purpose of increasing their production. Most commonly, the capital is used to purchase seeds, fertilizer and labor. These are the inputs, so to speak. With more inputs, subsequently, there are greater outputs or yields. Increased yields lead to a source of income for a group of people who ordinarily have no little or no income generation.
I recently had the pleasure of visiting 15 of the first SMT agricultural clients in their home villages. The villages have names like Senekedugu, Gbawuria, Heremakono and Karmosalai. All of the farmers I met had similar aspirations in May at the time of their loan disbursement – more inputs to yield more outputs. They have the land to cultivate, but they did not, until May, have the capital. Agricultural grant programs have come and gone over time. SMT’s agricultural loan program was the first of its kind to reach these remote villages. It could not have come at a better time.
Previously, these farmers could only harvest enough food to feed their families. The harvests were not big enough to generate any income. The loans have enabled many of them to generate income and create jobs for laborers looking to work. The program, however, has not come without its challenges.
While their land was ready to produce a bountiful harvest after planting seeds and laying the fertilizer, Mother Nature has not been as accommodating this harvest season. The rain season begins around May and typically lasts throughout October or early November. This year, however, the rains ceased earlier than ever before. The rains were weak and short-lasting. While most of us would prefer to say ‘good riddance’ to rain, these people’s livelihoods depend on rain. They need rain to survive.
Full crops were ruined by the climate change. Cabbage and carrots are the prominent vegetables grown in the villages. I heard case after case of carrots whose growth was stunted or cabbage patches that were ruined. The farmers rely on historical climate patterns to determine their planting and harvest season. They were completely caught off-guard by this phenomenon. The sudden and dramatic change in the normal climate pattern has caused problems amongst many of our agricultural clients. There’s a temptation amongst the farmers to blame it on global warming (yes, this controversial theory has made its way to West Africa), but it’s much too early to tell.
In addition to the climatic issues, Sierra Leone farmers are working with bad seeds. Again, case after case, farmers complained about the quality of the seeds they receive from the capital city of Freetown. The problem is they don’t have any other choice than what they get from Freetown. The seeds are imported from other West African countries, like The Gambia or Senegal. By the time they arrive to the villages, the seeds are no longer viable. The seeds are not germinating properly and can therefore produce no edible food. Bad inputs lead to bad outputs.
While there are many seed programs in Sierra Leone and in other developing countries, the feeling is that they are not affective particularly in the remote villages. Many of them don’t have the financial backing to sustain themselves and reach these far-out destinations. Are there any solutions to bad seeds? How could we possibly control the amount of rain or this global warming trend? There are solutions to these issues and I think they can all be offered on a micro scale by microfinance institutions around the world.
Let’s first consider the importance of agricultural education and training. In response to his client’s problems with managing the harvest calendar during a particularly finicky rain season, SMT’s agricultural loan officer, Mr. Bombeh Conteh, will lead an effort to train his clients on the importance of crop rotation and diversification. For example, starting this coming January, Bombeh will educate his clients on the planting and harvesting of the Irish potato. The Irish potato is a crop that does not require rain, now that we’re in the dry season, and it can be a valuable food item during a period of time when food and commodity trade is usually slow. They’ll have a product that will generate income during a time when income is generally non-existent. He’ll teach them how to take advantage of a specific season and weather pattern. This education will extend into the next rain season, when he will ensure his farmers get out there early to plant their carrots and cabbage.
SMT could also create a seed program tailored to its clients. As a proven, well-managed organization, SMT can obtain higher quality goods than any individual could in Sierra Leone, especially a poor farmer from a remote village. Theoretically, SMT improves the probability that the farmers yield a crop (and thus are able to repay their loans) by selling them the good seeds at the time of their loan disbursement. You are decreasing the risk of crop failure by providing the farmer with better inputs. They’re going to be able to produce more with good seeds! SMT would stand to gain a little from the sale of the seeds, too. If SMT can establish a partnership with a high quality seed provider from anywhere in the world that’s willing to export to Sierra Leone (*hint hint*), then I think we can get this program up-and-running.
SMT also has the ability to create a stable marketplace for the produce grown on their client’s farms. Today, the farmers face dramatic price fluctuations for the foods they harvest. We spoke to several clients who said one week the price they get for a bushel of rice from a buyer in Freetown is 30,000 Leones or $10 USD. Three weeks later the same buyer is buying the bushel of rice for 120,000 Leones or $40 USD. It’s impossible to time this market. The farmers simply hope for the best when they’re at the point when they must sell their goods or their families go hungry and their laborers go without pay. At the same time, holding on to the rice is contributing to the price fluctuations! By restricting the flow of supply to meet the demand, they are inflating or deflating the going-rate for the commodity. It’s a bad cycle.
SMT, or any other microfinance institution with clients in the agricultural sector, can step in as a business enterprise with strong distribution power and provide the farmers with a reliable, steady market for their produce. The client harvests their foods, they bring them to the SMT office, SMT sells them at a fair price from a central location, and SMT gives the money directly to the client. Retail sales would prove to be a lot more reliable and steady than the risks and fluctuations associated with selling their goods wholesale. SMT is considering this marketplace concept today for possible implementation in the future.
Finally, related to the sudden and dramatic decrease in rainfall this past season. There is a new product opportunity that could serve as a partial solution to this problem. Rainfall insurance is a new idea being floated around in international development circles. Think of rainfall insurance as you would any other type of insurance product.
As an example, let’s say SMT is both the agricultural loan provider and the rainfall insurance agent. SMT can collect a small premium out of the agricultural client’s monthly loan repayment, maybe ½ of 1 percent during the dry season. If there is a drought the following rain season and crops fail because of the lack of water, SMT will pay out on the insurance policies to the farmers. The farmers will use the insurance proceeds to pay back their loans in-full, feed their families, pay their laborers and prepare themselves for the next harvest season. Rainfall insurance is protection against the uncontrollable elements handed to us by Mother Nature.
Farmers in third-world countries are the poorest of the poor. The fruits of their labor sustain life and yet they have nothing themselves to show for it. We cannot neglect the farmers. We need to be creative with the products and services offered to the farming poor in the developing countries. The products and services must be tailored to meet their needs. Microfinance institutions are in a unique position where they can offer many of the solutions to their problems. Their ability to offer these solutions underscores the importance of the financial sector in reducing extreme poverty.
Maurice, Alidé’s loan officer, and I ventured into neighborhoods even dirtier and more fly stricken to visit Alide’s clients. On Monday we visited the most intense location ever – the lake country. It reminded me a little of New Orleans. The houses were built on mud and some directly over the lake, the log slats spaced almost wide enough for a foot to fall through. The area was muddy with lots of flies and very poor. We interviewed one of the few male borrowers, Moise Dossa. He was a happy, attractive man wearing robes of flowing colors. In his bare feet, he led us into the church. M translated my French into Fon; and Moise talked about how he had been forced to quit fishing due to a stomach or lung problem(cancer?) and had sold nets and logs with the help of an Alidé loan. He offered me a beer. It looked a little dirty at the edges,but it was impossible to decline. I could feel my stomach bubble suspiciously as I started to drink it. When we went outside, I tried to ditch it, but Moise admonished me in Fon, Maurice in French as if it was a cardinal sin. We took his photo in a pirogue, a small distinctly shaped boat.
Moise Dossa, a Kiva borrower
Time to leave.Most of the village had assembled, and I met the priest. But before we could go, I had to finish my beer. I tried to farm it out, but everyone simply watched me. I finally finished it, and tipsily mounted M’s motorcycle, and we zoomed down the road filled with muddy sad pits and kids yelling YAVO (foreigner) furiously at me as I went by.
Maurice and I entered a house not far from the lake, and were soon blinded by the smoke, which came from fish being grilled over huge black pots. The fish had to be imported due to the lake’s pollution, and the women were cooking hundreds of fish along with the help of at least 15 children who were surrounding the pots helping and staring at me. Flies were pervasive, and the host pulled up three chairs for the borrower, Maurice, and I. At the conclusion of the interview, we needed to show Daniel, one of the borrowers, in the lake at his place of business as opposed to at home. (He had finished fishing early in the morning). The three of us trooped down to the lake, Daniel with his basket, net, and oar, to get on a pirogue. The lakeshore was littered with mountains of trash. Pigs, chickens, goats, and birds scavenged through it. Daniel offered to buy me some bananas by the lakeshore, but I declined as politely as I could. When we went to a café to do his interview, I asked him if he had a problem with fish yields due to pollution, which he seemed to deny. However, a lot of the smoked fish were imported according to M, so either Daniel was in denial or I couldn’t understand his French well enough.
Ayoyoa ADANMITONDE, a Kiva borrower
M and I stopped by a client’s hair salon business where he had an identification verification to follow up. The lady’s husband sat in a chair, she was attaching light blond hair extensions to the hair of a woman sitting in the chair, who was nursing. As M talked, she turned on him all of a sudden, yelling in Fon. I had no idea what was happening, but abruptly M stopped, grabbed my arm, and said, “We’re leaving!”
“Wouldn’t tell me the date of her birthday!” He exclaimed as we got on his moto. “I don’t make the rules, the Microfinance Minister does!”
“Why was she so mad?” I asked.
“Forgot to call to say I was coming,” he said.
“Maurice!!” Her husband was running after us.
“Stop,” I said. Her husband ran up to us, handed over the identity papers.
“I don’t make the rules. . .” stammered Maurice, obviously upset, her husband was agreeing, saying he was sorry.
As we zoomed off on Maurice’s Roughrider moto, I eschewed the American shoulder pat in favor of a crisp French, “ça va?”
We stopped by another hair extension store. “Kiva?” I asked.
“Cherie,” (my darling) he answered happily.
A woman in bright yellow African pagnes (flowing outfit) stepped to the door. Unlike the normal pagne, this one plunged drastically low, and she wore purple lipstick and blue eyeshadow. She gave M beer, but I asked for a Coke, dehydrated as always.
“Do you have one my color?” I said, joking; indicating the hair extensions on the walls, some light but none as light as mine.
“Is she serious?” She asked M. “Does she want to look?”
I shook my head, sipping my Coke.
On Mange (We eat)
Maurice and I sat in the restaurant near his house where he knew everyone. In Benin, lunch breaks last from 12:30 to 3pm. To try to do something during this lunch break is a mistake. The first hour people usually eat, afterwards they sleep. Lights go off in offices, people bust out their sleeping cloths, and Alidé locks their doors.Before being seated, Maurice and I greeted people by shaking hands with a snap at the end. I got some fried igname (like French fries, but harder) and a light doughy pastry with spicy pepper dip. It tasted really good and was 100 CFA; cheap, I thought, and converted it to about 40 US cents. The other day I bought a loaf of bread that I have been eating for dinner and breakfast everyday for the grand total of 1 dollar, so at least I haven’t been spending money on food. Maurice got slippery-looking pate (ground igname flour) and a fish head with spicy pepper sauce.
At the field office
I am sitting in V’s office, Christmas music blasting in French and German. Like the Head Alidé office, this one is furnished with monk-like simplicity – not an extra decoration in sight. It is painted blue, with cardboard boxes holding Alidé’s records, a bulletin board, 2 computers, one fan, a faded yellow and blue shade over the window to keep out the tropical heat. The soaring music of “Ave Maria” makes me feel like I am in a Cathedral instead of this small room. Every morning mostly female borrowers wait in a covered area just outside where trainings are held. There is also a direct entrance to the counter where loans are dispensed at certain times.
I also got to meet some of the groups of borrowers who came to Alidé for consultations.
In the United States, my home country, our motto as of late has been change. I have been working at the Christian Rural Aid Network (CRAN) in Ghana for almost two months now, and I am just in time to witness some monumental policy changes of its own that will redefine the way CRAN does business and may even give President-elect Obama a run for his money.
Currently, CRAN has seven different branches in three regions of Ghana. Four of its branches are located near the main office around Cape Coast and Elmina, Ghana, two fishing towns that aren’t rural but aren’t urban either. On top of loaning to people in town, CRAN also lends to many rural communities around Cape Coast. About an hour away, CRAN has two more units running in rural fishing communities. Until June of last year, one of these units didn’t have electricity or computers. The other one still doesn’t. CRAN’s last unit can be found about a six-hour drive away in the Volta Region. Due to this branch’s distance from the head unit where a Kiva Coordinator uploads all the Kiva borrower profiles, none of the clients from that unit can be found on Kiva. This is something that CRAN would like to change sometime in the near future.
At each of the units, there is a manager along with loan officers, each of which has a portfolio of clients that he or she is in charge of. The loan officer is in charge of overseeing the loan and filling out all the paperwork. Since CRAN works only with groups, the loan officer talks everything over with the group’s president, secretary, and treasurer to make sure they know what is going on. The loan officer also visits all of the people at their workplaces to take photos in order to put the borrowers on Kiva. Other employees include the cashier and field officers in charge of collecting both loans and susu savings (a small daily savings).
As CRAN moves forward and attempts to make itself a sustainable financial institution, the employees are changing the way things are currently done to a new and exciting framework. Current groups have ten members or more, but from this month forward CRAN groups will consist of five members. This change is being made because right now many groups are scattered, hard to reach for loan collection, and hard to gather together. The loan officers often only know the president, secretary, and treasurer in a group and must rely on them to find the other members. Some of these groups have multiple family members or an employer and his or her employees comprising the group as well, so from now on group members must have their businesses located in the same area, and must not have any other family members in their group. Sometimes this is the case just because people find it hard to develop a group with at least ten people in order to receive a loan. A group loan is designed so that each of the members guarantees the other members—it is a lot more to take on with ten people.
The other caveat of any group’s membership is that every member must have health insurance. A National Health Insurance Bill that was designed by the governing New Patriotic Party and passed into law in 2003 by the parliament is an insurance plan designed to ensure that Ghanaian residents would have access to basic health care services without paying money at the point of delivery of the service. It has had some criticism, mainly by the opposing party that had implemented a cash-and-carry system. This cash-and-carry system, which was used since 1985 in Ghana, was replaced for various reasons, including a fall in clinic attendance. It required every Ghanaian to pay before receiving clinical care. Since implementing the new scheme in 2004, health care is free for children, pregnant women, and Ghanaians over the age of 70. There are also various plans for everyone else, costing as little as a few dollars and lasting for one-year increments. Because health care makes such a big difference in people’s ability to work, CRAN has decided that insurance is a must. Many Ghanaians get sick with illnesses such as malaria—a disease that can keep them from the workplace for a few days if treated but can even be deadly if untreated. This is, to make it economical, bad for business. A Ghanaian who can’t work can’t make money and needs to rely on help from others to sustain a business and a family. Health insurance will ensure that all Ghanaians who work with CRAN have access to the health care they need to be healthy.
Now, taking out a loan from CRAN is more than just taking out a loan. It is a commitment on the part of the borrowers that they will attend a pre-loan training that involves an introduction to CRAN and the loan disbursement. After receiving the loan, the borrowers attend a monthly training. It is not just one group of borrowers that meet, but many—totaling around 75 people, making it less of a time burden on loan officers to meet with their groups. During these trainings, they will make their monthly loan payments and also receive various lectures on topics such as health, fire safety, and money management. Near the end of the loan period, one of the trainings is dedicated to Kiva journals—ensuring that almost all of CRAN’s Kiva participants from this point on will have a journal. This will not only be a wonderful thing for Kiva lenders, it will also be great in terms of social performance. CRAN will have an opportunity to keep track of the people it loans to and the social progress that the loans make in their lives, which may also help CRAN to modify loans to make them better for the borrowers.
One of the biggest problems currently facing CRAN is high loan deferment rates—incidences where borrowers don’t pay back on time or at all. This new format will attempt to address this problem and will hopefully ensure that field officers aren’t constantly chasing down the people who need to pay—a waste of time, energy, fuel, and money for the organization. This new format—where attendance is close to mandatory in order to get a second loan later on—gathers the group on a monthly basis and gives the loan officer a perfect opportunity to collect the loan repayment.
One of the greatest strengths to this new system is budgetary. CRAN believes it will help the organization cut costs, which is imperative in CRAN’s long-term plan because it is a non-profit organization that runs off of loans. Any money loaned out to borrowers that isn’t from Kiva comes from loans from larger banks. Thus CRAN has interest of its own to pay, and when the borrowers don’t pay back, it negatively affects CRAN and how many other borrowers it can help.
My one big question as I have been introduced to this new system, which has been implemented at one of the units this month, is what will it do for the borrowers? I agree that it is best for the organization as it will hopefully lead to financial stability. However, in terms of borrowers, the recipients will be poor but probably not the poorest businesses in the area. The poorest people won’t be able to pay for health insurance and a susu savings (a small daily savings that is another new requirement of CRAN’s borrowers—so if borrowers don’t pay back CRAN will already have some money to take the repayment from).Thus, poor people will be helped, but some of the poorest won’t have the opportunity to develop their businesses through CRAN.
I do believe that this new system, especially the training, gives CRAN the opportunity to make an expanded social impact in the lives of its borrowers. And then once it is financially secure, it will be able to offer services designed for even poorer borrowers to help them develop their businesses.
This new system will involve a lot of change—from the organizational structure to what is expected of the borrowers, change in policy is revolutionizing almost every aspect of CRAN. These changes are being made in order to address and combat all of CRAN’s weaknesses as an organization and to put CRAN in a position to meet all of its future goals. While I am sure new challenges will arise with the new system, CRAN is working hard and intelligently to become a stronger organization.
ELECTION UPDATE: Ghana just had its presidential elections, which were very peaceful and well-run. Every other commercial on television the day of the elections (December 7) was about peace in Ghana. The country was praised by its African neighbors for doing so well. However, there will be a run-off taking place between the top two candidates on December 28. I will post an update following that in regards to the elections and whether Ghana is able to maintain peace.
Mrs. Rosario Roca runs a bodega in the front of her house on a quiet street in Comas, a northern suburb of Lima, Peru.After giving an EDAPROSPO loan officer and I Inka Colas (a yellow soda with the taste of bubble-gum, widely considered the national drink of Peru [nonalcoholic, the alcoholic distinction belongs to the Pisco Sour]), Mrs. Roca gave us a snapshot of what it meant to be a small business owner and resident of her neighborhood in Comas.The hospitality gave it away.
She has spent four years receiving loans from EDAPROSPO and this was her first loan financed by Kiva lenders.To receive loans from EDAPROSPO, a person normally forms a group of neighbors and entrepreneurs who become a ‘banquito’ (little bank).From this position, EDAPROSPO lends a large amount to the group, split among the members according to their requests (which is the amount you lent), and the group members then cross-guarantee each other’s loans.This approach to microfinance, stemming back to Muhammed Yunus’ approach in Bangladesh in the 1970s with his Grameen Bank, has the effect of building or, at the minimum, reinforcing trust among a small community of neighbors.Mrs. Roca thrives in this atmosphere of trust and is known as a prompt (and sometimes early!) payer of her debts.While most communities could stand a little boost of the interpersonal trust that ‘banquitos’ give, in Mrs. Roca’s case, it seems more like a natural extension of what the community already does.
On the lefthand side of the front counter of her bodega, Rosario keeps a handwritten ledger of credits that she extends to her neighbors who frequent her store.She says that she has always let her clients pay her when they could; in theory this means that a person will build a tab of 20 or even 50 soles and then pay her in a lump sum when they get a paycheck or have enough money.More often, however, her system of credit has led to very late repayments or none at all; time accumulates, people move out of the area and she is left with having to eat the debt that she extended in trust.The picture, though, is not as bleak as that anecdote makes it out to be.Next to her ledger of customer debts and credits is another sheet with handwritten names and figures.This sheet is a community chest that helps neighbors when a family member gets ill and racks up a hefty medical bill or is kept from work for an extended period of time due to illness.13 years ago, her husband had a serious injury and her neighbors collected money, each what they were able, and helped them pay for the medical expenses.Now, a neighbor has been bedridden and she is returning the favor; a finely woven web of trust has been spun in terms of medical insurance, without any outside organization acting as an impetus.
Her store, despite the frequent occurrence of ‘eating’ bad debt, continues to make a profit.She uses the profits to re-invest in the store, slowly building her stock of available goods for sale.Her stock of capital has grown to the point that she is considering expanding her store.Rosario’s husband, recently retired, is slowly learning the trade his wife has been perfecting over the past 25 years.He laughs often, still has trouble finding some snacks in the shop, supports his wife in her many endeavors, and seems to enjoy his new role as the helpmate to his wife, the boss.Rosario does not just run a bodega though; she also cooks lunches on request (and there are plenty of requests) and Sundays makes soup.On the weekends and holidays, she cooks hundreds of tamales that her neighbors, passer-bys, and relatives clamor for; she has even been asked to cater for several weddings (which take 200+ tamales).With her husband now available to help run the store, Mrs. Roca is likely to expand in her burgeoning food sales network.For the upcoming Christmas season, Rosario is stocking up on panetones (Peruvian fruitcake), milk, and sugar.She has timed her next loan from EDAPROSPO well so she will get the full dispersal a month before Christmas to temporarily boost her capital for the busy season (she wanted to do this last year, but her group needed experience [in the form of regret] rather than foresight to agree to pay their loans off early to start a new cycle in December rather than February like usual).
The community bond of trust is undoubtedly strengthened in the formal setting of microfinance.However, in Rosario’s case, the bonds existed before the ‘banquito’ even started.Six years ago, an event that could have easily broken the virtuous circle of trust occurred.Rosario had been running low on supplies and needed to go to a discount superstore to stock up on new items.With 1000 soles on hand, she went to a place about thirty minutes away by taxi to buy items for her store.After she had collected all the merchandise she needed in several large bags, she hailed a cab.The cab arrived, she filled it with all of her goods (her store was basically empty so the items she’d bought represented all the capital she had accumulated over many years), and they drove back to her street.The cab driver suggested he back up to her store so she could more easily unload the heavy bags of merchandise.After doing so, she stepped out of the cab and walked around to the trunk to begin unloading her goods.The cab driver then hit the gas and swerved out of the street and neighborhood with a thousand soles worth of merchandise, never to be seen again.When everything is taken, something is returned.Mrs. Roca was financially ruined; the bodega she had been building up for many years- gone – in a blink of an eye.But then something inspiring happened.Her neighbors, not wealthy people themselves, decided to hold an event in the street.With their get-together, they raised enough money to replace everything that had been stolen.
Now I am a believer in the institutional role that microfinance can play in building trust among people; you extended trust to Mrs. Rosario Roca by lending her your money, she built upon your trust by repaying you promptly and in full.The institutional underpinnings of microfinance are rooted in someone taking an initial risk of lending to a person who has no collateral and having that risk met and exceeded (in relation to the rate of their richer brethren) by prompt repayments by the poor.If that trust is not met, then it is very likely that the poor entrepreneur will never get another chance to get access to credit.What I love about Mrs. Rosario Roca’s story is the reminder that trust is not confined to formal relationships.The extension of credit may be taken away but you cannot take away your neighbors.Mrs. Roca’s neighborhood is a cauldron of trust, one where people look out for each other in sickness, in theft, and in poverty.Microfinance offers a path out of poverty by allowing trust to swirl through the field of financial services and into an accumulation of physical capital based on formal relationships.What Mrs. Rosario Roca’s neighborhood offers is a path out of isolation by allowing trust to swirl through individual traumas and tribulations and into an accumulation of social capital based on the necessarily informal relationships of love.
Blue eyeshadow, I love the way you match the shirt and the shoes just so. And I love how you pay no mind to that tired faux pas rule cuz you look damn good and you know it, too!
Gorgeous sunsets, you’re the best. How do you do it? Is that what the afternoon rainstorms are for? To set the stage – everyday without fail – with clouds to hang a gorgeous golden, purple, and rose sunset – a Michaelangelo sky.
“People of the Jungle” – is that what you call yourselves? Well, that I love – it reminds me of Tarzan. And you do love that platano, I’ve noticed. But above all I love your iambs and your dactyls – yes y’all, i had to look up my metric feet (poetry not centimeters) to find those words, but you don’t have to. Just imagine a linguistic lovechild of Italian, Shakespearean iambic pentameter, and maybe also a dramatic telenovela actress. That’s what you sound like: sing-songy delicious. “VA-moose haa-CER una CO-zaa” Le *sigh*, I swoon when you talk to me.
Two hour lunches, you are perfect. You are the exact amount of time needed for a little stroll, a lolly-gagging lunch, and then that sweet, sweet heat-induced nap with the fan set just so it lulls me to sleep. And still – you’re so good to me – you fit in that extra fifteen minutes at the end to get up, shake it off and squeeze in an ice cream cone during the brisk walk back to the office.
And, oooooh Socias of Manuela Ramos- you’re so generous and so affectionate. You make me feel at home and I knew from the first day that I’m the most lucky and most rapidly fattening girl in the world. You guys bestow more honors and food on me than I deserve. The chocolate demonstrations complete with tastings! The juanes – leafy packets stuffed with rice and chicken and olives – that stuff me in turn! When I visit your fruit stand you ask me if I’ve ever tried the juice of the “fill in the blank” (camu camu? cocoma? aguaje? guayabana? maracuya?) and when I say no you’ve produced a brimming glass for me to gulp down. You even help me up and sponge off my backside with a washcloth when I fell today in the mud in front of your house! You even give me a ring with your initials for me to remember you by! I feel sheepish when you applaud my introduction in meetings and when you serve me the first slice of birthday cake before the birthday socia. But I hope you know how much I appreciate and am flattered to meet you. That it’s nothing of consequence to be from America, which you say it is, but I think it’s far more impressive to have three businesses, five kids, and still enough time and courtesy to accompany me to my next stop in the road. Plus you got that blue eyeshadow thing going on, so you know I have a thing for you!
And my darling, scalding hot sun. You want to beat it out of me, but I refuse to keep loving you! I’ve been waiting for you through three constant years of San Francisco “fall”. If I’m going to give up seasons it’s going to be here with you, Sun! You start the sweats right out the shower and you remind me of swampy summers in DC and North Carolina. You’ve browned me out, and thank God because I thought I was fading to a forever yellow beneath the San Francisco fog! I don’t care if the weather channel says it’s “88, but it feels like 97″ for as long as I’m here I’m stepping out in the sunshine! Just don’t judge me when I walk in the shade.
And last but not least, Pucallpa… What is it about you? I swear you remind me of my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. Is it the red mud and the green grass and the quiet streets? And then sometimes I think I’m in West Africa or Thailand, though well, I don’t know what either is like – but it’s the swirling dust and then the sudden crazy storms and then even crazier swarms of mototaxis (which are basically motorized rickshaws) that infest the streets. I want to take a walk next week through your night markets with your random mix of animals: guinea pigs from the sierras, thousands of chickens, and the poor turtle-soup-doomed turtle that they don’t bother to chase when he lumbers away at his useless pace. You’re filled with evangelical missions and Catholic churches. And lunch and dinner are served outside under the sky. There’s just enough of you to have some nice music and bars and you’re just small enough to still retain a star-ful sky…. Just quit with the moths/cockroaches/mosquitos, eh?
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Hi, my name is Jenny Ballen and I am currently completing my ninth week as a Kiva fellow for Manuela Ramos in Peru. Check out my personal blog and experiences from the fellowship and Peru here.
I first went to Belimbingsari Village for a funeral. The father of two of DINARI Foundation’s staff, Gede Mustika and his sister Yulia, had suffered a stroke and died shortly thereafter. A rented van transported the staff from DINARI’s headquarters, and the mood seemed surprisingly cheerful during the three-hour trip to West Bali. I was reminded of school field trips as people passed around puffed-corn snacks and jokingly reclined their seats into their neighbors’ laps.
At the Christian service, Gede Mustika and Yulia wore white shirts, colorful sarongs and kains, sashes tied at the waist. At times, Yulia wept silently, but Gede Mustika remained solemn and composed. DINARI’s staff referred to him as Pak Gede, a title of respect given when he became manager of DINARI’s branch office in Melaya, the town just south of Belimbingsari.
Pak Gede and Yulia grew up in Belimbingsari, as had three quarters of DINARI’s staff. For many, the funeral trip had been a homecoming.
Pak Gede at his father's burial
Belimbingsari is the only exclusively Christian village in Bali. A narrow paved street runs through the community with dirt roads branching off of it. The three hundred inhabitants live in small, well-maintained houses with close-cropped grass lawns in front. The homes are separated by groves of tall coconut trees. People’s dogs roam the street and lie listlessly on the warm asphalt. Seventy years ago, Belimbingsari was a jungle.
In 1939, the Hindu majority in Bali’s capital of Denpasar banished newly converted Christians to the remote wilderness of West Bali. I was told that tigers inhabited the jungle, and it was assumed that the exiles would not survive.
Fifty people settled in Belimbingsari. They cut down trees to make roads and farmland, and they harvested coconuts. They built homes, and the tigers did not attack.
Their children inherited the land and prospered, becoming successful farmers and opening hotels and other businesses around Melaya. This second generation could afford to send their children, including many of DINARI’s staff, to universities in Denpasar and Jakarta. Pak Alit, DINARI’s executive director, told me that his father sent him and all his siblings to university with the income from selling coconuts.
Pak Alit did not return to Belimbingsari after earning his degree as an agricultural engineer. He settled outside of Denpasar where DINARI was founded in 1992. Seven years later, he hired four new employees, including Pak Gede, and opened the Melaya branch to begin offering agricultural loans and technical training to cow and pig breeders.
Before joining DINARI, Pak Gede and many others from Belimbingsari had worked in the tourism industry. Several lost their jobs after the 2002 bombings. Zeruya, now one of the supervisors for DINARI’s loan officers, sold crackers to food stalls from his motorbike before Pak Gede offered him a job in 2005. DINARI’s work in West Bali steadily increased, and the staff grew to twenty as the client base ballooned into the thousands.
Zeruya told me it had been difficult for him when he left his village previously to find work. He was happy to again be close to his parents, and he thought Belimbingsari was a good place to raise his two daughters.
“They can run everywhere,” he said. “Not like in Denpasar.”
But there is no university in Melaya, and he expects his children will obtain their higher education in Bali’s capital.
“There is no choice,” he said.
A portable pig
Nearly two months after the funeral, I returned to West Bali to interview DINARI’s clients. In Belimbingsari, I stayed in the guesthouse at DINARI’s Business Development Services Center, where clients received training about animal husbandry and furniture making.
I ate my dinner in Melaya as there were no food stalls in Belimbingsari, and one night I chatted with the couple who ran a restaurant. The husband had grown up in Belimbingsari and initially opened his establishment in the village, but he moved to Melaya to attract more customers.
“There are only old people living there,” he said. “And dogs.” He laughed. “Watch out for the dogs!”
Many of DINARI’s staff in Melaya asked me if I minded staying alone in the guesthouse. Zeruya teased me that he saw strangers lurking there. To me, Belimbingsari felt a bit like a retirement community, but people spoke about it as if it were a ghost town.
I told everyone, sincerely, that I really liked Belimbingsari. The pace was slower. With no other motorbikes in sight, I found myself singing Walking in Memphis during my morning commute. People smiled and waved to me from their lawns. At the guesthouse, mango trees bore fruit as big as footballs. A convenience store owner delighted when I told her my name was Lander,not landung, the Balinese word for “tall.” She invited me to stay at her house for my (theoretical) honeymoon.
The road in Belimbingsari
I admittedly did get a little spooked driving back at night. The coconut trees loomed over the road and threw big shadows from the street lights, making me feel like I was in tiger territory. My chest tightened as I passed under the imposing gate being built at the village entrance.
The new gate
According to Zeruya, all Balinese villages with sufficient funds erected gates to welcome visitors. But this gate appeared to have been lifted from a medieval fortress.In 2000, when riots on the nearby island of Lombok targeted Chinese-Christians, a mob of Muslims gathered outside Belimbingsari, threatening to attack the community. A rice farmer from the village cut down trees to make a blockade near the location of the gate. He then crouched behind another felled log further back, a hundred Molotov cocktails at the ready.
Although Islam is a minority religion in Bali, half of Melaya’s population practiced it. Most came from the island of Java hoping to find work. They boarded ferries and crossed the narrow Bali Strait to the port of Gilimanuk, fifteen kilometers northwest of Melaya. According to the rice farmer, some Muslims resented Christians for their business successes.
The mob at the gate eventually dispersed after Hindus came to protect the villagers. Despite Belimbingsari’s origin, I was told that Hindi people and Christians were now on good terms.
Many of DINARI’s clients were Muslim. They chatted amicably with Zeruya and the other staff members and did not appear resentful in any way. One store owner did seem bitter, but her animosity was directed at her estranged husband, not DINARI. The man had run off with another woman and Rp. 10 million from a government bank loan.
I asked this store owner and other clients about their dreams for the future. When I had posed the same question to borrowers from Denpasar, many of whom were also Muslim, they told me they hoped to move back to Java where they had family and owned land and homes.
The clients in Melaya hesitated at first to answer, but when Zeruya persisted, they responded that they wanted to improve their living situation. If they rented, they hoped to buy a house. If they were already home owners, they wanted to renovate the kitchen, tile the floor or plaster the walls. They had no intention of leaving Bali.
Recently, DINARI entered a partnership with the Indonesian branch of Habitat for Humanity. The two organizations set the ambitious goal of constructing five thousand homes in West Bali over the next five years.
A mockup of the "Growing Home" project
The project is called Rumah Tumbuh, or “Growing Home.” Habitat for Humanity provides no-interest loans to DINARI, which then offers construction financing to existing clients. Initially, borrowers in a community each receive Rp. three million ($250). Using local materials, the people help each other to build “core homes” approximately thirty square meters in size and new outhouses. If a homeowner saves money in the future and qualifies for additional loans, he or she can build out additional rooms. It is hoped that each home will “grow” to 108 square meters, at which point the house can connect to the bathroom.
A core home
As DINARI helped its clients around Melaya put down roots in their communities, I wondered about the future of Belimbingsari. Zeruya did not seem overly concerned. Many of the staff already owned land in the village and planned to retire there. I was told that the place got hopping during Easter and Christmas, and I was invited to come back for the Christmas Day service.
I plan to tour Bali by motorbike for a few weeks after my Kiva tenure, and hopefully I can plan my route to be in West Bali on Christmas Day. If I arrive the night before and no one is stirring, I plan to gun my Yamahawg under the new gate until the engine growls like a big cat.
Ferdinand, DINARI’s Kiva coordinator and my friend and shepherd in Bali
This is my last post as an active Kiva Fellow. Writing about my experiences has proven one of the most rewarding and enjoyable aspects of my tenure, and I am sincerely grateful to those of you who have read my posts and offered such thoughtful comments. My future is presently unsettled, but I hope that I can continue to have world adventures, find inspiring stories and share them with people like you.I encourage you one more time to watch for new loans from the DINARI Foundation: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=82&status=fundRaising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_tpg=fb
I’m floored by the magical connections we can make through technology. Some people say technology is flattening the world, shrinking the space, and homogenizing our cultures. I appreciate the argument, and do see that the internet is a democratic space, which in a sense, flattens our difference. And yes, technology can shrink space. But the idea for me, that technology robs us of our diversity is ludicrous. Rather, technology, and the Internet above all, bring voices to parts of the world that have never had a voice, technology paints our differences in bright, beautiful colors.
On Friday I had the wonderful opportunity to hear some unique voices. I traveled to Prisma’s field offices in Choluteca and San Lorenzo to deliver a presentation about Kiva to new loan officers. I met some Prisma clients who where trying to gather in the Prisma San Lorenzo office to get their picture taken for the profile on the Kiva website.
This is a group of five women who are trying to get a group loan to improve their respective businesses. I had the fortune to meet three. Maria and Carolina, sell shrimp that they buy from local fisherman. They sell each shrimp for 3 Lempira (about 16 cents). Sarah, sells jewelry ranging from 100 Lempira to 140 Lempira ($5.25- $7.50). They take their wares on the road. These women travel to different pueblos in Southern Honduras bringing their items to small communities who can’t bear the cost, or choose not to travel to the fisherman, or to Tegucigalpa where imitation gold earrings are readily available.
“Show her the earings”
These women were AMAZED to hear that people around the world would see the picture they were about to take. Unfortunately, not all five members of the group could show up, so after three hours of waiting, they left. They will try to meet again next week so they have their picture taken, and be eligible for a Kiva funded loan.
As they left, the asked to take a picture of me with their cell phone. They said, “they would send it to the internet people.”
***I am a Kiva Fellow, Class of KF6, serving three months in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and three more in La Paz, Boliva. Please check out my current MFI, Prisma Hoduras, SA , and see all of their fundraising loans here!***
I had been looking forward to going to the southern city of Mbeya even before I arrived in Tanzania.Mbeya is known for it’s cooler climate and lush vegetation.So when it turned out that SELFINA had branches in Mbeya and the surrounding areas and that journaling needed to implemented in those branches I enthusiastically bought my ticket for a 12 hour bus ride that would take me there.
The first few days were great!I was teaching them how to conduct, write and post journals and everything was rolling according to plan.Then, one morning I woke up with a mind splitting headache, severe eye pain, and flashes of fever and chills.I had no idea what was wrong with me.I honestly thought it was from being surrounded by electronic devices too much.I was thinking to myself, I should have listened to my mother and not have sat at so close to the tv screen all those year, should have taken more breaks to rest my eyes at work, etc.The pain was so severe that I broke down in tears just climbing the stairs to my room …
But as I had no idea what was wrong with me, I proceeded to go to work like it was any other day.I had mentioned to a couple of people at the office I had a huge headache but did not make a big deal about it.I proceeded with my day and taught one of the branch managers from a nearby region the process of conducting journal surveys.After completing the training I had to excuse myself, as the pain was too much bear.I had contacted some friends who advised me that it may be malaria, which I thought would be impossible for me to get as I was taking anti-malarial dugs and spraying myself with deet every day.I found myself walking to a nearby dispensary down the road from where I was staying to get tested for malaria, in my mind, to cross that off the list of things I did not have.
In the front was a pharmacy and they escorted me to a room in the back where there was a doctor sitting at a desk in a bare off-white room texting on his phone.I sat down next to him and told him my symptoms, he took my blood pressure, and he advised me it was probably malaria, however, they would need to test my blood to confirm.I thought that was a very good sign and a vote for confidence for this place.He then proceeded to inform me that the blood test would not be performed until later that evening or the next day as there was no electricity to run the test.Mbeya and the surrounding region was in its second week of no electricity due to a transformer room blowing up at the one and only electricity provider in the country (in the SELFINA Mbeya office, we were lucky to have a generator to use during the day).
As I have no medical background, I of course had my concerns.I probably asked this man 50 times in 50 different ways if my blood specimen would last that long without refrigeration.He reassured me several times that it would be okay and just as they were about to draw blood, the Mbeya SELFINA branch manager, Mr. Kibassa, a bear of a man, barges through the door and tells them to stop.
He apparently learned I went home after not feeling well and went to check up on me at the place I was staying where they informed I had come here to be tested.He basically whisked me away and we arrived at this other clinic, one that happens to have a SELFINA client running the pharmacy, but more importantly to me at the time, solar panels which enable them to run my test now.I go into the cluttered office of the doctor, describe my symptoms again, get my blood pressure taken again, and get sent to a lab of sorts where they try to distract me as they draw my blood (I get quite queasy with needles).30 minutes later, malaria positive test results in one hand and malaria fighting medicine in the other hand, I leave the clinic happy to know my illness isn’t from an overdose of staring at screens all of my life but something supposedly curable in 3 days.
I wish I could tell you that it was a painless and speedy recovery in 3 days, but it hasn’t been.I still have pain in my head and eye a week later.But I’m trying to take it as easy as possible and think of the positive side of things such as now I can relate a bit more with people here, most of whom have had malaria at least once in their life.
Note:I later learned that the incubation period is about 14 days, so I must have been bitten when I was back in Dar es Salaam
Rebeca walks into the SELFINA Mbeya branch with an air and a flair that is hard to describe.She is here to make one of her monthly repayments.As this is her third loan, so she knows the routine quite well.
As she settles herself into the chair and rewraps herself in her colorful khangas (traditional Tanzanian cloth with bold and vibrant colors and patterns) we explain that we are would like to spend a few minutes learning how her loans have impacted her life.
At SELFINA there are a total of 20 questions in total in which we ask every client when we journal, ranging from how much was your loan, to what are your future dreams for your family, to what are your recommendations for SELFINA.Each journal we conduct lasts about 30 minutes as we take the time to verify the information with the clients file and try to get to know a bit more about these clients.
When we reached to the question, are you married?She said, “nope, single!”As I too am single I give her a high-five!We exchanged a bunch of laughter and she then informed me that she is actually getting married soon and invited me to wedding.
But it wasn’t her being single that I decided to write about her (although her being 36 and still single is something that is a bit out of the Tanzania norm), it was about her story, her entrepreneurship that touched me.
Rebeca had first heard about SELFINA in the market place a few years back and she had encouraged her friends to go and take out a loan.After 5 of her friends successfully took out loans, she decided it was now her turn.Rebeca used her first loan to pay for classes on how to make cakes.Prior to the loan she knew how to make a standard type of cake, but nothing special.After, she knew how to make a wide variety of cakes, how to decorate them, and how to market them.Her cake business took off!
But was Rebeca satisfied with just making cakes for the rest of her life?Nope.She took the extra profits she earned and sent herself to nursing school.Now her future plan, after her wedding festivities are over, is to open a pharmacy where she can apply her newly gained knowledge yet again to another business.I am sure this business will do at least as equally as well and I’m interested into what she’ll use her pharmacy profits for.The sky is really the limit for Rebeca.
But what about her cake business you may ask?She plans on hiring employees and teaching them how to run that business.Rebeca is someone to keep your eye on.She’s definite a mover and a shaker.
