Posts filed under 'Africa'
Big is beautiful in Kenya
by Rachel Brooks, KF9, Kenya
My favorite Kiva field partner before I started my fellowship was Kisimu Medical & Education Trust, here in Kenya. At K-MET, microfinance is a smaller part of a community-based health organization. They offer loans to providers (many of them volunteers) so that they can maintain or improve their clinics and services. And they have these wonderfully innovative programs to help women and improve reproductive health.
But as much as programs like these make me go weak at the knees, I’ve also really come around to loving what the scope and focus of a big MFI can offer. Big is beautiful.
Faulu's Director holds the BIG certificate
Faulu Kenya has more than 90 outlets across the country, over 1000 staff members, and a fairly large headquarters. They are laser-focussed on providing financial services to low-income people, with over 250,000 clients. They want to reach a million clients by 2011. (more…)
2 comments 10 November 2009
My First Business Trip
by Jed Goldstein, KF9, Uganda
After a 10 hr bus journey to Kihihi from Kampala on bumpy dirt roads, it was Aaron Coplands Rodeo ballet that began to play in my mind as I stepped off the bus and began to explore the town that lay before me. Kihihi is the modern Ugandan version of the wild American west that Copland so effectively captures in his compositions. As I explored a bit, I could not help but compare the roars of dirtbikes rolling down the muddy thoroughfare to the click-clock sound made by a horse’s hooves. The expansiveness of the terrain, combined with the rolling, lush hills and the breathtaking vistas, still unspoiled by mini-malls and super sized wal-marts, is really a sight to be seen.
10 comments 2 November 2009
My Rwandan Children…
By Gavin Sword KF9 Rwanda
I know this is not the first time that I’ve mentioned that my children are Rwandan. We adopted Savilla and Christian in 2006 when they were both babies. Our girl turns 4 this month while our boy is a few months past 4. They are the cutest, most adorable little people one could ever hope to know. They are loving and friendly, kind to each other and to the people they meet. Part of the reason I wanted to come to Rwanda as a Kiva Fellow was so that they could have the opportunity to spend time in the country of their birth. To give them a chance to learn the language, make Rwandan friends and live in a land of people who look just like them (not the case in our current home, Vancouver, Canada). Our thinking was not that they would necessarily fully remember the experience, but that it could inform their identity and give them a sense of belonging. Well, this was the idea anyway. (more…)
28 comments 2 November 2009
No Short Cuts to the Top of a Palm-tree
By Ibrahim Oumarr Jalloh, Kiva Coordinator, Salone Microfinance Trust, Sierra Leone
There is a lot of wealth at the top of a palm-tree. Many would like to reap the benefits it possesses.
The palm-wine taper wants the palm-wine, the palm-oil producer wants the palm-oil, the mats designers and broom makers want the palm-leaves – even the snakes and rats want to feed from the palm fruits.
There are no rules about who is allowed to try to climb and reach the top of the palm tree to get what they want, but it is clear, because of the difficulty of getting to the top, that adhering to the policies of the palm-tree is crucial to success. There should be no thoughts about possible cunning ways to get to the top – one needs to begin from below and then work to the top. When one reaches there, one can reap whatever benefit there is.
8 comments 30 October 2009
No More Genocide
By Gavin Sword, KF9 Rwanda
It is true that internationally, Rwanda is most known for the horrific events of 1994; a genocide that claimed the lives of more than 800,000 of its people. There is no satisfactory way to comprehend what happened here. Yet as a testament to the human spirit – life in Rwanda carries on. (more…)
16 comments 28 October 2009
Tuning Out and Coming To…in a Chicken Coop
By Jessica Chervin, KF9 Togo
Yesterday evening, West Africa made me giddy.
I have been in Togo for almost five months, and in West Africa for almost nine. Here, my senses are never neutral. The most lovely moments are tempered by inconvenience. My daily moto rides to and from Microfund are at once thrilling and relaxing, but the soot and smell of burning garbage, the potholes that make Lome’s boulevards feel like urban mogul fields, and the passage by open landfills smack in the middle of the capital, tinge the experience with unpleasantness. Sensory and experiential overload and deprivation are not mutually exclusive. On those moto rides, I am equally attuned to what my heightened senses do not perceive: safety, calm, balance, and the ability to breathe deeply. The expatriate experience in West Africa is one of inescapable contrast. Everything is more colorful, too spicy, impossibly beautiful, unbearably filthy—but never quite normal. If one reacts every time to each of these stimuli, one is quickly exhausted. So, with time, in order to complete the marathon, one has to find a sustainable cruising speed, some semblance of equilibrium in a world that is anything but balanced—or, for that matter, equal.
Tchilabalo in his coop (for the grown hens. The chicks were kept separately across the way).
8 comments 28 October 2009
How I Got Here
Since arriving in Togo last week, a lot of my colleagues at FECECAV have asked how I actually got from Toronto to Kpalimé. Luckily, ten minutes into my trip I pulled out my trusty flip cam, which every Kiva Fellow has been given (thank you Flip!), and started shooting. The following 3-minute video is a condensed version of my trip, the full 16 hours of footage is available upon request.
3 comments 27 October 2009
Microfinance for Beginners~
By Anne Hector, KF9 Kenya
When last I posted (http://tiny.cc/pl68v), I was preparing to plunge into Nairobi traffic with the redoubtable intern, Mary Chege, to visit the Kitengela branch to gather up loans and work with the lending officers on Kiva postings. (more…)
6 comments 26 October 2009
On The Road With Pastor Zach
by Rachel Brooks, KF9, Kenya
Faulu Kenya, where I recently began as a Fellow, has a full-time Kiva Coordinator, Zachary Muriithi. He’s a busy guy. He works long hours at Faulu, manages his several small farms, helps run a home for 24 orphans, and preaches on Sunday. He has old and new friends wherever we go and has become an active user of Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress.
Still, Pastor Zach was excited for our first big task: completing a borrower verification process. We randomly picked ten of Faulu’s Kiva borrowers for a mini-audit and then appeared unannounced at their businesses to confirm their profile details. We really might as well have dropped a bag of marbles onto a map of Nairobi because the ten businesses could not have been farther apart but it was worth it.
(more…)
7 comments 24 October 2009
Gud Road, Light, Klin Water– Sierra Leone “101″
By Jenny E. Kim, Sierra Leone
My taxi driver Sharif is a 001– he eats 0 breakfast, 0 lunch, and 1 dinner. First started by university students in Freetown, classmates used the labeling system to identify those who were able to share meals and those who could not. The system is a reminder that in Sierra Leone access to basics necessities are limited. Food, clean water, roads, and electricity are all challenges. As the local currency continues its downward trajectory, in no other way does the average Sierra Leonean feel the economic pressures more than he does with food.
Above is a picture of a billboard located in one of Freetown’s busiest intersections, Congo Cross Junction. Sierra Leoneans call their country affectionately by the name “Salone”
One meal a day is common. (more…)
8 comments 22 October 2009
RSS - Posts