Saahkem Dorothy Muyang. 1954 - 2009.

By Dennis A. Espinoza, KF9, Grounded and Holistic Approach for People’s Empowerment (GHAPE) in Bamenda, Cameroon

I was working at my desk when Kenneth, my roommate and GHAPE loan officer, answered his phone and heard that ten year GHAPE member and Kiva borrower, Saahkem Dorothy Muyang, had passed away after a bout with diabetes.

Just glancing at Dorothy’s picture and noticing her beaming smile gives you an impression of who she was.  She had a big heart, a deep love for her family and was very involved in her community.  Needless to say, her passing was a significant loss to a lot of people around here.  She was well loved and I wish I would’ve had an opportunity to meet her in person.

As I took my bucket shower at 4:30am the morning of the funeral, I was a bit concerned that I hadn’t brought the proper clothes.  Black wasn’t a color I was planning on wearing much in this heat.  Fortunately, I dug deep and found a black polo at the bottom of my luggage to go with some black slacks and black shoes.

When I arrived I noticed I stood out.  I wasn’t the only one in colorless attire but we were in the minority.  Those closest to Dorothy weren’t wearing black. They weren’t even wearing dark colors.

Her church community wore bright yellow and white.  Fellow members of her fish frying community wore green, yellow, white and purple.

Her GHAPE community wore their blue, yellow and white GHAPE dresses.

Like a military uniform or a flag draped across a soldier’s casket, Dorothy’s GHAPE outfit was a defining article that remained with her throughout the entire ceremony.  Each of the individuals in her GHAPE lending group did also.

GHAPE rarely has to declare a bad debt.  The nature of the lending circle makes it so that all members’ loans are properly supported by peers and it seems to work well.  One of the few instances when GHAPE does declare a bad debt is in the event of a borrower’s death.  When a borrower passes away GHAPE forgives the loan and provides the deceased’s family with a bereavement contribution for the funeral and burial expenses.  The financial contribution is a gesture that makes a big difference in a place that doesn’t have the luxury of life insurance, but it is the least of what GHAPE does.

Throughout my short time in the field I’ve learned that GHAPE, and most of Kiva’s field partners, are so much more than a loan.  The fact really hit me when I saw four of GHAPE’s ten loan officers, GHAPE’s program director and a GHAPE board member consoling Dorothy’s family’s during the service and funeral.  Besides being a bit concerned of how the others were holding down the fort, I was amazed.

I sometimes wonder if the old personal financial advising firms took a cue from an MFI when they ran ads depicting a financial advisor speaking at the wedding of one of his client’s sons.  While I have yet to personally experience that level of involvement from any of my banks, it is exactly what many of Kiva’s partners do for their clients.  They know each borrower’s name, they have their account numbers memorized, they share in the joy of a birth, they celebrate their successes and they cry during their funerals.

So it seemed fitting that, instead of mourning in solemn dark attire, most of Dorothy’s friends demonstrated and celebrated the community they shared with her through their clothing and their songs.  They didn’t wear black.  They didn’t wear their Sunday best.  They displayed how they knew her best and what brought them together.  Watching Dorothy’s lending group stand together alongside GHAPE employees made it apparent that being a GHAPE member may be based on a loan but it means so much more.  It means standing in solidarity during a loss.  More importantly, it means standing united and supporting each other throughout life.

I think I need to find a new bank.

Support GHAPE and GHAPE’s borrowers by lending (search GHAPE) and joining GHAPE’s lending team.

Almost finished with my four months at GHAPE, in Bamenda, Cameroon, I thought I would share with everyone all the “thank yous” I heard while interviewing GHAPE/Kiva borrowers.

To all the Kiva lenders, “I thank them plenty!”

Fellow fellow Ashley and I had the honor of celebrating International Women’s Day with GHAPE borrowers on Sunday, March 8th, 2009.  It was quite the event: women dressed in kabas, which are the traditional Cameroonian dresses with various patterns and colors, and marched down the main street in Bamenda.  Women and men showed up in masses to the parade and many continued the party by drinking and eating with friends.

On a personal note, Women’s Day was one of my favorite memories of Cameroon.  There were tons of women out at the restaurants and bars enjoying themselves with friends and family, And, every time a group of women passed another group, they yelled, “HAPPY WOMEN”S DAY!”  As you can see this video comes delayed due to the lack of high speed internet, but hope you all enjoy it!

GHAPE – Grounded and Holistic Approach for People’s Empowerment, has three branches in Cameroon. Each branch is located in the North West Region: the capital city, Bamenda, houses GHAPE headquarters. Traveling from branch to branch, center to center, one can see the differences in landscape in Cameroon. Bamenda, a bustling city with lots of commerce is the central location for GHAPE. In Momo and Belo, the farmers reign in their small-town atmospheres.

Momo is a small, small town, equipped with a motor park for those who look to sell their produce outside the city. Home to six GHAPE centers, Momo is thriving with hardworking farmers.

In Belo, there is an honest tranquility amidst the mountaintops that is unmistakable. There is any wonder how work gets done in such a serene environment. The central market, a small section of the Cameroon “highway” houses many GHAPE borrowers. In Belo, there are ten centers that stretch out to half an hour’s
drive.

Here is a digital look at towns GHAPE lives in. Enjoy!

Bamenda:

To MoMo:

MoMo:

Car Park in MoMo.

Belo:

GHAPE in Belo:

GHAPE office in Belo

As a Kiva fellow, one of my jobs is to attend the various centers during their bimonthly meetings.  At the meetings, I have found a routine: watch the groups gather and prepare their money to turn in, sing the GHAPE anthem, discuss upcoming events, and then while the loan officer works out money logistics, I interview Kiva borrowers.  As you can see from the video, the other day was slightly different.

After the meeting, all the members and staff stayed in the center room and two members brought in two piglets.  It was quite the spectacle; well, I think I was the only one who thought so.  Many of the borrowers at GHAPE deal with agriculture from farming vegetables to livestock, and with some training, raising and breeding pigs is a great way to increase one’s capital for both the short and long term.

When a new center begins, GHAPE gives the center capital to purchase one female piglet.  The borrowers of that center then discuss which breed to buy and who gets to receive the first piglet.  The guidelines are that the borrower must be a female and have a suitable pig fence.  In addition, the chosen borrower must continue the cycle of “pass on a gift and be donor” by bringing in two female piglets after the given one has had a farrow (a liter of piglets) to give to two other GHAPE female clients.  This ‘gift that keeps on giving’ (literally) is a way for GHAPE to encourage its female borrowers to invest some time and money into an area of farming that really assists in saving money and provides free manure for their farms.  

While raising and selling pigs is a good investment in Cameroon, training is necessary and the process is a bit more complex than it looks.  Luckily, GHAPE conducts workshops on pig farming twice a year and asks the experts to share their advice with new or potential pig farmers.  For instance, there are several breeds of pigs and each has advantages and disadvantages; so when choosing a breed, one must consider factors, like which has a better resistance to disease,  which ones grows faster, etc.  At the workshop, potential pig farmers also learn how to build a good pig fence and how to keep its area clean.

Some of you may ask, “Why pigs?” One of the main reasons is that they can breed twice a year because their gestation period is “3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days,” and pigs eat less feed but provide more meat compared to other animals, like the bovine clan.  However, don’t be fooled: there are a good amount of challenges a farmer takes.  A year or so ago, the area of Bamenda was hit with Swine Fever, which is also known as  Hog Cholera and Pig Plague.  This air-born disease is highly contagious and the Cameroon government is still attempting to find a solution, like a vaccine, to prevent such a damaging spread like last year’s.  The only recommendation they have is to keep the pig area clean and away from other pigs.  

Another challenge of owning pigs is the expenses: at times, the cost of pig feed spikes in the market, making it harder for farmers to justify owning livestock.  In order to combat the prices, a farmer can mix feed with their surplus from the farm, like yams or corn, but that can only be done every so often.  Another major expense is buying material and paying a carpenter for the pig fence.  So when given a piglet from the GHAPE center, this cycle encourages clients to take up pig farming but with caution.

After learning so much about this area of farming, I am quite impressed with its complexities and how helpful it is to own a pig (if executed correctly).  To me, it seems like the Cameroonian version of the stock market: with the right education and instruction, the advantages of investing for the long-term will mostly likely outweigh the risk factors of the short-term.  And while not everyone wants to own (live)stock, it is always something to consider for the future when the timing is right.  In fact, GHAPE will not allow a borrower to receive a piglet until she has attended their workshop. In the video posted here, because there were no borrowers ready to receive a piglet, they sold the piglets to clients who already have received a pig in the past.

Living in Bamenda, Cameroon is relatively inexpensive. Taking a taxi from one end of the city to the other can cost you a maximum of 250 CFAs (50 cents). Granted, with everything else, you have to sacrifice some luxuries. Using the taxi as an example, the driver, at times, will fit 7 passengers with him in his mid-sized sedan. That is not unusual, especially for longer trips. Other purchases can be extremely cheap when compared to US prices. An avocado, or “pear” here, costs about 75 CFA (or 15 cents). They can cost even less at times. The trick to getting the low price is, however, to bargain for it. No prices are set and getting a good price is not easily done in the food market in Bamenda.

The two markets in Bamenda are large, sprawling matrices of single vendors. Each vendor has her or his own station, most of which are made out of wood. These stations house products staked up to their roofs, or they are open shops with large bags on the ground, filled with Cameroon-grown produce. Bargaining in the market can be a daunting task, especially if you are not used to bargaining, you look like a foreigner AND you are not sure what the price of food should be. The marketplace is surely competitive and each seller is trying to make a profit, so you must be well-informed before heading into the market matrix. Knowing someone, or in my case a GHAPE borrower, can be helpful for she can not only sell you her goods at a fair price, but she can also show you around and help you buy other foods at lower prices.

At GHAPE – Grounded and Holistic Approach for People’s Empowerment, most of the entrepreneurs are farmers and/or sellers in the market. Currently, their loan sizes range from 40,000 CFA to 200,000 CFA ($80-$400), and they are disbursed only to individuals. These borrowers work very hard at what they do. Those that sell in the market usually have to purchase their produce from a farmer or distributor, haul their products via public transportation (usually taxis), rent a place within the matrix of a market, and then they have to be able to sell their products at the right price to earn a profit, yet not turn away customers before their produce spoils. They call this type of business “Buy’em, Sell’em.”

Bamenda Food Market, Cameroon

In the Belo branch of GHAPE, the majority of borrowers are farmers. That means they have to balance the loan repayments with the farming season. Their loans are a minimum of one year and usually take a large portion of the year to see the fruits from their seeds. So, on top of farming their land, some borrowers supplement their income by selling retail items in the market. Moreover, new GHAPE members are expected to repay their loan right at the beginning of their loan term, as well as attend center meetings (of about 40 members) twice a month. Challenging enough? Not quite. In addition, most GHAPE members are not only entrepreneurs, but they are women, and with that comes a lot more responsibility in Cameroon.

In Cameroon, women run compounds. A compound is just as it sounds, a bit of land crammed with a few small, one-story houses. The people who live around you are not necessarily blood-related, but everyone helps out with chores. If your compound has children on it, as most do, then everyone shares in the responsibility of raising them. At times, growing up, you may never know who your real mother is because everyone who has children is called “mama” and you may never know if you are truly related to the elders on the compound because everyone is address as “uncle” or “auntie.” On top of raising children, living in Cameroon is difficult for someone who does not make a large income. Food is either grown at your distant farm, on the compound or you buy in bulk. Cooking is done over a fire in a special room outside. You are even lucky if your compound has running water on it. Outside of the major cities, one has to do some walking to get to a clean water source. Taking care of your compound can be a full-time job, all in itself. Woman, who not only run a compound, but provide the income for it, and in a lot of cases raise their children, are carrying a heavy workload. This sheds light on how GHAPE members,especially those that work in the market environment, do so much more work than just pay back their loans.

As you descend down the hill, onto the food market, you can see how vast and complex it is. Row after row, column after column, you can count hundreds of booths with women working in them, selling their produce. Occasionally you can spot a man, but most of them are on the outskirts, selling freshly butchered meats. In the middle, almost at the front entrance, sits two GHAPE borrowers, both women. They sell dried beans and “Irish” (potatoes). Emilia, whom greets you with the warmest smile every time you visit, is on her feet ready to help you buy something. So, you get a couple of cups of beans from her, perhaps some carrots from her neighbor and thank her for her help. You also tell her that you will see her soon at the center meeting next week. GHAPE has a saying, “When we are together…we are one,” and I can tell they mean it.

So, despite the overwhelming nature of buying and selling in the marketplace in Bamenda, it becomes apparent that sellers are not money-hungry and selfish, as we see so much in consumerism. Instead, once you get a chance to know them, you sense a bond between those who work so closely together in the market. Most of the time, borrowers say that they work hard to sell their goods at fair prices. In the end, those that are buying their produce are trying to get by as best they can, just like the farmers and the sellers. It takes time to see this dynamic, but as an outsider things of this nature sometimes do. One cannot say enough about the character of some of those that borrower from GHAPE and Kiva. Especially those who work so hard at providing food for not only the masses, but themselves and their families. Understanding the food market is like understanding Cameroon, it reveals some of the best and most trying aspects of living here.

Hello from Bamenda!!!

After about a two day transit adventure (NY to Paris (7hr), Paris to Douala (7hr), Douala to Bamenda (8 hr mini bus)), I arrived in Bamenda on Valentine’s Day, a day I thought I could avoid, but was proven incorrect!  I am working with GHAPE (Grounded & Holistic Approach for People’s Empowerment) and everyone in the office is incredibly helpful and great to talk with.  However, while my time in Cameroon has been positive, I have hit a major roadblock: I brought my Macintosh with me abroad and the software for accessing the internet here is for PCs only.  Thus, I apologize for the delay in posting and lack of videos for the moment, but I am determined to make it work by the end of this week, so stay tuned! I digress…

Since arriving two weeks ago, I have already met with a large amount of borrowers at center meetings, interviewed about 20 of them, and have been extremely impressed with every borrower and GHAPE employee so far.  This past week, GHAPE held its annual leadership workshop for all center chiefs.  For those of you who are not familiar its organization, GHAPE is composed of 28 centers in total, each center has 8 groups, and 5 borrowers constitute each group, so each center chief represents about 40 borrowers.  This leadership position holds a great amount of responsibility: leading meetings, announcing policy changes, collecting fines for tardiness and similar disruptions.

To be honest, because the workshop was two full days and GHAPE housed about 40 center chiefs at their office (right across the way to where my accommodations are), it was tiring, but very necessary.  And, while I was exhausted when the end of the second day came around, I was also overwhelmed by a sense of pride to be working with such a organization.  GHAPE really takes their social mission seriously: with monthly training sessions that cover how to management a loan to how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, GHAPE’s goal is to create a more sustainable community and it is clearly a success.  For instance, this leadership workshop I attended covered not only GHAPE policies and the qualities of a leader but also the topic of gender mainstreaming and conflict resolution.  I was quite impressed with the employees who presented and the questions asked by borrowers.  I have taken tons of video of the workshop, but again, I have to delay posting the content for another day when I have a better connection

On a personal note, I had a great weekend.  I picked up the other Kiva fellow, Ashley, from Douala and it has been fun to show her the ropes and lesson I’ve learned so far in the field.  Can’t wait to write about our adventures to come!  Hope all is well!

A warm welcome to the Kiva Fellows Blog! I would like to introduce myself to you, my name is Ashley King-Bischof. As one of the last KF7 Fellows to arrive in the field, I make my way to Bamenda, Cameroon with much anticipation and excitement. My travels to Cameroon started in the San Francisco Bay Area and will last more than a couple of days before arriving to my final destination. The first part of my trek was across North America to New York City, where I am now. From there I have a longer red-eye to London, a quick jet over to Zurich and then another flight to Douala, Cameroon. As a last, and probably the most crowded trip, I have a red-eye bus ride to Bamenda. A lot, right?!

There is a reason for that; there are no direct flights from the United States to Cameroon. I had no choice but to layover in a third-party country. Ironically though, a loan to an entrepreneur in Cameroon can be fundraised faster than the time it takes me to get there by plane. Kiva’s online platform bypasses the need for a lender to meet face to face with its borrower in order to give them credit. Instead, with a click of a mouse, their loan can have the same, positive effect through the internet. It blows my mind to think of how Kiva will affect the lives of people over time with this method; the possibilities are endless. That said, my opportunity as a Kiva Fellow still requires me to layover in Europe, and although it will take some time to get to Cameroon, the wait sure does make me appreciate Kiva’s online immediacy.

With a flight or two to go, I look forward to being a Kiva Fellow in Cameroon!

You can check out the MFI I will be working with, GHAPE. They have been working with Kiva for 2 years now.

Wednesday morning was a blast. I had to get up at 5 and get ready to go into the field alone. It was my first time to go alone, but I had set up a meeting with some of the clients from one of the centers in town so I could do a few extra interviews. I had never been to the center, so when I reached the junction the center was at I had to start asking for directions. The first woman I asked was carrying a bucket of popoffs (fried dough balls) and was on her way to the market. She grabbed my hand (holding hands is very common here), and led me to the bottom of a hill. She spoke to a friend of hers who apparently agreed to show me up the next leg of the trip and placed my hand inside my new tour guide’s hand. We walked up the hill and reached the local water tap. Children were lined up with large buckets waiting to bring back water for their family to prepare for the day. There, I was given a new tour guide—a girl around 10 years old with what had to be 20 litres of water on her head. She didn’t spill a drop as we walked quickly to the center. In front of the center waited 10 eager and excited clients, all of whom rushed over to greet me.

After conducting my interviews, I came outside to find two of the members waiting for me. One was the center chief of this particular center. They were standing with the neighbours and called me over. The mama of the home was drying out her fried grasshoppers and when she saw me coming immediately yelled at one of the children to get a ‘big paper’ (plastic bag). She filled a fairly large bag with grasshoppers and I thanked her. We continued down the hill. We walked through some compounds (essentially like someone’s back yard), to get to the Emelda’s shop. On the way, one of the neighbours was cooking her grasshoppers still. She went to talk to Emelda and asked if I could watch them. Of course, I immediately pulled out my camera and started taking a video, letting a couple jump out. Abraham, the center chief, assured me that would have happened even if I was stirring them properly.

At Emelda’s shop, or ‘off license’ which is similar to a bar, she sells beer, wine, cold drinks, and some food items. She wanted me to ’snap her’ (take her photo there), but she had had to hide all of her drink items off the shelves yesterday when the tax collectors came by; she didn’t have enough to pay taxes this month and knew they wouldn’t be going to help her people anyway. So, she decided to hide her items and pretend she had been doing very poorly in business. Next we went to Abraham’s farm. Emelda helps Abraham on the farm as well. The farm was huge, he was growing cabbage, tomato, sugar cane, njama njama (leafy green vegetable), pepper (jalapenoish), fish (in a fish pond), you name it, he had it. They had created an irrigation system by digging ditches through their farm land starting at the top of the hill (the farm was all on a downward slope). The ditches crossed back and forth over the approximately 5 hectares of land, finally ending in the fish pond. It was pretty muddy and slippery, so it was suggested I leave my sandals at the top. As we were walking around, the sun was starting to get pretty hot; Emelda had an extra head scarf and tied it on my head to protect me. Abraham decided to cut down some sugar cane stalks so I could take them back to the office. He cut down about 6 or 7 huge sticks and tied them together with grasses. They were about 4 to 5 feet long; they came up to about my chin. We left the farm and made our way over to another friend of Abraham’s who also helped on the farm.

He explained to me that here in Cameroon, you should not try to do it on your own. Your business and life will fail. He says life is too hard here to try it alone, you need the support of others; even just to cover you when you have malaria or typhoid, you need support. That’s why he likes being with GHAPE, they all support each other. All of them work together to make their lives better. Not a bad way to approach a problem. This other friend had three large pigs that had all just recently had piglets. There were quite a few of them all trying to jump out as soon as I looked in. I think they thought I was bringing them food or that the camera was food, because after a couple minutes they all became fairly disinterested in me. We walked up to the road so I could catch an okada (local term for motorbike here) back to the office. I still wasn’t wearing shoes (I know, could have caught all kinds of worms and bugs through my feet) and was wearing Emelda’s head scarf still (she said she would get it from the office later—it was too dusty to take an okada without it. I was now also carrying 7 or so long stalks of sugar cane over my shoulder and snacking on grasshoppers out of a big garbage bag; needless to say, I felt very Cameroonian. As I hopped on the bike and held the sugar cane with one hand, I rested my grasshoppers in my lap and pulled out my cell phone with the other hand to send out a few messages. It was only about half way through the ride home that I thought, “what am I doing? Hold on to the bike, put your grasshoppers and your cell phone away! What are you thinking?” Everyone was really happy to see me come back to the office with gifts of grasshoppers and sugar cane. They all went outside and began chopping off pieces of about one foot for each person. I was lucky enough to get my own stalk!

I have run out of time here, and have to get ready for Foumban this weekend. Foumban is about 4 hours outside of Bamenda and apparently has a huge cultural festival every two years. I will add some more blogs when I get back from that. However, I will say that this week, I successfully created the first GHAPE website! It was a bit over my head, but with a lot of trial and error it is up and running! Check it out and keep in mind there are still a lot of little details I’m still fixing up. www.ghape.org . I also added new photos to jenmcq.smugmug.com

This week has been completely exhausting, but one of the best weeks I’ve had here. I’ve been out in the field every morning this week—I still have tomorrow morning as well. Some of the centers have been quite far away, requiring me to leave at around 5:45 or so in the morning and catching a bike while it’s still dark. I like the longer rides though, I get to see more of Cameroon and get out of Bamenda. One of the rides to a center, Beatrice and I shared a bike. The driver told us he knew a short cut, and we went zooming through a foot path. The grass had grown over and was now hanging into the road standing at about 6 or 7 feet tall. It was smacking the driver and us in the face as we weaved around the ditch that had formed in the center of the path from the past rainy season. The whole time, Beatrice and I were just laughing at what was going on; the driver kept telling me he had taken us there on purpose—to show me the real Cameroon. It was a gorgeous view from that path; we could see the hilly countryside scattered with palm trees and crops as the sun was rising. I wasn’t able to take a picture—I was a bit more focused on holding on as we bounced down the path.

In two of the meetings now I have been given lunch after by some of the clients. At one of the meetings, all of the clients stayed behind after to have a lunch of achu (ground plantains and taro root) with a spicy, pepper and fish soup. Then at another meeting we were given koki (made by grinding koki beans and corn flour together and then frying with tomatoes and onions) and njama njama (huckleberry, a leafy green vegetable, fried with tomatoes, onions, and spices). The koki was really good. One of the clients sells groundnut koki (koki beans ground and fried with ground peanuts) on the main street in Bamenda and promised to get me some for Friday. I may try to get down there tomorrow.

In Wednesday’s center, two piglets were given out. GHAPE gives female piglets to female members; when you receive a piglet you have to raise it and breed it and come back to the center with two female piglets to give to other members. It is definitely an interesting and neat way of giving back to the center. All in all, the people are what make the early mornings and long dusty bike rides worth it though. These people are so unbelievable. They have hurdle after hurdle and even with a number of disappointments, they remain positive, optimistic and grateful. There is never any anger or negativity when you talk to them about their failures, just optimism about the future. I have never met anyone that works as hard as a lot of the GHAPE clients; they all have about four different jobs requiring varied skills. It truly is inspirational to hear what they are able to do with such small amounts of money; moreover, how what they do can change their lives. Just consider what this woman was able to do with her loan of $1,200 US.

Bih Allan, or Mangye as she is called by those that know she has had twins, is a woman with a lot on the go. Despite her busy schedule, she is relaxed and spends the entirety of the interview giggling. She not only has the daunting task of raising 6 children, but must generate enough income to pay for their school fees and daily needs. Although her husband contributes, she comes from a polygamous home and so her husband must divide his income between his other wife as well. Thanks to GHAPE and Kiva, she has been able to ensure that her family situation has not affected her children’s education and future.

Mangye grows cassava, yam, corn and beans on her farm. Much of her farmed vegetables are eaten; however, some are used to sell and some are used to make cooked food which she sells. She only sells her yams when she needs money, say to make her GHAPE payments or when school fees are due; she can sell them for 5000 CFA ($10 USD)per pound. To make garri and waterfou, two staple carbohydrate dishes produced from cassava, the cassava must be ground. This is a tedious and tiring process involving a lot of manual labour. She takes her cassava to be ground by a neighbour who has a cassava mill. For 4 pockets of cassava, it will cost her 3500 CFA ($7 USD) to grind it; she can then sell these four pockets for 9000 CFA ($18 USD).

Twice per week, Mangye sells waterfou (made from cassava), rice, stew, corn chafe (corn and beans cooked with spices), and eru (a leafy green vegetable fried in spices). She sells these items on the roadside to school children and passerbys. She can make around 6000 CFA ($12 USD) per day. She also rears pigs. She purchased two pigs for 17,000 CFA ($34 USD) and 13,000 CFA ($26 USD) and just recently sold them for 60,000 CFA ($120 USD) and 45,000 CFA($90 USD) respectively. It cost her 3380 CFA ($6.75 USD) per bag, and during the time she was raising them, she used 6 bags. She also purchased medicine and vitamins for her pigs, costing a total of 1600 CFA ($32 USD). She spent a total of 21,880 CFA ($43.75 USD) to rear them and was able to make a profit of 53,120 CFA ($106.25 USD).

She is currently raising ten fowls. She keeps her fowls for about 3 months and feeds them one bag of feed costing 13,500 CFA ($27 USD). The fowls cost 1300 CFA ($2.60 USD) each when she purchases them. She recently sold her last batch of 15 fowls for 52,000 CFA ($104 USD), or 3500 CFA ($7 USD) each. This last sale resulted in a profit of 20,500 CFA ($41 USD).

Mangye is also the proud owner of a motorbike now thanks to her GHAPE/Kiva loans. She purchased the bike for 530,000 CFA ($1060 USD) including all the documents and forms. She has contracted out the work to a driver who pays her 3000 CFA ($6 USD) per day and drives six days per week, resulting in an income of 72,000 CFA ($144 USD) per month. The bike can pay for itself in seven and a half months.

Mangye is proud that she can now rear pigs and fowls herself, sell products herself, make her profits herself and manage her life herself. She is happy to see her children’s school fees being paid easily and her family eating well and healthy. She thanks all those that contributed to her loan and says that these loans really have changed her life.

Every morning I have gone to a center and have had a different, but equally inspiring experience at each. Wednesday’s center prayer was quite interesting. Each center has a prayer at the beginning of the meeting led by one of the clients. When people here say a prayer, it is not your typical rehearsed or memorized prayer. This one referred to god as Papi God and Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus being Jesus of Nazareth wouldn’t be so strange if they didn’t say his name every two or three words. There were some references to thanking papi for having this whiteman with them for the meeting, and pleading that papi would chair the meeting for them so it could function well. There was a prayer for the whitemen countries as well, “We also pray, Jesus of Nazareth, for the whiteman countries in the world and pray that you Papi God and Jesus of Nazareth look over them and keep them safe Papi God and Jesus of Nazareth.” In case anyone was worried before about the future, there are thousands of people in Cameroon praying for the whiteman—I am told about 60 plus times a day that I am being prayed for. I never know how to respond to that, I usually say thank you, but it seems like a response offer my prayer for them would be more appropriate.

I have yet to meet a client who has been disappointed with their involvement in GHAPE. I am looking, but I don’t think there are any. There are people who have had failed businesses and what not, but they all manage to make their payments and take out another loan for another venture. The results I am seeing here are far beyond what I imagined even after studying microfinance and the empowerment of women. The women I meet here who have been in the program for a while are independent, powerful women. Some own businesses where they employ their husband and pay him a salary. In a society where women have been treated as property even within society and the legal framework in the past, it is truly amazing to see these women providing for their families and being treated as equals in the household.

Tuesday was fairly eventful, I left my apartment by 6 am to meet Beatrice at the Mbengwi moto park on the other side of town. Within seconds of standing at the side of the road, a bike-taxi had stopped and we were haggling over prices. We agreed on 200 CFA (around 40 cents) for around a 15 minute ride. I met Beatrice at the park and we took another bike together to the GHAPE center. The center meetings usually start at 6:30 and run until 12:00 depending on how quickly the clients are able to organize their books and what not. It’s a pretty tedious process; however, it ensures that I’m given the time to do all my interviews.

I interviewed thirteen clients, all with just wonderful stories. One man, Thomas, who is the General Center Chief for the area is phenomenal. He gave some of his last loan to his son to continue his business of window framing and iron door installations. He no longer has to support his son and spent the rest of his loan on a motorbike to use as a taxi. He is making enough profits from taxiing, palm wine, and pigs to easily make his minimum payments and contribute to his personal savings account provided by GHAPE. After my interviews, the meeting still had not finished. People were coming over to chat to me and ask me questions, mostly about whether or not I was married, haha. One woman sat with me for about an hour asking me about Canada and discussing Cameroon. She was pretty sweet, told me I was very pretty for a “white man” and began referring to me as “smiley-smile”–apparently I smile a lot.

Its funny, Cameroon is the first developing country I’ve been to where everyone, no matter how much money they have, is concerned with fashion and appearance. Older women are always wearing fancy African dresses, usually hand made, with gorgeous fabric. All the younger women look like they just walked out of a fashion shoot; new jeans, fancy tops, high heels, they have it all. A lot of the younger women also have children, which they secure on to their backs using a piece of brightly coloured fabric and wrapping it around their chest–kinda takes away from the model look.

After the meeting, one of the clients split her lunch with the credit assistants and I; it was a sardine sandwich–sardines on white bread. Yum. No, it wasn’t bad, but I hadn’t eaten yet, so, perhaps that had something to do with it. The three of us, two credit assistants and I, hoped on a bike to town to get back to work. Once again, fitting four on a bike, no helmets, and me on the very back because of my backpack. I think I’ll start bringing a purse instead.

I finally sorted out my phone issues, well, I realized it is broken and nothing I can do. I did, however, purchase a wireless ‘ctphone’ for my room. It has much better reception, and for 20,000 CFA per month, $40 USD, I can have unlimited internet between 6 pm and 7 am. Considering all the work I need to load on the internet and what not, I splurged. You can hook 5 computers up to the hub, so I think I will donate it to GHAPE when I leave. The internet in the office is so unbelievably slow, and around the same price per month.

Wednesday was excessively long; however, it was also pretty exciting. In the morning Loveline and I met Thomas from Center 06 to go to Belo for the General Meeting at the new Belo branch. Currently there are two branches: Bamenda and Belo. The Bamenda branch has 16 centers and the Belo branch now has 10 centers. Although there is a huge demand for more centers in the area, GHAPE is constrained by a lack of funds. They are unable to add any more centers until they find a new source of funding.

Every center has an elected ‘center chief’ and ‘vice chief’. Together, they facilitate center meetings with the credit assistants from GHAPE, help clients to understand GHAPE policies, give incoming clients initial training, help to resolve disputes within groups and the center, and in general ensure smooth and successful delivery of credit, training, and skills.

All of the Center Chiefs and their Vice Chiefs were present at the meeting from the 10 centers in Belo, as well as the two credit assistants from Belo, Loveline, the General Center Chief from Mbengwi (John Foriben), General Center Chief from Bamenda (Thomas) and myself. The meeting began at 9 and ended at around 4; apparently one of the faster meetings they’ve had in a while. Thankfully I did not attend the earlier sessions, some of which ended past 9 pm. At the beginning of the meeting, the credit assistant wrote the rules for the meeting on the board: no eating, no sleeping, no unnecessary movement, hand up to talk, permission to use toilet, and phones on vibrate. Each of the rules was associated with a fine, for sleeping you were fined and had to stand for the rest of the meeting. It reminded me a lot of middle school classroom, ha ha. The meeting was really interesting though; all of the center chiefs discussed some of the largest challenges they were facing in their new centers and exchanged ideas on how to overcome these challenges. Some of these challenges were things like lateness and absenteeism from clients, clients dropping out after having training and replacement members having no training, and more members wanting to join than the center can accommodate.

About half way through the meeting, people started to look a little tired; Loveline decided we needed some stretching to wake us up. After a few stretches, we started playing a game similar to “Simon Says”, only the leader sings “What I do” to which we respond “don’t laugh”. Some of the moves Loveline had us do with her were jumping and clapping, kicking your feet in the air, a dance move similar to get low, and spinning in circles. It was really quite strange. I was just trying to imagine this sort of break happening at an equivalent meeting in North America; I imagine that most board members at local credit unions in Canada do play active versions of “Simon Says”, just to help everyone stay focused. Maybe it should be implemented, perhaps in the Senate; I think it could really lighten things up. At first I was thinking what the hell is going on here, are they kidding? But after a few moves, I was loving it, ha ha, I thought it was great; it definitely woke me up. Another thing I found strange was one of the women who was a center chief would pick her nose constantly when addressing everyone in the room to discuss challenges or solutions to the topic. She would stop mid sentence to look at what she had found, and then continue where she left off a few seconds later. No one else seemed to phased by it, but this was every time she spoke, not just once. It was really strange.

After the meeting, I hung out with Thomas and John until Loveline was ready to leave. The Board member who lives beside the center joined us for a beer, Guinness Smooth is the beer of choice for most here, and it is paired with ‘coloured nuts’. Coloured nuts are one of those things that I have decided are impossible to explain. I suppose the best I can do is to say they are very bitter, in the shape of mandarin orange slice, hard, bizarre texture, and light pink. I also had my first guava today, I’ve eaten the inside parts of guavas, but here they just bite right into them. The outer shell is extremely bitter, reminds me lime peels. The inside was sweet though. Thomas, John and I then bought some bbq’d beef on a stick with hot sauce. It was the first time I’ve had meat or beer since I’ve been here, and I can’t lie, even though the beer was warm and the beef was cold, it was among the best beer and beef I’ve had. Ha ha.

Thursday and Friday have been spent working, a lot. The MFI I’m with does not have a Management Information System, all of their files are kept in little notebooks and written by hand. All of their transactions and calculations are done three times by calculator–it is extremely inefficient; however, they don’t have the capital to invest in any sort of technological improvements right now. It has made training on the new internet site extremely difficult; their knowledge of finance and accounting is also limited. On the upside, there have not been any problems with power struggles or control that we had prepared for in training. Loveline is more than happy to let me train her staff and assign them tasks in any way that I feel will help them to understand the processes best. She has also been asking lots of questions through our one-on-one training that we have been doing for the past week; a very good sign that she is retaining the information and trying to understand. Loveline does most of the Kiva work here, so I think she was excited when I suggested we delegate some tasks to the credit assistants, ha ha. On Monday I will train the credit assistants on the new site and also on journaling and business profiles; we are hoping to have each one of them upload a profile and a journal in the first week of the change over so that everyone knows how it is done. Because the Kiva clients at GHAPE are dispersed through all the centers and each credit assistant is responsible for certain centers, all 5 credit assistants have to understand the process.

Last night I did take some time for myself. I went to a shop next door with Vicky and purchased one litre of palm wine. Palm wine is extracted from the raffia bush and poured straight into a bucket, no distillation or refining process necessary. I bought one litre for 150 CFA, approximately 25 or 30 cents. It was pretty good. It is brought in fresh every morning and begins to ferment throughout the day; apparently by evening it is too strong for a lot of people. It tasted like grapefruit cider, if there is such a thing; alcohol and grapefruit soda. Delicious.

On a more important topic, I found corn flakes the other day in the market. This morning I was so excited to finally have a bowl of cereal; however, I made a major mistake in my planning–no milk. I knew there was some powdered milk in Mama’s house, but not wanting to borrow some at 6 am, I looked for other options. I decided not to use my water, because it has a bit of a chlorine smell and taste to it–didn’t think it would mesh well. Also decided not to use palm wine, too early to start drinking on a Friday. The only other option was tea. So, I added some tea to my corn flakes, knowing it wouldn’t be great, but hoping for better than just dry. It was foul–completely and totally disgusting. After a few bites I got used to it though, and didn’t mind it too much. My food quality control really is dropping quickly; Christmas dinner is going to taste so delicious.

I also learned today that many people keep what are called Kane rats in their homes. They catch them from the bush when they are young and train them to live in their homes; when a door is open, a trained Kane rat will remain in the home. Kane rats grow to about the size of a small cat (not kitten–full grown cat), and are just rats as we know them. You keep the trained one till it is big enough, then one day, you decide you feel like rat for dinner and hey, look at that, you have one right here at home. I think that is one item I will pass on if offered. I also passed on cow skin the other night; that was more because they only had a little to share between five and I knew I would not enjoy it as much as they would. Cow skin is about half an inch thick and purchased in sheets around 2 or 3 inches on each side. The skin is soaked and cleaned with a knife to get dirt and hair off, then cooked in soup. Vicky told me it is one of her favourite foods; maybe I’ll try it later this month. I must say though, this is the first trip I am actually considering passing on some foods, I must be maturing.

Anyway, this update is quickly becoming a novel, so, I will leave it there. I’m hoping to get out of Bamenda this weekend and see a few things; there are lots of mountains and lakes around here so I’d like to check out some of those areas. I’ll be sure to update this with what I find.

Well, after a long first week of work, I think its safe to say that I am completely in love with GHAPE.  The way that they operate just amazes me.  I have now been to 3 different centers, the ones today were over an hour and a half on less than optimal roads, and interviewed 15 clients.  Every client is so appreciative and excited about the future, it has been extremely inspiring.  Especially when you take into account the conditions that most of these clients are living in; most of them during the interview complained of serious theft or illness.  Yet, every one of these people managed to have their payments in on time and attend all the meetings.  I was surprised at how many activities these clients use for income generation; a pig farmer will most likely use the manure for her garden where she grows coco yams, cassava, potatoes, green spices, cabbage, or other vegetables.  She will sell these products as well as make some staple foods from them and sell them on the road or at the market.  She may also be making hair nets at night to sell.  The list goes on and on, it just depends on how many questions you ask. 

At the second center I met a man named John Foriben.  He started as a farmer in cabbage, plantains, green spices, and maize.  He began to take out loans from GHAPE and was able to invest in water pumps and a tractor.  He requested a grant from the UNDP last year and was given 5,000,000 CFA (around $11,000 USD).  He now employs 12 people on the farm, all GHAPE members, and pays them in kind.  They are allowed to take crops from the farm both to provide for their families and to sell in the market.  He now has 4 customers who take his products to Gabon.  He makes around 800,000 CFA ($1700 USD) per month—a huge amount in this area.  His wife and children were there, cracking open palm nuts to make palm oil, and for a snack.  The daughter, who was just a baby, maybe 10 months or so, was cracking open the nuts with a rock and giving them to me to eat.  It was quite cute.  I really enjoyed interviewing all the clients and learning about their lives.  It truly was interesting to get to know the everyday lives of people, to understand their hopes for the future, and to see their high level positivity and appreciation for their loans.  They sing three times a session, and I just love hearing the last song, the GHAPE anthem.  Its all about raising themselves out of poverty, becoming educated, and maintaining healthy lifestyles—very holistic approach. 

The GHAPE Anthem

All around the Nation

All across the World

The poor are longing to be free

Chorus:

Free from chains of poverty

Free from ignorance

Free from chains of HIV/AIDS

Strategies must be adapted

To lived realities

For the empowerment of the poor

(Chorus)

With GHAPE EC formula

A source for Liberation

The poor shall be set free

Say goodbye to poverty

Goodbye to ignorance

Goodbye to HIV/AIDS       

It is unquestionably one of the more inspiring jobs I’ve had in a while.  Kenya and Tanzania were great, but not like this.  It’s different when a woman tells you that simply having access to credit has completely changed the status of her family.  That a loan has created enough extra profit to pay for her children’s school fees, medical expenses, and provide balanced meals; three expenses that many families are unable to afford. 

The cost of living here is really cheap.  I think its fair to say that I am living on less than $2 a day right now.  I bought groceries yesterday, enough for 5 meals or so, it cost me two dollars.  That included a whole fish, a bag of yams, 6 tomatoes, onions, bag of beans, bag of corn, bag of plantains, and jalapenos—pretty cost effective.  I’m hoping to upload some photos tonight, but in a lot of them you’ll see my ‘mama’.  We were making achu last night, you cook cocoyams and plantains, then grind them together and mash them.  Cocoyams are….like a potato…but….have more flavour….I suppose.  Hard to describe.  They are good though.  After you make the mash, you cook a yellow soup from beef broth, spices, palm oil and, get this, cow skin.  Yea, she was cleaning cow skin with a knife, oh it made me cringe.  Its a delicacy over here, gross.  And in case you are wondering when looking at the photos, yes, mama is wearing a Britney Spears t-shirt, but its from her early days, ha ha.  Palm oil is the main cooking oil here, they make it from palm nuts, which I was able to eat more than enough of today in the field.   I met a woman who makes palm oil, and her daughter decided it would be fun to crack them out of the shell and keep giving them to me to eat.  When I refused one after about the tenth, she started crying.  So, I kept taking them, filling up my pockets with all these palm nuts, ha ha.  They are pretty good though.

Anyone who has spent time in some of the more remote parts of Africa will probably shrug their shoulders at my observations. But as a first time visitor it’s hard not to feel like a bit of a celebrity, at least with the children. Wherever you go, kids stop and look. Sometimes they laugh or point and every now and then they wave and shout ‘white man!’

At first I was a little taken aback, but now it has become quite routine. Mostly I rather enjoy being the local novelty and giving a wave as I walk or ride past.

Earlier this week we visited one of GHAPE’s established centres in the lush countryside that surrounds the town of Bamenda. An elderly women was leading the group in a quiet prayer in Pigeon English. As she solemnly continued, a small child walked into the meeting, then stopped in the middle of the room and exclaimed loudly ‘white man!’

Just occasionally it becomes a little wearing. There is a gaggle of kids who play near my house who are always around to greet me when I return from work. The youngest girl, who is perhaps four, and very sweet, says ‘hello… hello… hello…’ repeatedly when she sees me. It doesn’t help to reply: she still carries on in her little voice, ‘hello… hello… hello…’

Further down the road there are three children who find me most amusing. As I climb the track to pass their house they always gather, smiling and waving. When I return the greeting they burst into fits of animated giggles. I thought after time the novelty might wear off, but it seems I’m still as funny as ever.

Click here to see if any GHAPE borrowers in Cameroon are currently fundraising on Kiva.

Alternatively click here to view other African loans you can support.

This is my first blog as a kiva fellow and as an individual, so perhaps I will use this time to introduce myself to anyone in the internet community who would like to know.  I am Jen McQuhae, 22, from Vancouver Island, Canada.  I recently completed a four year honours degree in international development with a major in economics at the University of McGill in Montreal.  I have been fortunate enough to spend a great deal of my recent past travelling to a number of countries and working in a variety of contexts.  My last adventure was to Kenya and Tanzania where I worked in HIV clinics, public schools and orphanages.  I have recently been accepted to the Kiva Fellows Program and will be heading to Cameroon to work with an organization called GHAPE in a couple of weeks.

If you have no idea what Kiva is and what they do, stop reading this blog.  Go to their website, right now.  I’m serious, kiva.org.  It is the most amazing non-profit out there.  I know I may be a somewhat biased opinion on that, considering I am working for them at this point.  But its true. Kiva is a non-profit organization that allows individuals to lend money to individuals in developing countries who would not otherwise have access to credit.  This money is used to expand their businesses, whether it be through the purchase of a new cow, or a fridge, these people are able to do so much with these smalls loans, ideally helping them to move to a higher income bracket.  Kiva works with partner microfinance institutions (MFI), who are already overseas and have been working to expand credit and often other financial services to the poor.  They allow these MFIs to choose the clients they would like displayed and funded on Kiva, and to provide the information Kiva requires to create a profile on these clients.  Kiva will only fund up to 30% of an MFIs client base, as they don’t want the MFI to become too dependent on Kiva.  Everything at Kiva is done in the most sustainable way possible.

We (the fellows) have spent the past four days training at the head office in San Francisco to prepare for our postings all over the world.  There are 30 of us, from all different backgrounds with varied goals and passions.  It is really inspiring to see such a vibrant group of individuals come together for a cause like this.  Howerver, the staff at Kiva have really impressed me and made me feel hugely connected to the Kiva cause.  I have never seen such a high energy and postive group of individuals working towards such a great cause.  Everyone at the office has been so eager to improve Kiva and receive feedback, it truly is wonderful to see.  It is strange how attached I have become to Kiva in just four days of training, I cannot imagine how obsessed I will be when I return from working overseas.

I should probably leave it at that considering it is 5 AM right now, and I need to wake up soon to get ready for my last day of training with Kiva.  I will be posting a number of updates from Cameroon on this blog; the easiest way to find the posts it seems is to click on either GHAPE or Cameroon from the right hand Categories list on this website.  I am new to all this blogging stuff, but I am excited to be sharing the stories and experiences with people across the globe.  Well, see you in Cameroon!

One of the most inspiring things I have seen in Cameroon is the progress made by many GHAPE borrowers over the years. GHAPE is the local NGO where I am working during my time as a Kiva Fellow in West Africa. Their aim, like many of the other hundreds of microfinance organisations around the world, is to combat poverty by bringing capital to people who have none. GHAPE sow these funds with a good handful of business advice to ensure their borrowers’ ventures grow tall.

I spent my second week visiting the small town of Belo, which is frontier territory for microfinance. Just under a year ago GHAPE chose Belo for the site of their second office, with the express purpose of reaching some of the remote villages in this lush but poor hilly district.

Under the impressive stewardship of GHAPE staffer Kenneth, capably assisted by credit assistant Miranda, the Belo branch is now meeting the needs of nearly 500 borrowers in six rural communities. I had the privilege to attend one group’s first proper meeting, a few weeks after their initial GHAPE training. As the chairperson checked his notes to ensure the procedures were being followed, the members hesitantly completed the small green slips used to record their savings. They will graduate to become borrowers only after attendance at a few more such meetings. Their first loan – they call it ‘empowerment credit’ – will be fixed at 40,000 CFA Francs ($100 /£55), which most, at least in these parts, will use to make modest investments in their farms.

Back in the town of Bamenda, I made the journey to Centre 1, in the village of Alabukam. Many of Centre 1’s borrowers were among GHAPE’s very first, taking their initial loan nearly 10 years ago. And they are justifiably proud not just of this, but also of the progress that they and their families have made. From modest beginnings, many now have empowerment credit of 500,000 CFA Francs ($ 1,250 /£700) or more and are making monthly repayments greater than their first year’s total loan amount. While many have continued to expand farm output, several borrowers have progressed to other ventures. One I interviewed had just set up the village’s first pharmacy; two others earn money by renting motorbikes to the young drivers who ferry goods and passengers to and from town.

Of course things don’t always go swimmingly, even when some British chap from Kiva is attending your meeting. One recently dragged on for four and a half hours. A group of borrowers had failed to bring any money, meaning the centre’s repayments were short by 43,500 Francs. When this happens, the rest of the centre is expected to make up the difference, which is no laughing matter when it’s a big sum like this. Cue much grumbling and discussion. But eventually a resolution was found which kept everyone fairly happy and made sure the meeting met its obligations.

Microfinance may not be a panacea, but years of hard work from GHAPE have brought results in Cameroon which are tangible. And from new groups to old I have been struck by the borrowers’ infectious enthusiasm and their genuine desire to help each other help themselves.

Click here to see if any GHAPE borrowers in Cameroon are currently fundraising on Kiva.

Alternatively click here to view other African loans you can support.

]]> http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/09/11/microfinance-in-cameroon-%e2%80%93-ten-years-on/feed/ 3 Yuan 006-2 cimg21131 http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/28/mama%e2%80%99s-left-leg/ http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/28/mama%e2%80%99s-left-leg/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:27:36 +0000 Yuan http://kivafellows.wordpress.com/?p=1086 ]]>

Squeezing people into taxis is par for the course in Cameroon. As cabs approach, you shout your destination to the driver and if you get the nod you hop in. If there are already three in the back, no matter, there’s room for one more. If there are two in the front, again, no problem: a third person can fit in – roughly positioned astraddle the gear stick (US English: stick shift).

Leaving Bamenda to make the journey to the small town of Belo, I felt a certain smugness at having bagged the front seat of the taxi. A medium-sized (US English: very small) 1980s Toyota Corolla with a broken windscreen it might have been, but at least I had my own seat.

Cars depart the town’s ‘motor park’ (a muddy square with much transport activity) only when fully occupied. However, I’d rather failed to appreciate what this would mean, having made a naïve presumption that longer-distance transport might be a little more comfortable than the round-town variety.

Time passed as I chatted outside with the driver, an agreeable chap despite his keen support of Manchester United Football Club. One, two, three got in the back. The drizzle turned to downpour, so I climbed into my big comfy seat and prepared for the attractive scenery I’d been told the journey would bring.

But it wasn’t yet time to leave. A young woman with (school age) child rocked up and squeezed into the back. The old lady holding a large plastic box of starchy-looking substance grumbled loudly in Pigeon English as she folded an arm somewhere. I began to feel rather guilty about my luxury tourist’s seat.

At least I did – until the appearance of a petit Cameroonian woman in a rather nice gold dress. Bugger. I knew six weren’t going to fit in the back, so I moved up, resigned to an hour in the gear stick position. But some chap directed that I should get out – Mama (as older Cameroonian woman are respectfully called) was to sit there. I made sure I shared a good section of my seat. Rather a squash.

By this point, there was no sign of my Manchester United supporting pal. A new driver instead took position and started the engine. A big, thick-set man, he filled out the remaining third of the front seats with ease. Until he got out. And another man got in. But rather than being yet another new cabbie, this man’s unfortunate destiny was to occupy the seat roughly underneath the driver, astraddle both the gear stick and Mama’s left leg.

I think this may well be the worst seat in Cameroonian taxis. However, as I have only been here a couple of weeks I wonder if this may prove a hasty assertion.

Click here to see if any GHAPE borrowers in Cameroon are currently fundraising on Kiva.

Alternatively click here to view other African loans you can support.

]]> http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/28/mama%e2%80%99s-left-leg/feed/ 1 Yuan http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/22/new-discovery-microfinance-before-grameen/ http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/22/new-discovery-microfinance-before-grameen/#comments Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:14:01 +0000 lucygent http://kivafellows.wordpress.com/?p=1060 ]]>

Well, maybe I’m not the first to discover that microfinance existed in Cameroon before the Grameen bank was founded in India or before Mohammed Yunnus got the Nobel Prize, but I felt like I had when I stumbled upon Njangi while talking to some friends over the weekend. The young people who I’ve met in Cameroon are all very intelligent and informed. The standard of education is excellent and radio commercials advertising excellent classroom facilities for young children frequent the radio. Conversation amongst the teens most often centers on grades from the last semester and I’ve yet to meet someone my age who does not plan to pursue at least one masters degree before finishing their education. At the same time that people generally agree here that you must get an advanced degree, cynicism surrounding job prospects is rampant. They swear that no one can achieve a decent position within a company unless they’ve got connections or they’re embezzling. In one of these conversations about the sad state of the nation, I asked my friends why it was that they still pursued advanced degrees and how it was possible for their parents, with families of five to nine children, to sponsor children over twenty years of school. It is a struggle for my family to support just me in college and there are only two children in my family. They said “Njangi!” and then started laughing.

Njangi, as I found out, is microfinance on a smaller scale. Groups of friends, neighbors, mothers of school-age children or motorcycle-driving men get together and pool money that they can then have access to for activities related to the mission statement of the group. Some of these groups have grown into such large and established institutions that credit unions sprouted from their meetings. These groups assign treasurers and leaders. They are based not only on finances but also on community and friendship. The trust amongst the members and the knowledge that without the Njangi groups, life would be a lot harder, brings honesty into the groups. My friends say their mothers get money for schooling, feeding the household and supporting the church all through their Njangi groups. It was a debate amongst them whether Njangi could be the sole source of income, but they pointed out that people “playing” Njangi could borrow from one Njangi and contribute to another and so on and so forth, in order to have access to loans from many sources. In terms of accountancy, I think this strategy is a little risky, but if people can manage paying everyone back in the end, I guess there is no problem. My friends have said that their friends, parents and grandparents all play Njangi, making it the main source of financing in the nation. It has been going on for generations from what I can tell. Apparently, it is illegal in Cameroonian law because it is tax-free and hard to track by the government, yet an estimated 7.5 out of all 15 million Cameroonians play and many towns wouldn’t survive without them. I thought I had stumbled upon some secret that would make a name for me in anthropology. Of course, upon minimal internet research, I found that some people had written on the subject before. One of my friends begrudgingly acknowledged that is was due to the low value that Cameroonian scholars place on publishing that led to the Nobel prize won by Yunnus. “If Cameroonians wrote anything down, we could win awards for the things we have been doing for years, but we don’t write!”

I sought to pursue the topic further. I asked my GHAPE colleagues what information they had about Njangi and found that our own office has its own Njangi! Some of the staff take part in up to five Njangi’s and the values can run up to 20,000 FCFA ($50 USD) contribution per month, which is 40% of their 50,000 FCFA ($125 USD) monthly salary. One of my colleagues who partakes in five Njangi groups explained the financial and scheduling obligations of each Njangi to me.

*Cow Njangi pools 20 members annual contributions of 30,000 into a collective fund that buys cows, rice, and palm oil at the end of the year to distribute equally amongst all members. I assume it’s called “Cow” because that’s the largest purchase and main attraction/focus of the group.

The obligations and terms of withdrawal are different within each Njangi. Despite the calculations, the Njangi membership is worth-while, say the Cameroonians I’ve asked. While a meager 50,000 FCFA ($125 USD) per month barely covers basic needs, taking 92% out of the salary seems like a HUGE chunk. At times, my colleagues don’t have an extra 200 FCFA ($0.50 USD) in their budget to eat lunch. What an Njangi offers in a society with no social safety-net, however, is a small sense of security. If a member needs emergency funds or many hundreds of thousands of FCFA, they would need many months to amass that value. Educational fees would not be a possibility without this access to capital. It relies largely on good-will and social equity which makes it such an interesting field of study.

Financial Instruments advertised on one local credit union poster

The GHAPE office Njangi has 12 members, despite there being only 8 people who work in the office. This is because people can enter the Njangi under multiple names, as long as they make monthly contributions per name. The single women in the office have multiple names because they don’t have families and they rely on their boyfriends for the majority of their expenses. Collectively, the GHAPE office offers 10,000 FCFA ($25 USD) of each members’ contribution to a pre-designated beneficiary each month. The remaining 1000 FCFA ($2.50 USD) is pooled into the emergency fund that can be borrowed from, but must be repaid with 15% interest. This is so interesting to me because it is becoming more and more apparent that EVERYONE relies on Njangi. As I mentioned earlier, some of the Njangi’s have grown so large that they are now credit unions and one of the advertised financial instruments offered is Njangi financing. Now that I’ve heard about Njangi, it seems to be popping up everywhere and every new person I question has something to say about it. I just can’t express how interested I am in this. I wish I had another whole Fellowship to study Njangi. Hopefully more extensive research can be done in the field in the near future. <http://www.kiva.org/about/aboutPartner?id=40>

I am sitting in the modest headquarters of GHAPE in Bamenda, north west Cameroon.

I am surrounded by the membership books of some of the organisation’s small borrowers, detailing their loan totals and bi-monthly repayments. There is no column for defaults. When the women (it is mostly women) meet to make their regular contributions they stay in the room until the right amount of money has been collected. If someone cannot make their payment then the others have to make up the difference. But they all know each other and it’s never good to be embarrassed in front of your neighbours.

Across the office, Eric is counting the notes and coins collected this morning. And on the radio they are talking, appropriately, about loan defaults. But not in microfinance. It’s the BBC World Service and they are discussing the inadequacies of financial regulation in the West and the embarrassment of Northern Rock, the bank which had to be rescued by the UK government.

It rather got me thinking. Perhaps I could organise a fact finding mission to GHAPE’s offices for the battered bosses of Britain’s Financial Services Authority. I’m sure they could learn a few lessons.

Click here to see if any GHAPE borrowers in Cameroon are currently fundraising on Kiva.

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]]> http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/21/irresponsible-lending-%e2%80%93-some-lessons/feed/ 4 Yuan http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/04/death-of-a-client/ http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/08/04/death-of-a-client/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:02:09 +0000 lucygent http://kivafellows.wordpress.com/?p=906 ]]>

On Friday, three members of the GHAPE office went to the funeral of one of our members, Bih Josopha. She was 48 years old and left eight children behind, four of whom are under the age of 14. The daughter had come to the office to inform us of her passing on Thursday, immediately after it occurred, and we decided which office members would go and pay dues. For GHAPE members, attendance at a fellow member’s funeral is compulsory, punishable by a fine. Some of the members were a little discontented when the burial was

food from the GHAPE members

three hours behind schedule, but most of the members wanted to show their respect for a friend. Many of the women made food to feed the GHAPE members during the funeral and also to contribute to the grieving family. A lot of work that was put into the funeral to make it happen only a day after the death, but it seemed that everyone pulled their strength together, understanding the need for the effort.

When we were doing the training to become Kiva fellows, one section of the training was about being sensitive to social interactions among office members. Maybe, as Americans, we would find ourselves more physically affectionate than locals would feel comfortable being, for example. It was a good lesson to take into the field, to be very observant of the way my colleagues acted before asserting my own personality. After all, it’s better to come off a little cold in the beginning, than to make everyone around me feel uncomfortable with the way I’m acting. It turned out that the GHAPE office members are just as physically affectionate as I am, but I took a couple weeks before letting myself be that open with them. I wanted to make sure that it was ok within office politics to joke around and play. Going to a funeral was a challenge of a different kind for me. Not only was I given little observation time beforehand, I was there as a detached member of the company she owed money to and the only white person in attendance. (The loan was forgiven, as happens upon deaths within GHAPE) I did my best to imitate an appropriately somber demeanor, but not be weepy. I didn’t know the woman, but I was really sad to see her young children so overwhelmed with grief. Part of the Cameroonian burial includes music and dance, however, which lifts people’s spirits and brings some light into the ceremony. In this way, friends and family leave the funeral having grieved for the loss, paid respect, rejoiced in the life of the person, and praised God for what they have remaining in their own lives.

musicians after the burial

I had been wanting for some time to go to what Cameroonians call a “Cry Die,” which is the commemoration of a person’s death. I haven’t been to one yet, but I hear that many of the tribes come to support the family and dance and play music on the day in honor of the deceased. As a student of African dance, I am very interested in seeing how the Cameroonian tribes dance and drum and a Cry Die has been recommended to me for this particular display of tribal culture. I hadn’t understood that a funeral service would include dancing and drumming as well, but now I’ve seen that it does. Upon arrival at the funeral, Mercybertha, Fointama, and I were shown in to see the corpse of Bih Josopha, before she was placed in her coffin. I wasn’t extremely comfortable with seeing her, let alone photographing her, but my boss at GHAPE said I had to take pictures to make a good journal for the Kiva lenders. Fointama had a camera of his own and was unabashedly documenting the entire event. Somehow I felt a little more self-conscious wielding the camera in light of the fact that I was a foreigner. Later in the process of the burial, there was dancing around the newly-packed grave, and as a GHAPE member, I was asked to come into the dancing circle and sing with the other GHAPE members. I tried to look around and determine whether I should be animated or sad or somber, but I really got no definitive answer from those I saw around me. Some were smiling and singing whole-heartedly, others were doing more of an obligatory march around the grave, while not singing at all. I didn’t want to be too animated, for fear of disrespecting the death, so I did a side-to-side step behind the others and didn’t sing. I hope that I didn’t offend anyone by not participating as much.

Death carries a different tone in Cameroon, from what I have experienced. The family that I live with has nine children, four of their own and five orphans who are cousins or friends of the family. The orphans all lost their parents at young ages. Three of the five are siblings and they lost their father first to an unknown disease and then a few years later, lost their mother to brain cancer. They said they never expected to lose their father AND their mother, but it just happened that way. Medical care is not very good here and for something as delicate as brain cancer, there’s really no hope of being cured. I’ve heard the women here talk angrily and disdainfully about the inaction doctors take for hopeless cases, usually these decisions are made upon little more than a basic inspection of the patient. The orphans who I live with are very sympathetic and wonderful people, but they themselves have expressed how death no longer affects them as it used to. They say they can hear of a death or go to a funeral and feel little more than pity. Death is so common here, and unnecessary, preventable deaths are part of everyday life. It seems to me that people try to make a way of celebrating the person’s life and incorporating a hopeful element into the ceremony, so that the event isn’t so bleak.

Bih Josopha died after six weeks of complaining of chest pain. Her brother explained to me that he had taken her to get an x-ray, but had been unable to diagnose her from what he saw in the results, not being a doctor himself. Josopha had been taking care of her eight children alone, after her husband left her, and the four young children now have to find somewhere to live. The brother has seven children of his own and is already stretching his resources. Maybe Josopha’s older children will be able to take care of the younger ones, suggested her brother. The family is not as fortunate as those orphans living in my house, with more affluent relatives to provide a home, an education and affection for them. The outpouring of support I saw, just for the funeral service, will hopefully carry on to help the family afterwards.

A funeral is not something I can say I was happy to have the chance to experience. A death is always going to be a sad thing for me. I would like to say, rather, that I felt grateful to the family to let me attend this ceremony. I’m trying to be sensitive to where my presence is welcome and where it is not, with the understanding that perhaps not all things should be made accessible to foreigners. With this, I extend to the Kiva lender what I hope is a respectful little glimpse into what happened here on Friday and what happens here in Cameroon.