Kiva Stories from the Field

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.

I take a break from my normal broadcasting about microfinance to discuss a special event. This weekend I had an invitation to attend a funeral a couple hours away in a part of the country I have never been to. I was invited by my friend and co-worker Lawrence, but I live with Lawrence’s mother’s twin sister and her family. Lawrence’s grandmother had died at the age of 86, so it was going to be a family affair.

At first I was really excited about going—I had gone to part of a funeral once but knew there was much more to it than I had first experienced in the few hours I had spent before. I did have one big worry about going—I just pulled my calf muscle and could barely walk. I was worried about going, but I was more worried about being stuck in my house in Cape Coast alone all weekend with no access to food or water—since I don’t have any food in the house and am almost out of water. I figured that I might as well go, rest my leg as much as I could, and experience something new.

Lawrence, his Aunt whom I live with, her 7-year-old son Francis, and I left Friday at the end of work to drive what was supposed to be two hours. I brought pillows to elevate my leg on and was excited to enjoy the view. About two hours in, however, we picked up a woman who I learned was Lawrence’s older sister. The car was at that point full of people and luggage. I had my bag with my laptop and my purse on the ground at my feet and was holding two pillows and a blanket on my lap. My legs were squished together, and I knew that this wasn’t going to be good for my calf. But, hey, we were close so I could do it.

Two hours later, we finally arrived at our destination: a city in the Central Region of Ghana called Breman Asikuma. It turns out that we had taken an entirely different road to pick up his sister and had gone quite a bit past our destination. We then had to turn around and go back south and quite a ways more east. Most Ghanaians are not the most explicit of people, and on top of that they don’t usually speak in English unless they are speaking to me, which makes it difficult for me to know what is going on. I have learned a lot of basics, and as I learn them I can question Ghanaians on what they are saying, but otherwise everyone just keeps speaking different languages (there are many that are spoken). By the time we arrived, I could barely walk. My calf was so swollen and cramped I literally stumbled and needed someone to hold my hand to walk.

I quickly hit the couch and elevated my leg, but everyone else wasn’t so lucky. They began getting dressed for the wake, a ceremony that involves a service and seeing the deceased one last time. It starts around midnight and goes on until daybreak—this one in particular ended up going until 3 a.m. Because of the shape of my leg, I decided not to go and rested instead.

The next morning, I woke to the sounds of voices—many voices. I went to the backyard and saw about twenty women cooking all sorts of dishes. I watched for a while and then they put me to work. I saw that some women were preparing the meat—fried fish and chicken mostly along with intestines and other meats that were meant for their soups. I also saw them making giant bowl after giant bowl of one of my favorite dishes in Ghana: Jollof Rice. Jollof Rice is a dish similar to (and thought to be the origin of) the dish called Spanish Rice in the United States. The women were pouring the sauce, which they had previously made, and then added rice and water to the mix. The giant bowls were on small outside ovens consisting of charcoal and at times rocks that they took from the backyard. My job was simple: fan the ovens. It was pretty easy, but it was much more work than we have when we use an oven in the United States. In the meantime, I got to spend time talking to all the women, which was really fun despite the language barriers (English is the official language in Ghana, but that just means that only officials speak it and only when they are at work. Anyone who has gone to school speaks it, but there are quite a few people who don’t know it.)

We made giant bowl after giant bowl of Jollof Rice, and after we finished one bowl it was dumped into a cooler and the bowl was washed so we could repeat the process. As we finished the rice, others had already started making the stew, made with fresh vegetables and lots and lots of vegetable oils, that we would serve with fufu and preparing the cassava to make fufu with. Fufu is made by boiling cassava and plantain and pounding it into a glutinous mass. It is served with a soup or stew and meat. Others boiled yam, a food similar to a potato that is served boiled and with meat and palava sauce (a sauce consisting pretty much of oils, vegetables, and sometimes meat. and still others cooked the plantain, a food very similar to a banana but less sweet that in its boiled form is eaten with the palava sauce as well.

Fufu being served with stew and meat

By the time all the other foods were finished, it was fufu-pounding time. Pounding fufu takes hours and is not for the weak at heart. It involves one person using a large thick stick with a wooden masher at the end to repeatedly pound on the cassava while another person continues to add more and more cassava, constantly putting their fingers in danger of total havoc. I have no idea how long it took them to pound as much fufu as they were making (enough for at least 100 people and probably more than that), but pounding fufu for one person usually takes about 15 minutes.

Each piece of cassava in the bowl gets pounded one at a time

I guess I should step back and say that all this food the women were making was for guests of the funeral—and it was more food than I have even seen at weddings that I have attended in the United States. In Ghana, when someone dies, people are expected to come and pay their respects—and usually they leave after having eaten and danced. In front of the house, there was a large sitting area set up where people, clad in traditional black and red African clothing to properly mourn the death of Auntie Dadzie, aged 86—people also wore black and white to celebrate her old age, something guests can do if the person who died was more than seventy. Various people were on hand to serve a variety of drinks filling two refrigerators to all the guests along with the food that we had slaved over all morning.

At about this time, we headed over to the other part of the funeral in a large outdoor area that included three large seating areas complete with canopies all facing a canopy under which the band was playing. In between all the canopies in a center area was a dance floor, at times aptly inhabited by numerous Ghanaians strutting their stuff, sometimes too much stuff for the many men who had simply had too much to drink.

When we arrived, people in t-shirts with the deceased women’s photo on the front and the words Demirefa Due (Respect is due) sprawled across the back. Some of them handed out small pieces of paper with Lawrence’s grandmother’s photo and information on it along with pins so guests could pin it on their bodies. In the center of one of the canopied seating areas was a donation table where guests could give back to those who planned the entire day and who had paid for the band, the food, the drinks, and the renting of the chairs and canopies among other things. I gave the equivalent of $5, and in exchange for my donation I received a keychain of the woman along with her information and when she died.

I couldn’t help but to thinking in the midst of all the chatting and planning that if Ghanaians could organize such a great party, they surely have what it takes to organize revolutionary change at great magnitudes—aren’t the two always related?

Despite my injury, the weekend was full of learning new words in new languages, learning to make new foods, learning to live with a family very different from my own, and learning to see a funeral as more than just goodbye. Next month, I will be going to another funeral (this time the funeral of a chief and one of my friend’s fathers—it is planned out so far in advance to allow ample time for people to prepare to come and attend the event, not to mention ample time for the family to save up enough money for the event)—and I am excited for the chance to learn more. In Ghana, funerals are more than just a funeral or a party or a gathering; it is Ghanaian culture. Ghanaians love to dance, party, and relax, they have a culture that is very hospitable and caring about others, and they strongly believe in taking care of their children. And once children are grown, they have the responsibility of taking care of their parents, even in death.

Dancing the day away

The next day was Sunday, and although I spent the day at home resting my leg some of the others had another event to man. After church, there was another celebration that lasted for many hours—the final in a weekend ode to a woman whom I’ve never met but whose family made sure I would never forget.