Bound Together, Not Tied Down
15 July 2009
By Joel Carlman, KF8 – Kisumu Medical & Education Trust – Kisumu, Kenya
Over the years, there have been many entries on this site (and on many others) about the popular topic of group lending. The fact that borrowers gather once a week, or once a month to deal with any issues they might have or to keep each other accountable is incredible. That group lending has tended to lead to higher repayment rates is a fun little factoid that practitioners of microfinance love to point out. But, that only represents the utility of group lending. Yes, it works, but it’s also beautiful in practice.
Recently, I had the chance to travel a few hours south of Kisumu to two borrower groups. One is located in the rural community of Bware, and the other in the more urban-feeling town of Rongo. Both groups taught me a lot about what group lending is all about, and why, besides serving a utilitarian function, it can also be beautiful.
The One Thing
10 July 2009
By Alison Carlman, KF8 – Kenya
As a graduate student of International Development at an African university, I wish that the answer was as simple as finding the “one thing” to alleviate poverty. For marketing purposes, NGOs and “experts” tell us that the answer is so simple, whether it’s access to clean water, economic liberalization, universal healthcare, education, modernization, or microfinance. But 50 years of “Development” in practice teaches us that it’s not so black and white.
Kiva will be the first to tell you: microfinance is not the solution to poverty. Provision of financial services is simply an important part of helping people improve their lives; microfinance is only a “tool” that can help people to meet a portion of their basic physical, social, psychological, and spiritual needs.
Alison at K-MET with Deborah, the Coordinator of the Food Security Program.
I’m working with Kisumu Medical & Education Trust (K-MET), a reproductive health organization in Kenya. One of the many services that K-MET provides is reproductive health education and life-skills training to at-risk young girls ages 10-24. These girls are often young mothers, survivors of rape and unsafe abortion, children of polygamous families, girls who had to drop out of school and work as prostitutes in order to meet theirs and their families’ basic needs.
A loan alone won’t solve these girls’ problems; they need counseling, support, marketable skills, food, daycare, education, encouragement, mentorship…. the list goes on.
Read the rest of this entry »
Pissed Off Kiva Lenders
20 June 2009
By John Briggs, KF8 Kenya
Update on sentiment shift: On June 23, Tom, the team captain for the (formerly) Pissed Off Kiva Lenders, changed the team name to Unhappy Kiva Lenders. Tom explained the name change in a posting on the team page: “I want the day to come soon when the team name will be ‘Delighted Again Kiva Lenders’ but the step above in the name change reflects current progress.”
Some Kiva lenders are pissed off about Kiva’s recent launch of loans to borrowers in the United States. Their angry cry has been heard in Kenya.
I arrived in Kenya two weeks ago to work with new Kiva field partner KADET. My marathon orientation-and-training tour is in full swing: this week I met dozens of KADET branch personnel in the western cities of Kisumu and Eldoret.
Successfully setting up Kiva-related operations poses many challenges for MFIs, but my new KADET colleagues made quick work of it. Both branches were able to post borrowers to Kiva on the same day they were introduced to it: Kisumu posted Maulyne’s loan and Eldoret posted Monicah’s loan.
Both loans were funded overnight, and the KADET staff was jubilant. At the Eldoret branch I joined KADET staff in poring over the Kiva lenders and lending teams who had supported Monicah. One lending team for Monicah’s loan jumped out at us: the Pissed Off Kiva Lenders.
Pissed off lenders? People at KADET were surprised. This wasn’t in the Kiva orientation I’d given them. Stephen Makanga, KADET’s integration and donor relations manager, and I decided to open the Pissed Off Kiva Lenders team page to find out more.
Image from the Pissed Off Kiva Lenders' team page
A statement on the page announced, “Kiva’s stated mission is to ‘alleviate poverty’. Poverty is defined as: ‘the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions’. Does that sound more like the situation for US Kiva borrowers or borrowers from the Third World countries?”
Stephen gave the page an incredulous stare and kept reading.
Better Together
18 June 2009
Joel Carlman – Kisumu, Kenya – KF8
Hello from Kisumu, Kenya! After 36 hours of flying and several very sound nights of sleep, I’m writing you from the offices of Kisumu Medical and Education Trust (K-MET), our Kiva field partner! I say our because I have the privilege of working alongside my wife, Alison Carlman throughout our Kiva Fellowship. What an experience!
After arriving at the tiny Kisumu airport on Monday evening, we were able to settle into our temporary housing on the K-MET “complex.” We were in a bit of a daze from the sleepless flights and harrowing airport encounters trying to convince airport personnel in every country that we traveled through that they should exempt us from the charges levied on overweight baggage. Since when is 30kg a person overweight!?
Moving on.
The Kenyan experience thus far has been wonderful. From Ekesa, the administrative manager who picked us up from the airport, to the administrative staff, to John Asuke, the director of the revolving loan fund, to the staff at the field offices—everyone we have encountered at K-MET—and in Kenya in general—has warmed our hearts to an unexpected extent. We are so excited to be able to work with this group of exceptional people! Read the rest of this entry »
Two’s company, Kiva’s a crowd
4 June 2009
Kiva is a crowdsourcer.
Crowds of lenders are the source of funds for Kiva borrowers. A very recent milestone quietly appeared on the Kiva statistics page — over half a million lenders have funded borrower loans on the Kiva website. That’s one big crowd!
There’s also a crowd of volunteers and avid Kiva boosters: hundreds of volunteer editors and translators, dozens of Kiva Fellows in the field, umpteen heroic souls who volunteer at Kiva headquarters in San Francisco, and the nearly five-thousand-strong group of Kiva Friends, the best compadres ever.
It’s good company to keep. Much of our interaction is in, and uniquely facilitated by, the electronic ether (the Internets, a series of tubes). Face-to-face meetings may never occur, but can be a cause for celebration when they do.
Growing a Business, Saving a Child
29 May 2009
By Brett Dobbs, KF7 Kenya
While an estimated half of Kenyans with AIDS are receiving anti-retroviral treatment, only about a third of Kenyan children are. In a Feb. 5th 2009 report issued by Human Rights Watch, the authors listed two primary reasons for the gap in care. The first, familiar to those in micro finance, is the lack of access to major health centers. Like banks, the best hospitals are located in major urban centers and cater to the slim minority that can afford steep hospital bills.
Second, many caregivers do not take their children for testing because of “stigma attached to the illness, misinformation, neglect or lack of resources.” At K-MET, Executive Director Monica Oguttu is familiar with these problems.
I am living in Kisumu, Kenya
21 April 2009
I am living in Kisumu, Kenya. Here is a picture of the street where I volunteer, in the Nyalenda slum.
Walking around the slum, one quickly comes across evidence of the post election violence. Burned buildings are common. As are random herds of goats.
White people in Kisumu are usually in self-contained SUVs. Not too many ever enter the Nyalenda slum. As a result, as I walk, I am usually chased by children.
If I stay in one place for too long, they gather to stare.
In the slum, you find many teenage girls. Their stories show a lot of common themes.
I am 20 years old. My parents passed away when I was 14. A lack of school fees made me leave school. We were left 10 children. Everyone searched for places to stay but I was left alone and went to be a street girl. A guy hired me as a maid but forced me to have sex. Within one month he raped me and I was pregnant. I went to the Kenyan police and they did not take any action about that case. They wanted money but I didn’t have even a single cent to give them. I became a mother of a child but there was no job or anything to do. I wake up early in the morning to wash clothes for people. They only give me 50 shillings (*equivalent of less than $1USD) in order to get food to eat with my child. Without washing clothes, we go to sleep hungry. If I can get someone to take care of me and return me back to school, then I can be proud and be happy as some people are. Maybe my life can change and I can be someone different.
I’m a girl of age 20 years. I dropped out of school in 2005 because I did not have money to continue my education. I have been staying at home doing nothing. I have no money to start a business. I have no knowledge of anything. I tried to convince my father to look for money to take me to high school but he did not. I have been walking day and night to look for employment even as a housemaid but the salary is as low as 100 shillings a month (*$1.31 USD per month). There is a time I succeeded in getting employment in a rich man’s house. He promised to pay me well but was exploiting me sexually. When I threatened to report him he sent me away. I was frustrated beyond words.
I am 22 years old. I am the first born in a family of five. I live with my mother and step-father and dropped out of school. I used to go clubbing and really had a bad company. I got pregnant and now I have a kid, he’s 2.5 years old. Life has been so hard I even tried marriage to find happiness and comfort. I was married to a young man who gave me everything but mistreated me and my kid. I had no choice but to stay with him since he provided me everything. Nobody cared about me. My husband was cheating on me but there was nothing I could do. Now I am HIV positive.
A Sisterhood for Change participant posing with her child
Kisumu Medical and Education Trust (“KMET”) is one of KIVA’s partners. In 2006, KMET created a program to address the seemingly hopeless situation for teenage girls. KMET recruited orphans, single mothers, high school drop-outs, HIV/AIDs patients and commercial sex workers for a program called Sisterhood for Change. The stories above are taken from profiles written by the girls recruited by the program.
Susan teaches tailoring skills to an SFC girl
When Sisterhood for Change began, KMET expected that upon graduation, the girls would immediately get jobs in local communities. Unfortunately, Kisumu just… doesn’t have jobs. So even with their new vocational skills, the girls were still unemployed and relying upon men for income.
So KMET conceptualized an idea for Safe Spaces. KMET has purchased a building in the Nyalenda slum and stocked it with the equipment needed to run tailoring, hairdressing and catering businesses. KMET will train the girls in business and entrepreneurship, and then they will be free to work in the Safe Space for as long as they wish. The girls will be purchasing supplies using KIVA loans.
For a long time, I wondered whether it could work. We held a lot of preliminary meetings to discuss our plans for the Safe Spaces, and the girls usually yawned in indifference. I would smile. I would pump my fists in excitement. I would lure them with cookies. Still, they seemed disinterested.
But now it’s actually happening! They are working in the Safe Spaces, selling french fries, avocado juice, and sassy hairstyles. Training takes place from April 29th-May 7th, with the generous help fof the Child at Venture Foundation. I still sometimes wonder if they are ready. I still sometimes wonder if Muhammad Yunus would approve. These girls really are the poorest of the poor, and we are trained that microfinance is not always effective with that group. Will high school drop outs be able to run their own businesses? We’ll find out…
Would Muhammad Yunus lend to us?
Milena Arciszewski is a year-long Kiva Fellow. She has been in Kenya since January 2009, helping to develop the Safe Space initiative. She loves getting emails, and can be reached at milena.kathryn@gmail.com.
Healthy Loans
27 March 2009
Neat pajamas. That was one of two things I got out of having Amoebic Dysentery last week. The other, was a new appreciation for the work that K-MET, the development corporation with a small micro-finance wing, is doing.
Bad Food. Neat Pajamas.
I had been in Kisumu, Kenya for nearly three weeks and was really starting to hit my stride when the stomach rumble that is all too familiar to my fellow fellows rudely interrupted me. I’ll leave out the nasty parts but within 5-hours I went from bold Kiva Fellow to helpless, dehydrated man-baby. I called Milena Arciszewski (KF6, saint) and she helped me to the hospital where I managed to not cry myself to sleep and the doctors decided to check me in.
After a few IVs full of industrial strength Chinese anti-biotics and 80 gagillion trips to the bathroom, I was beginning to feel a little better and ventured out to the hospital’s balcony. Looking and acting like an extra from the latest Wes Anderson flick (cool pajamas, bandages, self-pity), I watched the sun set over a nearby slum.
It was at this moment the disparity in Kenya’s health-care system hit me. The treatment I received at Aga Khan Hospital was some of the best I have received in the world, but it was unfortunately due to the fact that most of the doctors and nurses had few other patients to tend to. The bulk of Kisumu’s population, including those suffering from the same parasite I had, cannot afford to check in or even visit a properly functioning hospital.
As I looked out at the slum, I thought of the other people who drank the same water or ate the same bad meat who were battling the same issue. What was going to become a battle/travel story for me was going to quite possibly kill someone within a kilometer of the hospital.
So where do micro-loans come in? I coincidentally am in a position to know. K-MET, where I have been placed for my Kiva fellowship, is not a traditional MFI. Rather, it is a development corporation focused on improving the health standards in Western Kenya. What is unique, is that K-MET uses the bulk of its micro-finance program as an incentive for Community Based Health Workers to dedicate more time to their work. Why the incentive? Because there are really incredible (mostly) women who work and live in the slums here in Kisumu (as well as outlying rural areas) who, on top of raising and supporting their families, running their business and managing some of the more difficult aspects of living in an underdeveloped town, VOLUNTEER to do community based health work. This often means taking on extra costs like delivering meds to patients to sick to get to the hospital or transporting health workers to patients homes. Often, these women are the lifeline for chronically sick and weak patients. Micro-loans often feel like the least that can be done for these women.
Really Neat Women
The program is also great because these women are trained to educate their families, friends, neighbors and communities about nutrition, hygiene, safe-sex and birth control while others are actual nurses who provide limited medical care. What makes the whole thing more remarkable to me, is that many of these women live on barely a dollar a day, a fair amount are widows and they live in conditions that are extremely difficult.
The services provided by these community based health workers pales in comparison to the treatment I received at the hospital, but without them, there would be nothing for their patients. I knew before I arrived that the work these women did was important, but until I went through the desperation that comes with debilitation, I’m not sure I fully understood how important it is to support these women in their work. It has given me, and I hope in turn, Kiva Lenders to K-MET, a new sense of purpose.
To lend to K-MET, check out the K-MET Team set up today!
Good-bye for now, Kisumu
24 March 2009
“Be late, but get there”
This sticker, prominently displayed on the dashboard of the Mombasa bus, did not inspire much confidence that we would reach our destination in a timely manner, but it at least reassured my safety a bit more than another common sticker – “drive it like you stole it.”
Occasional Frequent maniacal driving aside, you are also most likely already aware of the fact that things in East Africa rarely operate in a way that someone from the United States (my home country) might call prompt. This has proven to be a way of life that is right up my alley.
While consistently late to most things in the U.S., here I have been “right on time”, and dare I say even “early” to many events. As someone who was once told by a professor that time doesn’t apply to me, African polepole time (slowly slowly) is something I can get down with.
So, in the “be late but get there” spirit, here I am, much belatedly, writing a blog post to say goodbye to K-MET and my first Kiva placement.
I write this now from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, my second Kiva placement, but I am transported by my thoughts back to Kisumu, Kenya to the K-MET office, to the farewell lunch where some weeks ago I said goodbye to my friends and coworkers.
Mama Monica, K-MET's Executive Director and me (with my gift of necklace and bracelet/arm band)
It is awkward to know that an event is in your honor, when really you feel as though it should be the other way around, that you should be the one treating your hosts who were so kind for four months. This awkward feeling intensifies when you realize that after lunch your co-workers will go around in a circle and each one will say something about/to you, while everyone else stares directly at you.
My cheeks were pink, yes, but as each friend said goodbye to me, I tucked their words away in my memory, needing to save them, to keep their smiles and the long days we spent together with me always. It is hard to explain how touched I was by some of the things said to me that day, how much the friendship of everyone at K-MET has meant to me.
- John Asuke is one of the most hardworking, admirable men that I have ever met. He carries K-MET’s microfinance department on his tai kwon do trained back, working even with typhoid fever. And he has some sweet dance moves.
When I stood up to say a few words, my mind drifted over the last few months.
There were, of course, small moments of difficulty and discomfort, illness and confusion, grapples with identity and development work, as well as much larger moments of grief and mourning – the sudden death of friend and co-worker Alice Otieno, (the office is lacking your bright laughter, Alice) and the deaths of my two grandparents (your cactus, planted 38 years ago in Nakuru, is huge now, I wish I could have told you) – that made my heart clench tight on a number of days.
As these darkened clouds of memory billowed in my mind, other, brighter, memories joined them, crowding, jostling, calling out for recognition.
Memories of the comfort, care, and love given and received in time of sadness and grief, scalding morning chai, field visits to spirited borrowers, bumpy dirt roads, music and more music, squabbling roosters in the yard, Indian food with friends, stone faced babies, nights spent looking at the stars, dirty garbage everywhere, bright bougainvillea flowers, the smell of burning trash, hot nyama choma and cold Tusker beer, silhouettes of women carrying water up winding burnt orange paths as dusk falls over Kenyan hills, layers of dust and sweat covering skin, kind helpful strangers, haggling for mangos, stories of humor and strength in difficult situations, wind rushing on the back of a motorcycle, elaborate handshakes and fist pounds, laughter, tenacious grips on life, love, and family, Obama calls in the streets, the hum of sewing machines, real hugs, the intimate glimpses into people’s businesses and lives, their hopes and challenges, and small moments of complete bliss – the feeling of being in the exact place I was meant to be in for that moment.
Together, all these moments have woven themselves together to make an indelible impression on me. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of people’s lives in Kisumu and to have them become a part of mine.
- This borrower group in Mombasa, Kenya includes many enterprising women who hold steady jobs and have created their own small businesses in order to supplement their primary income
- Bernard, Kiva Borrower, lost his business during post-election violence last year when his sewing machine was stolen. He fled the area for months, then returned to start again, buying a new machine with a K-MET loan
I like to think that I will be back in Kisumu some day, to breathe in that dusty lake breeze and have some fried tilapia and ugali with my friends, catching up on all the stories I have missed.
So oriti ahenya for now, Kisumu and K-MET. Thank you for all that you have given me; I hope that I have been able to give something back.
