Universal Language: Obama
5 November 2008
Just shout it out: Obama! On the streets off Kenya, this gets you cheeers and hoots and offers off friendship and prayers…a good word, indeed.
It is good to be American in Kenya, that much I can say. Nairobi was not totally wild, but I definitely got shouts from buses and Matatus all day long. People were happy: Obama T-shirts, Obama buttons and stickers…good vibes all around.
This is absolute bliss compared to 2004, when I had just arrived in Germany and had to answer for the re-election of Bush…regardless of my opinion of the man, I felt that I alone had to act as his and America’s spokesman; I had to answer for his deeply unpopular foreign policy…as if Iraq was my call…I had to answer for the all American people, and this is difficult…I am from Rhode Island and there is much more to America than the smallest state (with a great big heart, mind you)…and I was doing this in my (at the time) sad, sad German…no fun in 2004.
But those days are over, folks!!! It is a new day, and one can feel the energy here. The Kenyans are happy, and I think that they are hopeful; this somehow vindicates their own troubles after the election in December here.
Obama is a Kenyan today (and will be for the next 4 years, at least). And that gives this country hope: hope that a black man can be the most powerful man in the world, hope that America will give them more attention, and hope that anyone can become anything they want to become.
Whether or not Obama Fixes All the World’s Troubles, he has inspired people at least. For the Kenyans, he has shown them that politics can be positive and that politics can heal a nation instead of just dividing it.
Tomorrow I head to Kisii, in the west, towards his father’s homeland, and closer to where the violence in January and February almost tore the country apart. I will report soon on how exactly Hope has arrived in Western Kenya.
Welcome to the 3 K’s: K-MET, Kisumu, Kenya
29 October 2008
When I last corresponded with you, dear Kiva Fellows Blog reader, I was still in my home country, chucking trespassing snakes out of my house and considering whether just one bottle of Pepto-Bismol would be enough for 10 months on a foreign continent.
I write to you now from my desk at K-MET, in Kisumu Kenya, my home for the next 3 months (Kisumu, you know, hopefully not the desk). I am drinking my morning tea, which is scalding hot, milky and sweet with just a hint of spice, listening to the roosters in the yard and the chatter of birds waft in through the open window.
I arrived in the country 9 days ago, on a rainy Sunday night in Nairobi. After a long travel day and a tedious visa queue, I was very happy to see the smiling face of a fellow Kiva Fellow, Dave, who was kind enough to meet me at the airport. I spent the next two days benefiting from Dave’s semi-veteran status as he helped me navigate matatus in the city, and from the hospitality of Kiva Partner Development Specialist David Kitusa’s family. I was lucky to have such a wonderful start to this experience.
David Kitusa was scheduled to be meeting with my host organization K-MET that Wednesday, a coincidental piece of good fortune. From the Kisumu airport, David and I took a taxi down some bumpy roads to the K-MET office, where we were warmly welcomed with carved wooden necklaces. I immediately liked the place. Now, I’m not saying that I can be won over by a necklace, but this was a really cool necklace. Each member of the staff was friendly and kind, extremely generous with their welcomes. I felt very much at home and could tell that I would enjoy coming into work each day to work along side such nice people.
We were treated to a power point presentation giving a background of K-MET and what the organization does in the community. I was, frankly, blown away. As I continue to see each day the work the organization does and how it strives to create innovative and practical solutions for vulnerable people, I realize even more how valuable their work is for the community. And I’ve only been here 6 days.
K-MET is the Kisumu Medical and Education Trust. It is an indigenous non-governmental organization that was started by a group of Kenyans in Nairobi in 1995. It now operates in 5 of the 8 Kenyan provinces, with its headquarters in Kisumu. Their mission is to promote development of underserved communities through innovative health and education programs.
K-MET was originally founded in order to address reproductive health care. While abortion is illegal in Kenya, many back alley abortions are still performed, and this contributes to the region’s high rate of maternal mortality (1,000 deaths per 100,000 births compared to a US rate of 17 deaths to 100,000 births). K-MET provides post abortion care and promotes family planning and contraceptive use in order to create an environment where every child is wanted.
K-MET has expanded over the years to provide a wide range of health care services in communities through clinics and home based care programs. I could go on and on about their different programs: the clinical services, the home based care, the nutrition program, the program Sisterhood for Change, which provides skills training for girls out of school…
But you, who have stuck with me this far, must be wondering how microfinance plays into all of this. Other Kiva partners are solely microfinance institutions and here I am typing incessantly about health care. K-MET is an interesting Kiva Partner in that their primary focus is indeed not on microfinance. Rather, the microfinance program supplements their broader vision of meeting communities’ health needs. The microfinance program was initiated in 2004 and they began their partnership with Kiva in 2006. K-MET has big ideas for the program and I am excited to learn what they have in store for the future.
Perhaps you have browsed through K-MET’s clients on the Kiva website and are now thinking, “wait! I see how a doctor purchasing an ultrasound machine is health related, but selling charcoal? That’s a stretch…” While some loans are made to Private Network Providers with health facilities, in order to make improvements to their clinics and services, others are made to what are known as Community Based Service Providers. These are people who work in the Home Based Care program for K-MET as volunteers and have a business from which they receive their income, selling charcoal for example. With a loan from K-MET and Kiva, they are able to maintain a steady revenue flow, and even increase profits, allowing them to continue their volunteer work caring for patients.
I have started attending borrower group meetings and even had the opportunity to talk to four women about their loan applications yesterday. Hopefully you will see Yucabeth, who is applying for a loan in order to purchase vegetables for her vegetable stand, on the Kiva website soon!
Yucabeth Akinyi Ochieng
I want to leave you with a video created by a former intern at K-MET. Sadly, the portion on the microfinance department is extremely short, but it will give you a bit of an idea of the organization as a whole.
Impressions…
13 October 2008
People always use toothpicks after meals…you don’t “get off” a bus or Matatu, you “alight” (I have actually never heard this word before)…people make “blunders” instead of “mistakes”…Kenya produces great coffee, but since the domestic demand is rather for tea, most places serving coffee here are surprisingly bad…people love eating meat…when I ask people for directions, they assume that I am utterly helpless and may not make it to where I am going…if my colleagues give me directions, they want me to send them an SMS once I arrive, so that they know that I made it safely…everyone carries little plastic bags with them wherever they go…the growing middle class is obvious, even just by looking around at the massive billboards, which are designed to be more vertical than horizontal, and the endless commercials hocking a consumer lifestyle to Nairobians…the word “gay” was censored out of the Ugly Betty episode I watched after dinner last night, as was the word “sex” on an episode of “Shark”, an awful American TV series I have never heard of…the Swahili news will show interviews with people in English without subtitles…the English news will show interviews in Swahili without subtitles…men walk down the street holding hands, because they are friends…my frequent “Thank you” or “Asante” (thank you in Swahili) to whoever has helped me are always met with “Welcome” or “Karibu” (welcome in Swahili)…people are proud of Kenya and are slightly ashamed about the post-election violence; they hope that is not all I know about their country…if I walk into any eating establishment that is not an almost exclusively white hangout, I will be watched by the other customers the whole time, from ordering to eating to paying: it seems to me that they are in total disbelief that I am sitting there, drinking coffee and eating a donut (good donuts here)…handshakes can be an extended affair, and vigorous…people speak English to me, but the accent can be impenetrable, the words unfamiliar and unexpected, and when coupled with the accent: impossible to understand…
NAIROBI: It’s a mad, mad world…
13 October 2008
Nairobi is a mad, mad place for the unfamiliar visitor. Traffic, pollution, swarms of people…
The simplest, most convenient way to get around is on a Matatu. A Matatu is a little van, almost like a VW bus, except outfitted with seats for 14 people…and sometimes a flat screen TV and Pioneer speakers, which are always pumping some kind of reggae or American hip hop through the little van.
Matatus rule the road, or at least they think they do. The sliding door is almost always open, with the “Matatu Manager” hanging out of the van for the whole ride, shouting where the Matatu is headed, how much it costs, etc… once you are in the van, the open door policy provide a nice breeze as you weave your way through the other cars and around the brave individuals trying to cross the street. But once you are in, you barely notice the world whizzing by around you, or how close you come to smashing into another vehicle. Usually I am so consumed by the deafening music that there is nothing else to do except bob my head to the beat and leave it all up to some higher being…
The music, the chatter, the entire vibe of the Matatu wraps you up and dumps you out somewhere down the road – which really feels like the past few months of my life…
Being a white man here is interesting. Either no one bothers you, no one cares that you are there….or you become the center of attention in any situation. You can swarmed by people, all wanting to know where you from, your marital status (disbelief follows my answer of “27 and single, no children”) and how you should follow them to the nearest store, market stand, restaurant, etc…
Thankfully I do not have to deal with all of this on my own: I have the honor of living with David Kitusa, Kiva’s Partner Development Specialist for East and Southern Africa, and his family. This makes my experience extra special, as I come home every night to a family. Their warmth and hospitality cannot be overstated – in the past 7 days I have learned so much from them about life in Kenya and Nairobi. Staying with them has added an extra dimension to my visit, certainly, as well as that intangible feeling that comes with being part of a family. Living life here with them is something I will never forget.
Let’s start from the beginning…
13 October 2008
My name is David Stewart and I am the Kiva Fellow in Nairobi, Kenya. I am working with Opportunity Kenya, part of Opportunity International. Opportunity just bought Sunlink, a small MFI here in Nairobi. I am here to help the transition and get all of the Sunlink staff on board with this thing from the US we know (and love) as Kiva….but before I got here….
It was virtually impossible to write anything before leaving the States for Nairobi. There was simply too much movement, too much momentum to stop and capture my thoughts.
For starters, I spent almost 5 months backpacking through the mountains of California, Oregon and Washington on the Pacific Crest Trail. Most people have heard of the Appalachian Trail: the PCT is its longer, slightly wilder cousin in the West.
It is a 2,600 mile long continuous footpath through the mountains, starting at the Mexican border east o San Diego and ending 8 miles inside of Canada. There are virtually no shelters to sleep in (bring your tent!) and one must go into town every 5-8 days in order to buy food and supplies for the next leg of the journey. It runs along the eastern edge of California, through the Mojave Desert, and then up into the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range, where you live like a mountain goat for several weeks, climbing up and over and down 11, 12, even 13,000 foot mountain passes. It then winds back to the middle of California and takes you up through the center of Oregon and Washington along the crest of the Cascades. All told, the trail passes through 7 national parks and countless national forests and wilderness areas.
Along the way, I managed to apply for the Kiva Fellowship, conduct a phone interview (early on a Sunday morning in Ashland, Oregon) and get hired (which I found out by checking my e-mail on another hiker’s IPhone, high up on a ridge in Oregon, where he happened to have reception).
Originally, I thought I was headed to Azerbaijan; this was right around the time that Russia invaded Georgia. This lead to mock “Good luck out there” wishes from other hikers and suggestions that it might be safer to sleep with candy bars in my tent in bear country than to go anywhere near Azerbaijan. It was also discussed at length whether or not I should shave my beard before leaving…this, however, was all for naught, as I found out soon afterwards that I would be headed to Kenya, instead. I was pleasantly surprised…
My hike lasted from April 25th until September 11th. The timing worked out perfectly, as training for the Kiva Fellowship began on September 25th. I still had to get to San Francisco, though. How did this work?
At the northern end of the trail, in a provincial park in Canada, there are buses running into Vancouver. Vancouver was a beautiful city, a great way to come back into civilization…unless you take a wrong turn and go down East Hastings Street, on which you can find countless people shooting heroin and smoking crack in broad daylight. I am not exaggerating about this; my friends and I made the wrong turn and watched people shoot up on street corners. Less than 100 yards away, people were shopping at American Apparel and enjoying the finest raw oysters that the northern Pacific has to offer. This passes for normal in Vancouver.
I jumped into the northern Pacific, by the way. In a word: cold.
A few days later, upon arriving in San Francisco for my Kiva training, I witnessed a shooting. I called 911 and described to them everything I had seen, which was not all that much. I simply heard the shots, looked across the street, saw a hooded figure fall and another hooded figure run off with a gun in hand. It all happened so fast….tragic, sad, scary…
Such was my reintroduction to society.
At least Kiva was uplifting. Actually, it was downright inspiring. After one short week of training, I left San Francisco feeling that I was truly a part of Kiva and that I could actually contribute to the cause. It was not an abstraction; indeed, as a Kiva Fellow I am on the ground, in the country, seeing how loans are disbursed and how those loans affect people here. The positives, the negatives, and all the concerns and issues surrounding microfinance as it relates to real people who are simply trying to get a leg up in life.
I can say now that the effect of these loans is very real – for the Microfinance Institutes that grant the loans as well as for the borrowers who use them to grow their businesses.
Oh, wait: before leaving Boston for Nairobi I attended a wedding in Delaware, swam in the roiling Atlantic Ocean (thank you for the waves, Ike) and found some time to sleep somewhere in between all of this…
snake! in my house!
7 October 2008
I found a snake in the living room closet.
I had been trying to mentally prepare for just this sort of moment, imagining myself cool and collected, taking snakes in the house in my stride. “Oh, just another snake!” I’d smile to everyone as I calmly shooed the snake from the house, proving myself not some silly American, but someone capable - someone who doesn’t fuss about snakes in the house. However, I hadn’t, in fact, thought that I would need to call upon my no-snake-fussing mental fortitude quite so soon.
You see, I haven’t arrived in Kenya yet.
It’s not that I imagined snakes behind every door in Kenya, no, far from it. But I do have to admit that if I had been placing bets, I would have bet that my snake encounter would be more likely to happen somewhere in Kenya rather than in my parents’ house in the U.S. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, I am in southwest Texas after all.
Oh and that calm, collected, doesn’t-get-in-a-fuss-about-snakes Sarah? Yeah, that girl was slamming the closet door shut and running away as fast as her legs could carry her. There may or may not have also been some hand waving and high pitched screeching of “there is a snake! a SNAKE. in. the. house. !!” Too bad there was no one else home, so my melodrama was wasted. My, but it was a fine performance.
When my heartbeat had slowed a little, I knew exactly what had to be done. I called my dad. He, unfortunately, did not hear his cell phone ringing so I was forced to leave a somewhat incoherent message about me being attacked by snakes and how he sure would wish he had answered his phone when he came home and found my poor, mangled snake bitten body on the living room floor.
I then called my friend Anne. Living in Rochester, New York, I knew that she wouldn’t be able to be much more than moral support, but I knew that if anyone could understand my freak out then it would be her (let’s just say Anne is no great fan of snakes either). Immediately she rose to the occasion, telling me to toget.out.of.the.house. and to call animal control. Granted, I maaay have exaggerated slightly on the size and seemingly venomous nature of the snake, but hers was exactly the sort of response I needed. Talking with her allowed me to take a step back and look at the situation a little more clearly. I imagined the call to animal control going as follows:
Me: “Snake! In my house!”
Burly Texan Animal Control Guy who is wearing a huge live rattlesnake as a belt: “Okay ma’am calm down, can you describe the snake?”
Me: “Well, um, it’s about two feet long, is about as thick as two or three fingers, doesn’t look very threatening…”
Burly Texan Animal Control Guy who is now letting scorpions play on his face: “HAHAHAHA..click.”
Rather than earn such shame, and perhaps be kicked out of Texas, I put on a pair of galoshes, some gardening gloves, and grabbed a broom (standard snake catching gear, of course). I took a deep breath, got the snake, which turned out to be an incredibly scared, nice animal, and put it out in the front garden, where it slithered away happily, perhaps to relate its tale of adventure to the rest of the family over a nice fieldmouse supper.
As it turns out, along with finishing packing for Kenya, I may be needing a little more prep work on this whole “mental fortitude about snakes” thing. Let’s be honest though - from the accounts I’ve heard, there is only a small chance that I’ll even see a snake where I’ll be in Kenya, let alone find one in my house there. But after this encounter, I might be packing my galoshes and gardening gloves, just in case…
he seemed bigger in the closet
When Primates Attack (And Other Tales of Fellows’ Mayhem and Adventure)
23 September 2008
As the next round of Kiva Fellows finished their training, Nabomita, Zack, and Julie (KF5) met for a weekend getaway in Mombasa, Kenya. During our reunion, we came up with some words to live by both for successfully completing your fellowship and for happily taking a respite from the rigors of life at an MFI. Read on, for our pearls of wisdom.
1) Don’t let the signs fool you; greasing an Immigration Official’s palm can buy you entry into a foreign country
After 8 hours on a bus from Dar es Salaam, Nabomita and Julie reached the Kenyan border only to face the reality of parting with $50 each to enter the country (the equivalent of 250 delicious breakfast chapatis.) Luckily rules in Kenya—even those pertaining to immigration status—are flexible. After a few minutes of talking to the official who was clearly looking for some sort of entertainment (evident through his use of different cartoon voices for each passing visitor) he indicated that he might be willing to help us get into the country if we could make his Ramadan feast a nicer one. Watching him sip on a Fanta Orange at 3:30pm, we were naturally skeptical that he, in fact, had an Iftar in his future, but we decided to let it slide. We were able to buy our visas for $30 each and he even gave us his email address should we confront problems trying to reenter Tanzania. It was difficult to fathom how we would be able to use this address to solicit his aid if stopped at the border, but he handed us the post-it note with such gusto that it almost made us believe it wasn’t worthless.
2) Don’t be afraid to use your muzungu status to sneak in to 5-star resorts
On our first morning at our dodgy “cottage” down the beach, we felt the call of the resorts farther north and tried to wash the dirt out from under our fingernails well enough so that we could pass as luxury vacationers. The resort staff welcomed us suspiciously to join their exclusively European, golden-anniversary-celebrating clients. The only issue arose as we tried to maintain our tight $5-per-day budget while sipping on a glass of their $8 juice. Eventually we resorted to the only food there we could afford: a fresh coconut, the milk of which quenched our thirst while the meat sustained us until we got back to our side of the beach. The lesson here is that while you might be able to get in because of your status as foreigner, it does not necessarily mean you can afford to be there.
3) Don’t let the bottle fool you—spray on sunscreen still needs to be rubbed in
Julie—the palest member of the trio—made the tactical error of spraying herself with SPF 15 sunscreen without rubbing it in in an attempt to spare her hands from yucky sunscreen residue. Believing it would air dry, Julie looked down five hours later to see that she resembled a leper (no offense to lepers). The pattern of the sunburn was so random that it made one wonder if someone had taken a paintbrush to create sunburn abstract art on her legs and stomach. The next two days resulted in Julie’s new-found modesty as she alternated between applying soothing aloe and trying to hide the offending legs in long pants at the beach.
- Paintbrush strokes of sunburn and a geometric sternum burn (and pants to hide the offending legs)
4) Thieves are not only found walking through bustling markets. They can enter your room, and they don’t even have to be evolved
After a breakfast of champions (Nutella and crackers), the trio wandered the 50 meters to the beach while leaving their cottage door ajar. Upon returning a few minutes later, we walked in on 5 monkeys boldly making away with a yet unopened package of crackers from inside the room. That the monkeys knew the crackers were to be found under Zack’s moldy clothing demonstrates that they had been spying on us through the windows all morning and awaiting our departure. In an attempt to win his crackers back, Zack set peanut butter and biscuit traps but the monkeys knew better and stayed away to enjoy their feast. This was a harbinger of things to come (raw unedited monkey battle video forthcoming)
Stealthy monkey and the stolen crackers (he even has a cracker hanging out of his mouth)
5) When using your guidebooks keep in mind that they probably haven’t been updated in 5 to 10 years
Reading about the only Mexican restaurant in East Africa led the fellows to salivate over the thought of margaritas and guacamole for the five hours leading up to dinner. After taking three matatus, one ferry, and two tuktuks we finally arrived at the anticipated source of our greatest meal in Africa. Perplexed by the void where the restaurant should have been, we asked some loitering locals where we could find our enchiladas. After a few minutes of confusion as to what we were asking, the locals informed us that said restaurant was not only closed, but had closed in 2003, never to reopen. Having eaten nothing for the previous five hours in preparation for the grand feast, the ravenous fellows exclaimed in despair at the revelation. Unable to think clearly through the hunger we started wandering until we came upon an immaculate seaside restaurant—the kitchen of which was closed. Sure we would collapse before our blood sugar levels were restored, we made our way to the middle-school hangout of upperclass suburban Mombasa to satiate our hunger with bagfuls of movie popcorn and paneer pies. Never put your life or your stomach in the hands of Lonely Planet.
6) Just because you’re taking some time off does not mean you get to escape the hassles of Africa
After months of solo travel, the group discovered that even strength in numbers does not deter drunken suitors. Walking through Mombasa, Julie and Nabomita were berated by an incoherent local for being “thieves” and “robbers”. Despite being impressed that he knew both of those words in English, they sped up their pace. Undeterred, he followed them all of the way to the ferry, volume and rage-level increasing. “If he touches either of us, I’ll break his hand,” Julie affirmed to Nabomita. Her deadpan indicated that she might even be looking forward to having a violent outburst. Stepping up to play his role as Man of the Group, Zack tried to place himself between the offending man and the ready-to-pounce women. Unfortunately, Zack’s strategic positioning made him the victim of an ill-aimed blown kiss as the drunk man landed one right on Zack’s shoulder. Julie lunged, ready to fight, but Zack wisely told her that she need not jump—he liked it a little bit. At this point, we remembered that Africa’s hassles are typically as harmless as butterfly kisses.
7) You’re not alone; whatever bizaro experiences you’re having, one of the other fellows can probably empathize
From the moment Zack, Nabomita, and Julie met up, there was no lull in the conversation. Having experienced so much in our completed months in Africa, it was refreshing to tell our respective stories and find that even though we’d gone through them alone, many were shared experiences. From daily hassles to minor victories, work-related questions to poverty alleviation philosophizing, talking to people who could truly understand the work we’d been pouring ourselves into was incredibly therapeutic. If you connected with fellows at karaoke, the conference room, or the comfy sofas at Kiva headquarters, do what you can to stay in touch—and even better, take a long weekend to regroup. You’ll need it.
Much love,
Nabomita, Zack, and Julie
- Nabomita, Zack, and Julie (KF5) in Mombasa, Kenya
Mambo Jambo
19 September 2008
Jambo everyone! Or, to prove that I’m “in the know”, Mambo!
Okay, so these may be the only two words I know in Swahili at this point, but I am expecting/hoping that my vocabulary will exponentially increase in the next 13 weeks. At this moment, I am sitting among 29 other, and infinitely more interesting than I, future Fellows in a training session at Kiva headquarters. Here at the Kiva office we have been overeating and learning how to be the very best Fellows we can be (which of course includes learning how to post on this blog!).
This initial post is intended to be both a test run of our blogging skills (mine resemble those of a chimpanzee who has found access to internet) and an introduction. So, hello, mambo, etc.. my name is Sarah Forbes and I will be working as a Kiva Fellow in Africa for 10 months. My first placement will be with K-MET, the Kisumu Medical and Education Trust, in Kisumu, Kenya, with two other placements to follow elsewhere.
It is hard to convey through this post just how excited I am to be working with Kiva, in the company of so many fantastic individuals. It would just take too many exclamation points. Rather than blow your mind with those, I’ll end this post now, but keep your fingers crossed for Swahili success stories in the future!
Micro-finance in Post-Conflict: Meet OI-Wedco
9 September 2008
It has been sometime since I’ve updated for the Kiva Fellows blog. As cliché as it is lots has happened and I’ve promised a more in depth description of the impact of the post-election crisis on micro-finance. So in baseball terminology I offer a double header (or double-dip in the vernacular of the dugout). I wanted to separate the entries. This one is about my field partner. Below is an entry more specific to the violence and its impact on three remarkable women.
I’ve been in Africa for two months and I thought I’d finally share more about my field partner, Opportunity International-Wedco. As a fellow you are caught working for two organizations simultaneously, although the missions typically align there are still interesting challenges when the organizations differ. Thankfully it hasn’t happened too much.
OI-Wedco's Main Office
Over the last several weeks I’ve been primarily working from the OI-Wedco headquarters office on the outskirts of Kisumu. My main contact has been Kimberly, an American who has been working here for nearly two years. She is a regular renaissance woman around here. Kim has been managing partner/donor relationships, consultants, hiring/firing, training new staff, among other things. I arrived into an extreme busy and tense time due to a confluence of internal and external issues. The external issues have been from the lingering impact of the post-election crisis (you can read my summary below). The internal issues include primarily HR problems. Staffing qualified positions, especially loan officers can be extremely challenging even though the unemployment rate in Kenya is around 40-50%. Due to limits of education and resources, the pool of qualified candidates is small and elusive. When I first arrived they conducted 50 interviews in a few days, so, they didn’t have much time to sit me down for conversations and training about OI-Wedco etc. Instead, I learned as I went along and jumped into preparing my travels to visit clients and sorted out the repayment sheet for their groups posted to Kiva (which hadn’t been submitted for months). Much of OI-Wedco I learned on my own and from brief casual conversations with the staff. Opportunity International is a large international organization that conducts micro-finance operations in 28 countries. They acquired WEDCO (Women’s Economic Development, something, something…they love acronyms in Africa), which was a small struggling Kenya MFI in 2006 and a few weeks they acquired another MFI based in the central province around Nairobi (which has made things interesting). Opportunity International’s growth philosophy seems to be one that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead they find local MFI’s that at the core have strong potential, but need adjustments structure and strategy. OI doesn’t seem to start MFI’s from scratch, but instead “adopts” and integrates them into their network.
At OI-Wedco, constant visitors come in and out. Most are consultants or staff from headquarters in the US, UK or elsewhere. I’ve met dozens as they visit for a week or so and leave. It makes for some interesting conversation and every day different. Ultimately, I’ve been inspired by the social and holistic mission of OI and many of the staff have beautifully expressed to me how they get purpose in working to assist their fellow Kenyans (they could be getting paid better working elsewhere).
The main product OI-Wedco offers is a group loan with a minimum of 15 people (self-help groups or trust groups). When a new group forms they get a collective bank account and apply for legal status from the local government (all together costs the group around $25). For new groups OI-Wedco loan officers offer a 5-7 week training course in various business/finance topics relevant for micro-enterprise. If a client goes clears three loans with a strong payment history they can graduate to an individual loan. That is micro-finance in action. It should provide social mobility that enables people to take incremental steps out of poverty and in this case towards more robust financial services. This group dynamic provides efficiency for OI-Wedco, while providing legitimate collateral and support for the clients. I’ve been amazed at the diversity of backgrounds and incomes for OI-Wedco clients. As you can probably tell if you have explored Kiva, most of the clients listed for funding are individuals. They do, however, have several MFI’s like OI-Wedco that work with on groups (learn more).
I found it interesting that their best clients generally come from rural villages. In order to reach out to many parts of Western Kenya they currently have five branch offices in the towns of Busia, Bungoma, Eldoret, Kisii, and Kisumu (more will expanded soon) and several one room offices in smaller towns. Having the rural areas as the stronger clients does cause problems for costs in transportation and maintaining several branch locations, but the stability, repayment, as well as mission proves its value (plus it is fun riding on the back of an OI motobike). One branch manager told me that he wished all his groups were in rural areas, if so his portfolio would have a tiny PAR (percentage at risk, the primary yardstick of micro-finance stability). He tells me that this is because the rural areas tend to have strong community ties and more responsible/mature members. His main groups with issues are in the urban areas. This he tells me, is because those groups tend to be younger, less experienced, more distractions, and less commonalities tying them to the group.
Riding Shotgun in a Matatu
The timing of the partnership is both interesting and tragic. Kiva and OI-Wedco officially became partners in early December 2007, weeks before the presidential election that sent Kenya into a whirlwind of violence, economic pause, inflation, tension, and the death of 1,500 people. I’ve met with a few clients that received their loan days before the election and used a good portion of the capital to buy stock, which many lost through looting or arson during the turmoil.
After the post-election crisis, Kiva sought to help OI-Wedco in any way. The plan was to post group loans on Kiva that were being rescheduled by OI-Wedco due to the impact of the crisis on client groups. Kiva’s policy is that a new business posted for funding must be within thirty days of the loan disbursement. Because the loans of OI-Wedco groups were only being rescheduled, not re-loaned or “topped up” as the clients like to call it, Kiva made an exception due the extraordinary challenges of the crisis.
Nevertheless, it made things messy and confusing to sort out afterwards, as I’ve been sifting through the repayment data, amounts disbursed, dates disbursed, loan terms, etc. Which made for a maddening time of reconciling the repayments schedule (my eyes are permanently cross-eyed). I discovered some of the reasons for the glitches and have been able to stabilize and I am working on getting a better system going.
Anyway, I thank you for reading this scattered and I’m guessing at some points confusing entry. All in all I am finding my fellowship to be more challenging than I thought it would be, yet more worthwhile than I ever imagined.
Brief Summary of the Post-Election Crisis in Kenya
9 September 2008
The last several weeks I’ve been traveling all over West Kenya visiting groups in the branch offices of OI-Wedco to do journal updates. I return back to Kisumu with a deeply somber heart.
A few weeks ago in Kakemega I met two Kikuyu single mothers from a Kiva funded group. They told me about how they lost everything after the post-election violence. During the turmoil their shop and clothing stock was burned because of their tribal background. They fled to an IDP (internally displaced persons, essentially refugees in their own country) camp run by the UN and stayed for five months. They left the camp because of its awful conditions, and now sell cloths for a vendor and make a measly fifty schillings a day (less than a dollar).
An IDP camp in Kenya
Another woman that I met was Agripina. She is also a member of a Kiva funded group. As a result of the violence she lost everything she owned, her vehicle, house, salon, and car were all burned the evening of December 28th when Mwai Kibaki was officially announced winner of the presidential election. Agripina was a victim of the violence even though she is Luhya (the majority tribe in Kakamega) because she is married to a Kikuyu man. They fled far away to an IDP camp in Nakuru. All of this happened when she was six months pregnant and thankfully she gave birth to her first child, a healthy baby boy on March 11th inside the camp.
What could I say? What could I do?
These weren’t sob stories played up to solicit a handout as touts falsely do on the streets of Nairobi and Kisumu. These were the raw, compelling, and honest stories of the impact of the foolish chaos of the post-election crisis upon three specific women.
I’d like to do my best to explain the post-election crisis in Kenya.
*****Summary
Leading up to the presidential election held in Kenya on December 27, 2007. Several candidates were on the ballot, but the country knew that it would come down to two candidates that would battle for the presidency (much like a particular countries two party system).
Incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, and his former political ally, Raila Odinga, were the two primary challengers. Kibaki is part of the largest tribe in Kenya, the Kikuyu’s, who have had most of political power since independence and the majority live in central Kenya. Of the three presidents in Kenya’s history two have been Kikuyu’s and are notorious for preferential favoritism by giving influential political posts to other Kikuyu’s despite experience or ability.
Raila Odinga is a Luo, which is the third largest tribe in Kenya and most in his tribe live in Western Kenya (where I am based). During his campaign he rallied other tribes under his constituency in opposition to the Kibaki and the Kikuyu’s. It is disappointing that modern democracies in the developing world don’t uniting people to a political party by issues and platforms and instead resort to an easier leverage of tribal background and thus vehemently divide the electorate.
The day after the election as votes were being counted, (media coverage is as rapid as American cable news) Odinga had a significant lead and his party prematurely claimed victory, as the day progressed a swift and suspicious swing in vote tabulations showed Kibaki closing the gap and eventually winning the election.
On December 30th the other tribes grew discontent of the corrupt favoritism and alleged/assumed vote rigging, and there was widespread discontent. The perpetual marginalization spurred a rage of Luo’s and other tribes attacking Kikuyu’s and their establishments in the west while Kikuyu’s responded with attacks against Luo’s and others in the central province. Gangs and militias became small armies and neighborhoods and villages became the battlegrounds. Police and soldiers were sent in to create peace, but they are also accused of attacking innocent people. (I met a member of Kiva funded group who showed me a scar near his ankle from a bullet during the violence)
The violence was a tragic mess that left 1500 people dead, 250,000 people displaced (estimates), millions of dollars of damages to residences, businesses, and goods, and resulted in a period of zero economic activity that impacted every Kenyan as well as landlocked East African nations that rely on transporting their goods through Kenya. I met a recently hired loan officer last week who told me his story. He is a Luo from the Kisumu area, who went to college in Nairobi and got a job working for a start up telecommunications company. For the last few years he poured his life into building the company and his family, the day after the election, the entire companies headquarters were set ablaze (the founder is Kikuyu). They lost millions of dollars of equipment, but most importantly they lost the company and place of work for many people. He was bitter and angry towards the reckless thoughtlessness of the violence, they attacked the business without acknowledging that Luo’s worked there too.
It is important to remember that this crisis isn’t as simple as categorizing a group as bad and good, innocent or guilty, right or wrong. Each side has those that are to blame and each side has those that were innocent victims. Up to this year Kenya had been held as an exemplary developing African state, yet the violence revealed that tribalism still runs deep and that generalizations and hostilities had been on edge for years.
It was devastating and destructive chaos and an absolute miracle that Kofi Annan was able to negotiate a peace by creating a grand coalition government, perhaps the greatest legacy of one of the world’s great statesman. Many international observers were concerned that the crisis could have scaled to match the genocide of Rwanda in the mid-nineties.
After the coalition government was brokered on February 28th the violence stopped. Order was restored and people went back to rebuilding their lives.
*****
After my time in Kakamega, I could do nothing but think about the dark, poignant eyes of Grace, Anne, and Agripina. The pain and loss that they suffered is beyond anything I’ll ever be able to fully comprehend.
My heart is feels like lead, it is heavy seeing how we humans can still resort to the most unimaginative answer to our problems with violence.
It leaves me with the simple question of HOW? How could this happen?
Lack of hope is my best answer and may be too simple.
Nevertheless, it is hopelessness that can lead to desperation of doing unthinkable things.
Hopelessness is what fueled the post-election violence in Kenya because people saw no other hope towards the injustices of an illegitimate corrupt government and it is hopelessness that perpetuates some of the greatest ills in our world.
Grace, Anne, and Agripina have every reason to be hopeless, yet with bold courage continue on with the belief in making something better for themselves and for their children.
Kiva doesn’t only distrubute loans to the poor…Kiva distributes hope.
