Posts filed under 'Eastern Europe & Central Asia (EECA)'
What a Loan Smells Like:
By Brian Kelly, KF9, Armenia
Not very good, at least in some of these Armenian villages I’ve been dropping in on lately. Have you smelled a chicken coop, or a sty filled with 20 pigs lately? It’s tough to carry a conversation in there. Visiting borrowers, at least in Armenian villages is quite the sensory overload. You will smell more than you hoped to, probably taste something you never expected to, and perhaps hear a story that will inspire you to start your own apricot grove.
Haaaayyyy. This will feed the animals throughout the winter, looks tasty
Kiva does an interesting thing. It helps put stories to the often boringly academic discipline of microfinance. Without the stories, Kiva would struggle to fund loans as quickly as it does. They help to strike a chord inside of us that increases willingness to lend or donate because of a connection felt on a human level. But you probably know all of that already, (or have read some of the chatter) and this spiel sounds all good and nice, but what does a loan really LOOK like. What does it feel like, taste like up close? How is access to credit really affecting the borrower? Well that question is one of the unique opportunities that Kiva Fellows get to ask and hopefully attempt to answer.
7 comments 8 November 2009
Verb rules and road duels
By Rob Packer, KF9 Kyrgyzstan
A less endearing road habit is driving in the country at night, where the gentleman’s etiquette of how to deal with oncoming traffic that I’m used to, has become an updated version of the staple of the 19th-century Russian novel, the duel.
Continue Reading 3 comments 5 November 2009
The people who borrow
By Jane Lim, KF9 Mongolia
Today my envy of other Kiva fellows faded because I finally, finally got to meet Kiva borrowers.
There is a certain sadness that most of these borrowers have. For some it’s buried deep beneath stoicism and the victories of subsequent success, but for others it’s brimming at the surface, and you get the feeling that one more slight push would send them into the chasm. When I take their photos, they never smile – and I’ve thought of asking them to, but I don’t want to if there’s nothing to smile about. The truth is, life has been hard for them.
where i went today: the Chingeltey ger district
13 comments 4 November 2009
Kyrgyzstan’s Windy City
By Rob Packer, KF9 Kyrgyzstan
In the middle of October I spent a week away from the Bishkek office of my MFI, Mol Bulak Finance, to see microfinance in action in their Balykchy branch. Part of the training as a Kiva Fellow is to complete an online course from the United Nations Development Program on microfinance, which seemed to tell me continuously that microfinance is a low-margin, high-cost business. No matter how many times this message is drilled into me, it still comes as a shock.
The town of Balykchy sits at the start of Lake Issyk-Kul, the world’s second-largest mountain lake after Lake Titicaca. The lake is a summertime holiday Riviera and a former Soviet naval testing ground far away from the prying eyes of the West. Compared with its more visitor-friendly lakeside neighbours of resort town Chopon-Ata and trekking or skiing centre Karakol, Balykchy suffers from a bad reputation in Bishkek. Bishkek was a sea of yellow leaves at the time, but I was warned that I would need warm clothes for the cold and sunglasses for the wind. As we drove out from Bishkek, the ever-present fields and mountains became drier and when we finally left the steppes and arrived in the massive valley of Issyk-Kul, the landscape looked more and more like a mountainous desert, camels included. During my time there, I never experienced Balykchy’s gale force delights but the wind’s presence seemed to hang over the town like a dragon in the mountains.
The modern-day Silk Road outside of Balykchy.
5 comments 1 November 2009
Adapting to Armenia (..still?)
By Brian Kelly, KF9, Armenia
So after being in Armenia for almost two weeks, I have to say the introduction was a little tougher than imagined. As a preface, I don’t speak Armenian and I don’t speak Russian, both of which are the primary languages used here. English is everywhere at my MFI, but not too present elsewhere, other than the really western-style restaurants and cafes. So adapting to a new alphabet has been a challenge, as I see this foreign script all over a menu, and then a bunch of numbers. Then I point at something, similar to google’s “I’m feeling lucky” function, and hope for the best. Street signs exist about 50% of the time (so I feel you Victoria), and when they do, about 50% of the time the street name is recognizable. Those are quickly diminishing odds right there.
What I’ve found is the simplest transactions can have me looking like a complete fool. (more…)
13 comments 25 October 2009
Добро пожаловать, граф Картошка! Jagaimo-san, Irasshai! ジャガイモさん、いらっしゃい！Welcome Mr Potato!
By Rob Packer, KF9 Kyrgyzstan
Inter-Cultural Exchanges in Kyrgyzstan
The words ikebana and prazdnik started spreading around the offices of Mol Bulak Finance, my MFI last week. Prazdnik was the easy part: it means holiday, festival or party in Russian, but the word ikebana was new to me. My first thought was “That word sounds a lot like the Japanese art of flower arrangement!” and then decided it didn’t really sound all that Russian, and used my limited knowledge of Kyrgyz (eki means two) to convince myself it must be Kyrgyz. When I asked I was met with shocked expressions and told it really was the Japanese word and that on Thursday flowers would be arranged, or lunch prepared.
8 comments 21 October 2009
excerpts pertaining to M
by Jane Lim, KF9 Mongolia
notable quotes from recent reads…
“Ulaanbaatar is possibly the coldest capital city in the world.“
- Michael Kohn, Lonely Planet Mongolia, p14
as a testament to the point above, it snowed on wednesday for the first time since summer… and it’s only early october.
“The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches… Their debate ranged back and forth… No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.”
– Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, p172-173
absolutely hilarious stuff.
7 comments 17 October 2009
The place between Russia and China
by Jane Lim, KF9, Mongolia
here’s where i’m at:
i wanted to write a before and after just so you can hear my drawn breath of anticipation / trepidation in between…
before: 9:30am EST on Friday, Oct 9th
i realize no one knows a lot about Mongolia… therefore i can make up absolutely anything and people will believe me. haha
case in point. (some of the following are actually true)
- there is a mongolian mythical creature called the Mongolian Death Worm which is purportedly found in the Gobi Desert, grows up to 5 ft long, and spews sulfuric acid which makes it deadly to men
- Genghis Khan’s father wasn’t his mother’s first husband
- mongolians historically have been nomads, and hence do not farm; therefore amongst many other things their vegetables are made-in-china
- there is another mongolian mythical creature in the Kharyagas lake which is roughly equivalent to the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland
- there is a Louis Vuitton store in the capital
- there still exists barter trade in Mongolia. I am for instance, trying to use xx units of xxx as currency. (am not revealing exactly what because i don’t want it to devalue. j/k)
turning to more mundane matters, in the next 35 hours starting at 4:30pm EST i will take 3 flights, have 2 layovers, be in 4 airports (Boston>LA>Seoul>Mongolia), before arriving in Ulaanbataar.
hopefully it’ll go like clockwork.
after: roughly 3pm on Sunday, October 11th (Mongolian time is exactly 12 hours ahead of EST)
Landing in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
time to be a Kiva fellow.
8 comments 12 October 2009
A Sunday outing, MFI-style
By Rob Packer, KF9 (Kyrgyzstan)
I feel it’s almost become a cliché to write about the inspiring professionalism and overwhelming dedication of MFI staff on these pages. I’ve now been at my Kyrgyz MFI, Mol Bulak Finance, for a week and have now seen where the clichés come from: reality. As if to drive the point home, MBG’s indefatigable Credit Manager, Renat was waiting outside my apartment at 9am on a sunny, but cold October morning to visit borrowers in and around Kara-Balta, Kyrgyzstan.
The view from Bishkek
The road out of Bishkek was my first trip outside of the capital within Kyrgyzstan after my night-time journey from the airport into town. Our route out took us past Osh Bazaar, one of Bishkek’s largest, and Kyrgyzstan’s largest used car market, which is a phenomenon I hope to write about in a later blog. Along our route thousands of kilometres of flat Kazakh Steppe and West Siberian Plain crashed spectacularly into the snow-capped Toblerone blocks of the Alatau Mountains, the advance guard of the Himalayas, which rise 3500 metres within the space of 50 km. (more…)
10 comments 11 October 2009
Ready or Not, Here We Come…
By Brian Kelly, KF9, Armenia
“Life definitely just got a whole lot better.” A simple few words, but ones that perfectly represent where I stand a week after completing training for the Kiva Fellows program. Said by fellow KF9 Alana, this statement resonated with me as we headed to our graduation dinner. 49 of us had just completed a long week of training in all things Kiva, and in these short 5 days I realized how lucky I was to be a member of this 9th class of Kiva Fellows.
Fall 2009's must have accessory: KF9 Digital Belt Buckle
Last week’s training was overwhelming to say the least – the community and caliber of relationships I established was completely unpredicted. (more…)
15 comments 3 October 2009
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