Jambo Jambo everyone from Nairobi! Once again it has been a rather overcast week here in the highlands, but I have faith since we have had two sunny days this week! For all the Kenyans this weather is freezing, but as a Brit, its a normal English summer spent without sun and some rain, pretty standard. So this week has been quite exciting, lots of adventures to report, starting with another trip to Kayole slums outside of Nairobi on Tuesday. Most of the staff went, so it was rather a big day out for us all together, and we were interviewing some people for a project. I was surprisingly...
Continue Reading >>Clara Ajsoc
We’ve met a wide variety of women in the last couple of weeks, from Mayan women who speak no Spanish at all and who try to scrape together a living with some weaving and a pig, to fairly ordinary poor urban women who remind us a little more of home, except that to them $15 is what you have to come up with every month for the kid’s school payment.
Last week Nancy met Clara Ajsoc in the highland village of Santa Clara La Laguna. Clara used her Friendship Bridge loan to buy a calf, which she raised...
Continue Reading >>Jambo once again from cold Nairobi! I am going to start this blog talking about my trip to Kayole to visit some Kiva clients last Wednesday. Kayole is located about 30 minutes from downtown Nairobi, and is not really considered a slum, more of an ‘informal settlement’ whatever that really means. So we loaded up into the car and drove through the smoggy streets of the city. Driving through Kayole I was already struck about how different it was from Kiambiu-which is considered a real ‘slum’- Kayole had actual buildings, mostly flats, ambiguously piled on top of each...
Continue Reading >>Yesterday in Baku, sixteen Azerbaijanis from seven MFIs filled a small conference room for a class on writing business descriptions and success stories. They were craving training, not only on these critical elements of promoting their organizations, but also on writing in the English language. Among the attendees, employees from Kiva’s three Azerbaijani field partners were present: Murad and Jeyhun from NorMicro, Ulviyya from Komak, and Tamilla from AqroInvest.
The class was organized by Paul at ACDI|VOCA through...
Continue Reading >>Mother and daughter of a client
As we take photos and write down the stories of clients, they are almost always thrilled to see their picture on the display of our camera. But they often have no picture of themselves or their family, and sometimes come close to begging for one.
Well, we finally figured it out for the first time today. Yes, I know this is not that difficult a challenge, but it was progress for us. When we returned from the village to the nearest town, we found a photo printing place, printed out the...
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Hi, I’m Shannon from San Francisco, CA and I am a Fellow working with Kiva’s MFI partner, Hluvuku-Adsema, in Mozambique on the southeastern coast of Africa. The country is probably best known for its magnificent beaches, but I will spend most of my time in the equally pretty interior.
After what amounted to 29 hours in flight and two more hours bumping along a dirt highway, I was happy to arrive at Hluvuku’s headquarters in the small town of...
Wednesday I headed up to San Antonio, Solola, Guatemala. It was my second day doing interviews and photos to post profiles for Friendship Bridge.
Patti (the Friendship facilitator) and I hopped into the taxi (really the back of a pickup). We snaked our way along the shore and up the side of a mountain — the view was incredible. As I looked across the emerald lake toward the towering volcanoes, I wondered how such a beautiful place could house such incredible poverty.
All day I sat with the Mayan women in...
Continue Reading >>Well I have been here for over a month now and have a little less than a month left. I can’t believe so much time has passed already. Next week I will be taking some time off from my Fellow duties to visit Tanzania with some family. Then I return to Nakuru for a week. After that I will travel to Eb-F branch offices in Mombasa and Nairobi.
So it’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s going to be easiest to go with the bullet/list format I went with in my last entry. It’ll be a mix of recapping certain days/events and just random thoughts/...
Continue Reading >>Clara in Santa Clara La Laguna
Hello to all of you from Mazatenango, Guatemala. We wanted to introduce ourselves – We’re Randy Fay and Nancy Lewis, and we’ve just started helping to post clients from Friendship Bridge. We’re in the middle of an epic bicycle trek from the north of Canada to the bottom of South America – you’re invited to follow us on our blog at hobobiker.com. But we’re thankful and excited to be able to spend a time here in Guatemala as Kiva Fellows helping to post...
Continue Reading >>Continuing on from my last blog, I believe I was talking about my adventures last Wednesday, which would have been July 11th. Firstly, one thing I would like to discuss was my bus ride that morning. I waited for 45 minutes to get on a bus, because they were all full. So imagine my delight when FINALLY a bus let me on! I sat in the last row of the bus, and settled into the quick 10-minute journey to ANK. Upon reaching the hospital stop though, this seemingly smooth bus ride turned into a roller coaster at Disneyworld, as the bus was pulling through the bus stop I was being...
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