On this first day in the field I went to meetings of two different village banks, ie. groups of 15-30 local entrepreneurs who have received a jointly-liable loan to fund their productive micro-businesses…. That definition sounds absurdly bland and clinical. What I mean to say is that I met the most unbelievably inspiring, industrious, resilient, joyful people.
Along the path to the first meeting, I met Sayari. She’s five. She also has shoes, goes to school, and lives next door to Cecelia the chairwoman of the Atpatsa village bank. Broken conversation regressed to hand signs due to the constant interruption by passing chickens and goats. Then she reached home, and I reached the meeting. The Atpatsa ladies are all amazing; gathering each week to compile their loan payments and collective savings, and simultaneously commiserating about the slow market today, passing around babies, and chattering about new investment ideas- Chisomo wants a hanging scale for her fruit stand.
To the market for meeting number 2… Loved the paths through the stalls and the collective bustle about the place. But the best part of all is how the market smells! Roasting peanuts and corn still in the husk, chili powder and spices, dried fish, chips frying in oil with some other interesting fried-doughnut-cakes, ripe bananas, and the usual kitchen fire. Incredible.
Another good village bank. While laughing along at my silly, infantile Chichewa as I helped them with their calculations its was easy to forget how truly poor and neglected these people are. But one look around and I realized we were lounging on bales of straw bundled as broom brushes in a market storeroom, and that my pocket money for lunch and the minibus ride back to town was three times the weekly payment of the man smiling next to me. People, this is microfinance.
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