Backdating – over Halloween and All Saint’s Day last year I took advantage of the long three-day weekend to meet up with Kiva Fellow/compatriot in the Philippines Ed Coambs, and we proceeded to have a good time in Cebu. My overall impression of Cebu was otherworldly – especially in comparison to Cagayan de Oro, where I had been living. There weren’t many beautiful old stone churches in Cagayan like the Basilica of Santo Niño.
Complete with many landmarks commemorating the landing (and death) of the great European explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the weighty layers of history made themselves felt as I walked through the streets of Cebu. In a way Cebu is like a mash-up of Boston, for the history, and Miami, for the beautiful beaches nearby and modern amenities – including the biggest SM City mall in the Philippines, as my HSPFI co-workers informed me. You really can’t ask for any better than that.
Three weeks ago on our way back from HSPFI’s Valencia Branch, I handed my camera to Corroi, HSPFI’s Kiva Coordinator. She had been telling me all sorts of stories about Bukidnon province (which was her home), and because our departure from the Valencia office was delayed we couldn’t do some of the sightseeing in Bukidnon that she had originally planned. So I asked her to take some pictures of Bukidnon as our bus rumbled its way back to Cagayan de Oro. This turned out to be an inspired move as she took tons of awesome landscape photos, which I hadn’t done as good a job of documenting. And they were kinda artsy to boot, because of the movement blur and interesting lighting from our bus window.
Imagine you’re a loan officer who’s working for one of Kiva’s partner MFIs. You’ve been traveling around the field, collecting repayments from quite a few clients over the course of the day. It’s getting late, and you’ve amassed a huge amount of cash – the equivalent of a few months’ worth of income for locals. As the sun begins to set, you realize you’re still at least an hour away from the office – an hour’s worth of travel on your motorcycle, over rough roads that are poorly (if at all) lit. What do you think could happen next?
Having read Meg’s excellent blog post “Bad Roads, Interest Rates, and MFI Sustainability” and the ensuing comments from Kiva lenders, I admit that I was rather baffled. Particularly by comments that varied upon the theme of: “In the U.S. you can get loans for ~8%! You can get credit for 18% interest, which we find high and oppressive! So how can MFIs charge 36% interest rates on loans to their poor clients, it is usurious, it can’t be justified…” so on and so forth.
I believe that if you were to plunk a U.S. bank into a developing country with limited infrastructure, where most clients don’t have ready access to the internet that lets them transfer money from one bank account to another with the click of a mouse, where you have to ask employees to constantly risk their personal safety by carrying huge amounts of cash over uncertain roads and territories, those banks would not be charging 8% interest or even 18% interest, but a much, much higher rate.
Still not convinced? Let’s try a quick breakdown of some actual numbers -
I was just two days off the plane and back in the Philippines when I heard that HSPFI’s 2009 Q4 Project Officers Meeting would be taking place the next day. I really wanted to make something for the POs as a small token of thanks, so I threw a video together and showed it the next day to whoops and cheers. I actually think this is the best Kiva/HSPFI video that I’ve edited to-date, so I was really glad to see it well-received.
A bit of context – the first part of the video is mostly made up of footage from the HSPFI 2009 Staff Christmas Party. The day kicked off with gift exchanges and team-building/general bonding activities at a nearby resort; the night activities took place in the HSPFI office and consisted of a big delicious dinner and the HSPFI staff dance competition (and videoke/impromptu dancing). Having seen how hard HSPFI staff works on a regular basis, it was really cool to see the organization give back to dedicated staff members on the ground with a kickass Christmas celebration.
(Video Background Music: Allison Crowe – “Immersed” and “Midnight”, available on Jamendo.com)
Other footage used in the video were taken from the 2009 Q3 HSPFI POs Meeting & After-Party; Iligan Branch’s 15th Anniversary and 2009 Client Christmas Party; and Gingoog Branch’s 2009 Client Christmas Party. I also threw in some of my favorite photos from various branch visits/field travels with awesome HSPFI POs.
If you follow me via @Anecdoted on Twitter, you’ll notice that I share quite a few articles criticizing microfinance, far more than ones that praise. Despite this evidence to the contrary, I do believe that microfinance “works” – but not in the “silver bullet” transformative way that most people often associate with microfinance and poverty alleviation.
As a Kiva Fellow, I’ve seen the successes. I’ve visited businesses and interviewed clients who have succeeded because of microfinance. These borrowers were able to grow their businesses that not only provide the owners with a comfortable living, but also provide additional livelihoods for hired employees. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Esther Duflo of M.I.T, and Dean Karlan of Yale wrote in their New York Times op-ed “The Role of Microfinance,” microcredit is generally viewed as either “transformative” successes, or “ruinous” failures. Having seen the former, I believe that much of the latter is caused by over-high expectations – that poor people all over the world would be lifted out of poverty through lending. When recent research failed to support this concept of global poverty alleviation, people started to lose faith in microfinance.
I guess it was just a matter of time before I did the obligatory food post about all the interesting dishes that I’ve been trying in the Philippines. Unfortunately what prompted me to type up this post was a string of eating mishaps, of sorts. On Tuesday a nearby barangay (or village) had a fiesta in celebration of its patron saint. As my co-worker informed me, this fiesta was for the Immaculate Conception, celebrating “the conception of the Virgin Mary without any stain of original sin.” Which was a tad hard for me to wrap my mind around initially because it’s celebrating an event as opposed to an actual saint, but I guess this barangay fiesta is the local equivalent of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
At any decent celebration, party, or fiesta in the Philippines there will always be lechon baboy, or roasted pig. The first time I had it was in Cebu, where it’s a local specialty. I had met up with fellow KF9er Ed Coambs one weekend and made a point to try out lechon baboy, since all my HSPFI co-workers kept telling me that Cebu has the best lechon baboy in the Philippines. We ended up getting a tame, chopped-up version in a restaurant recommended on Wikitravel. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. I much preferred lechon manok, or roasted chicken. And to be honest, on that Cebu trip Ed and I gravitated towards American comfort foods. Like McDonald’s and pancakes.
Every time I come back from the field, I’m weighed down by videos, photos, barely legible notebook scribbles. Stories from Kiva borrowers, the good and the bad. As I turn these stories into journals I try to imagine what it would be like to be a Kiva lender on the other side, receiving an update on the Kiva borrower that they chose to fund. There’s a lot of joy in sharing the good, the success stories, a cause for celebration. Why we’re proud to be lending through Kiva. But what about the bad, stories of something gone awry? How does it feel, as a lender, to receive those updates?
What do Kiva lenders expect to hear from Kiva borrowers?
The world has been abuzz with Monday’s news of the election “massacre” in Maguindanao, Mindanao. About 50 lawyers, journalists and relatives of local politicians were abducted and brutally killed because of their affiliation with an opposition politician. This horrific event is being followed closely by the international media, including the New York Times and CNN, because it made Monday “the deadliest single day for journalists anywhere in the world” and was also “the worst politically motivated violence in the Philippines’ recent history.” The U.S. Embassy in Manila issued a travel alert on Wednesday as a result, because of “heightened tensions” and “significant military presence” in Maguindanao.
Ironically, while news of the Monday killings shocked the world, it hasn’t physically affected people here in Northern Mindanao quite as much as another news event which, in contrast, made just a small blip among international media outlets – tropical depression Urduja, which hit the area on Tuesday and caused flooding and landslides in Northern Mindanao. (Incidentally, no U.S. Embassy alert on the tropical storm thus far. Not one that I’ve received, anyways.)
The water had a bit abated by Wednesday morning, but across the street from the office people were wading in water up to their hips. A HSPFI colleague said the traffic island was completely flooded over when he looked outside at 3AM.
It’s been a few weeks since my visit, but I simply loved Camiguin – a beautiful place filled with interesting people and things.
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