Shereef’s Kiva Blog

Archive for September, 2009

This I did not foresee. Not one, but TWO incidents involving chickens…in a sack. Vocal chickens trying to escape their respective enclosures.

Between 4pm and 6pm EDPYME is the busiest. People come to solicit or repay loans, ask questions and tend to general business. Where I work upstairs, all the chairs are taken and people even stand on the steps right beside me while waiting to see a loan officer. On one of these busy afternoons all seemed normal. A low murmur of conversation and typing filled the warm sleepy room. Then, the clucking started.

Beneath the chair immediately to my right there was a rainbow colored bag made of woven plastics. Not only was it clucking, but twitching. I barely stifled laughter and could do nothing to prevent a look of utter amusement from spreading across my face. Then the chicken fell silent and still.

Most people in the waiting room are not sure who I am: an accountant, a government official, an American evaluator. And I generally sit in silence staring intently at my computer. So when my formal composure breaks, the borrowers immediately bristle in fear that I may think less of them and they will not get a loan. Normally, I respect the dynamic. In this case, it all went out the window.

After a few minutes the room was still full, but I looked over at the chair and noticed that the bag was gone. Same woman sitting above, same faces staring at me all around, but the chicken had escaped to my total bemusement.

A few days later Manuel (the Kiva Assistant) and I headed off to do some interviews for Kiva profiles. We normally take a colectivo (a collective taxi, but actually just some guys car waiting in a lot) and this morning was no different. When I sat in the back seat my foot grazed a bag on the floor belonging to the woman next to me.

And then all hell ALMOST broke loose. The bag’s top burst open and two teenage chickens tried to make a break for it through the colectivo. The women caught them by the neck and stuffed them back in. After a few minutes of struggle the defiant poultry submitted to their incarceration and I, once again, could not restrain my look of childlike joy.

Sadly I have no pictures to share but from now on I will keep my camera close at hand, constantly vigilant for the antics of live animals being unexpectedly stored in prosaic baggage.

Kiva’s stated mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. The statement, fraught with vague nuance, runs through my head as I do borrower visits and judgmentally examine their lives, homes and dreams. Specifically, I compare their circumstances to my own imagined definition of the poverty Kiva strives to alleviate – and the two do not necessarily coincide.

I have walked down the dusty desert streets of the towns surrounding Chiclayo, through the unpaved dirt that separates the run-down homes connected by a spider web of tenuous cables and wires. But as soon as I enter the home of a lender all the expectations and stereotypes shatter. In my mind, the poor do not own dining room furniture and flat screen TVs.

So, what if we succeed? What if we alleviate poverty? If everyone were to start accumulating limitless material wealth it would defy my other privileged belief in the need to shift to sustainable consumption practices. On the other hand though, it would be hypocritical at best to suggest that other people do not have the same right to consume as I do.

Time-out. The experience I had (see the pictures of Kiva borrower Cruz below) is by no means universal but definitely forces me to step out of my own prejudgments and adjust to reality. The whole question of, “is the goal [of development] to level the playing filed or to move to a new field,” is still premature, and built on a partially false conflation.

I do think that more wealth leads on one level to more stuff but not that much more. Strictly conflating levels of material accumulation with degree of poverty is an error. Poverty is more nuanced. Here in Peru, and in many countries, the distance that separates the middle class from the poor is minimal, but the distance between middle class and the rich stretches immeasurably.

My experience so far has led me to believe that instability is what defines poverty. The means by which people accumulate wealth are tenuous and lead them to make instant material decisions instead of more long-term savings – they do not feel secure in the long term. And that is one of the reasons I sincerely believe in the mission of organizations like Kiva and EDPYME Alternativa: they do not just provide loans and services, but re-enfranchise the marginalized who then begin to trust in circumstance and plan a better future for themselves and their children.

Please feel free to leave comments below – it would be great to see a discussion going on the pitfalls of understanding poverty and directing development.

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09.04.09 - what if we succeed?

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