Notes from: April 5, 2012

I felt very much alive today.  This was largely due to feeling like I have been chased by a running grave.    I had planned to go out with the loan officer from Opportunity International today to visit four trust groups whose members had each received a small loan for their businesses.  I got up thankful that we were going by car and not bodas’ because there was a passionate rainfall last night and the roads would be like slip and slides.  Riding on the back of a boda strikes me as a real crapshoot.  It’s one of those things you do where you literally put your life into someone’s hands.  In most cases the driver is wearing a winter jacket, flip flops, no helmet, no eyewear, and girded with pure fearlessness.

So I was glad that the day before I was told that we’d be going via taxi which means a car.  I meet the loan officer at 8am and we set out exiting the front doors of Opportunity Bank in Jinja to a patiently waiting boda driver.  Not having any idea what we were doing, where we were going, or how far I agreed to be the third on the back of the boda thinking maybe we were going a short distance.  I quickly ascertained that we were indeed going the whole day on a single boda from village to village with each one being 10-20 km apart.  It was the boda driver in front, then the loan officer for Opportunity International in the middle, and me in the rear.  Soon we were taking small rocky paths, not roads, up and down hills, over railway bridges, all the while hitting patches of mud and puddles the size of small ponds.  Sometimes the back tire would begin to slide and the three of us would instinctively put our feet down to bounce us back upright.  This is when I began to feel alive.  Life seems to come into sharper focus when you figure that at any moment you might be hurtling over a cliff on the back of a loan officer.  I began to send messages up to the driver (Abu) letting him know that if we returned home alive I’d make it worth his while.    

We made it out of the treacherous cow path rock and slide section and were now on a dirt road which before this I would have said was hazardous but by this point I was grateful for anything that resembled a road.  Relief must have come off me like steam because the loan officer mentioned that he was worried about me there for a bit.  It didn’t seem to bother him much he was busy answering his phone, as was the boda driver.  I clutched the rack on the back of the bike trying to find the best grip for when we spill and set up our inevitable yard sale in a sugarcane ditch somewhere.  Incidentally, I am realizing now as I write this that while being on the back had its privileges it did a number on my tailbone which must have taken a few whacks off the steel bar at the back of the seat.    

Then just when I was settling in and finding my rhythm the loan officer reached into his left rear pocket.  Remember that to all fit you are jammed into the back of the guy in front of you leaving you with an intimate knowledge of him.  When the loan officer reached into his pocket to retrieve his handkerchief of course I felt every movement and my eyes went wide and round and fixed straight ahead, as if preparing to go somewhere else in my mind for a while.  The same thing happened not too long after when he was fishing in his other back pocket for his camera.  I began visualizing the boundary exercises that we do in group work with the men back in the recovery home thinking that an interpersonal boundary exercise would look much different in Africa.  Yet, fields of sugarcane whizzed by as we negotiated potholes, giant puddles and oncoming diesel trucks while traveling at a terrific clip.

We met some inspiring small business owners and watched as they policed themselves and kept each other accountable to make their weekly repayments.  There was one guy who took it on the chin for coming in for several weeks in a row defaulting on his loan.  He was, ‘playing games’ and the others were not happy.  They were threatening to come after him for his security deposit which was his boat.  After each tense moment it usually ended in some grinning as the easy going nature of Ugandans prevailed.  Some were doing exceptionally well.  Shop owners had shelves stocked full and were repaying their loans ahead of schedule and applying for larger amounts.  The industrious one’s really stood out and were usually chosen as the chairperson of the group due to their leadership, integrity and determination to get ahead.  The smaller loans were for 200 000 schillings which is equal to about 80 dollars.  The larger loans went up to a million schillings which is about 400 dollars.  There were shopkeepers, brick makers, farmers, tailors, fishermen, boda drivers, drug store owners, and many others receiving loans. 

this lady (standing) now owns this house, this business, and puts her son through university

this lady had next to no stock or income four months ago

the strongest trust group of the day showing their loan payments for the week

What struck me was the communal atmosphere of these loan trust groups and how they interacted when we met to watch them collect each others’ weekly payment.  Everyone knows everyone’s business, babies, goats were involved and even our boda driver seemed pretty instrumental in the proceedings.  He was filling out forms, organizing the members, and had a few words to say to the guy who was defaulting.  Every once in a while one of them would look to me as if I had some sort of influence over the loan process.  I had to tell one guy I had nothing to do with the interest rates and I was just happy that we made it to their village in one piece.  You know they’re talking about you when you hear the word ‘muzungu’ amidst the cacophony of otherwise indecipherable words.  When I hear this word I’d look up and one of them would inevitably start grinning. 

Some people bungie jump over the Nile River but getting on the back of a boda  is enough of an infusion of life for me.  Feeling the air rushing, the sky moving, passing banana trees, the whiff of diesel exhaust, burning charcoal, and children ever startled to see a muzungu in these parts.  I wouldn’t change a thing about this day.