Hey everyone! Life in Uganda has been great. I’m going to start off this post by telling you more about Five Talents.
We offer three loan products to the active poor in and around three cities/villages in Uganda: Kampala, Kasese and Kabale. The three loan products are group loans, individual business loans and individual salary loans. Group loans are the traditional microfinance loans you think of where borrowers form groups of five and all take out a loan together (around $50-$200 each) guaranteeing each other’s loans. We then organize these groups of five into larger clusters that elect a chairperson, treasurer and secretary. The clusters meet regularly to remind each other of payments due, discuss any difficulties people are having and ways to improve their business. Repayments are made to the cluster’s treasurer who then gives the money to Five Talents. These types of loans make up more than 80% of our portfolio.
Individual business loans are set up for persons who ‘graduate’ from the group loan model. So these are individuals that have grown their business to a point that they need a loan of $1,000 - $2,000 (typically too large for group members to guarantee). These borrowers will put up collateral and take an individual loan for working capital or purchasing large assets. Individual salary loans are typically used for home improvement or paying school fees. These loans are set up with the individual’s employer and part of the person’s monthly salary is sent directly to us as repayment.
I spent a couple days last week in the field with our loan officers in Kampala following up with current clients and training prospective clients. These people do all sorts or micro-businesses. Examples would be selling vegetables at local markets, selling second-hand clothes, transporting or selling charcoal, making clay bricks, running a local hair salon or running a general store. Sometimes our clients will be in several different parts of the value chain. For example, some of our clients sell bed frames, doors, chest of drawers, caskets and other finished wood products. Other clients will do the carpentry work for the bed posts, door designs, etc., while others store and resale timber that is shipped in from the forests in western Uganda, and used by the carpenters. Below are some pictures of our clients:
I am really enjoying work but there have been a few adjustments. Certain things you take for granted really slow down your ability to get things done here. For instance, internet has become a bit of a luxury. When it starts raining (which is every day) the internet and power typically go off. We have a generator but it’s not strong enough to run our wireless router so we typically have small windows of time with internet access.
Another example is simply getting around. The other day we had a 15 minute meeting that was roughly five miles from our office in a neighborhood called Namuwongo. We spent about thirty minutes grabbing a taxi (a van that operates like a bus) to the new taxi park in town. Most taxis go from a suburb area to one of the taxi parks (‘new’ or ‘old’) and then back out. Once we got to the new taxi park, we had to fight our way through hundreds of people to get to the sign for Namuwongo. From there we had to wait for the taxi to fill up (the taxis don't go until the van is completely full). After waiting about twenty minutes and there being only two other people, we decided to try the old taxi park. So we fought through a bunch of people to get to the old taxi park and waited another 15 minutes for the taxi at the old taxi park to fill up. Then because the traffic was so bad, the taxi driver tried to take another route. Except he got lost and ended up back tracking a couple times. We finally got to Namuwongo and decided to grab lunch which took about 45 minutes to an hour. Then we finally got to our destination but the guy we were supposed to meet was out of the country. However, we were able to meet with the director of the organization once he got back from lunch. So we waited for him, had our 15 minute conversation and then headed back to the office. On the way back it started raining pretty hard and then hailing so we had to pull over and wait it out. We finally got back to the office about five hours after leaving for the meeting.
In other news, I found a safe boda boda driver to take me to and from work (and anywhere else I need to go). His name is Sylvester, he kind of looks like Wesley Snipes and is a recreational kickboxer (a pretty good person to have around if I ever get into a tight spot). He spent an hour yesterday teaching me how to ride his boda boda:
Also, here are a couple more pictures of things that were crammed on the back of a boda. The first one, although tough to see, is of two guys and two goats:
I’ll post some more pictures of the city next time.
A couple weekends ago I went to Jinja (northeast of Kampala) with a few friends to go whitewater rafting on the Nile River. It was incredible. The rapids are grade 5 which are the largest rapids you can commercially raft. The water is much deeper in the Nile than you would find in Colorado so rocks don’t come into play when the raft flips, which happened about four or five times. Here are a few pictures of last rapid we went on:
After rafting, I went to Mbale (eastern Uganda near the border with Kenya) to see the CURE hospital that Sam Baguma works for. It was amazing to see the work they were doing at CURE. The hospital specializes in neurosurgery and mostly treats children that suffer from hydrocephalus (swelling of the brain caused by excess spinal fluid). Hydrocephalus is very prevalent in developing countries and is mostly caused by an infection within a month or two after the child is born (cases in developed countries are much more rare and are typically hereditary). Spinal fluid builds up in the brain after the infection causes a ventricle tube that acts as a drain to close up. The child’s head will swell to an enormous size (probably double the size of a normal head) and will cause brain damage and death if not treated relatively soon. The standard operation used worldwide to treat hydrocephalus involves the use of a shunt that stays in the patient their entire life (having to be replaced several times). CURE, however, pioneered the use of arthroscopic surgery to punch a hole in the closed ventricle tube, providing the patient with a permanent, shunt-less fix. Because CURE is able to treat close to 1,000 children a year, surgeons fly in from all over the world to learn the innovative surgery.
Below is picture of the hospital:
For the next two weeks, I am travelling out to Kasese and Kabale (southwestern Uganda) to visit our branch offices. I will try to get another post up once I get back.
Take care,
Tyler
