Microfinance in pictures

After over a year with Unitus, I finally had the opportunity to see some microfinance in action last month and I thought I'd take the chance to give a quick explanation and post some pictures of my visit to a center meeting. Broadly, microfinance is financial services offered to the poor. These can include credit, savings, insurance, remittances, and other products. What people usually think of when they hear "microfinance" (and what Muhammad Yunus is famous for) is essentially a small, short-term business loan offered to a very poor woman. The typical microfinance client is too poor to secure a loan with collateral so she joins a group of five or so women, all of whom receive loans from the same MFI (microfinance institution) at the same time. While money is received and repaid individually, no woman in the group can receive a second loan until she AND her group members have paid back their loans. This innovative lending methodology has resulted in repayment rates that are much higher than those found at traditional banks. The women use their loan capital to purchase the supplies or equipment or workspace they need to engage in some type of business. One might purchase chickens with the upfront money, and then sell the eggs to generate ongoing revenue and pay back her loan. Another might invest in cooking equipment so that she can sell food on the street. The possibilities are endless. In my opinion, microfinance is revolutionary because it challenges the idea that the poor can't be trusted with money, or need to be retrained. Poor people have many revenue-generating skills and money management skills - they simply lack collateral and access to capital. Many MFIs lend exclusively to women because repayment rates tend to be higher, and the social impact tends to be greater. A greater percentage of a woman's profits will go towards things - such as education - that benefit her family far into the future.

This center meeting was held about 45 minutes away from the city center, in one of Bangalore's large stretches of slums. These women were sitting on the floor of a member's home with many of their children crowded around the doorway.

Every woman had a yellow book (like the one that the woman in the blue sari is holding) in which they record their loan repayments and contributions to their savings accounts. They proudly showed the books to me and I observed that the average savings deposit was 50 rupees (or a little over one US dollar).

The weekly or bi-weekly center meeting is a chance for women to make loan payments, connect with the other members of their group, and ask any questions or talk about problems they were having. In general, they were chatty and seemed happy to be there. I kept getting distracted by their beautiful children, however.
Here are some scenes from their neighborhood. Some women who receive microloans become incense rollers.
The slums are filthy, filthy, filthy, and CROWDED, but not entirely depressing places to be. There were bright colors and beautiful, friendly children everywhere.

Betcha never seen...

A bloody, severed cow head,

a nun in safety goggles using a weed-whacker,

a man with about forty tin pots on the back of his two-wheeler,

Or, well...enough said.

Just a hint of things to come...

Yesterday I ran in a half-marathon on a commune in South India under a fake name. Ha! I've always wanted to start a story that way. It actually happens to be true, though. I owe you all many updates, and I will catch up, but here's a little something for starters. That's me, Benazir Muthubuthuamanarajan (not quite sure on the spelling of my last name).

Cows on the Beach

Is that weird? I can't tell anymore...

I took an impromptu weekend jaunt to Gokarna, a tiny town on India's western coast. Gokarna is known for two things - fabulous beaches and really holy temples. The temples are so holy, in fact, that I wasn't allowed inside them, and was forced to spend all my time on the beach. Rough.

Anyway, Gokarna (or "cow's ear") is so-called because Hindus believe that Lord Shiva emerged from the ear of a cow there. There's a pretty great story about the history of Gokarna. Ready? Hindu gods attained immortality by worshipping a divine lingam (uh...phallus) that belonged to Lord Shiva. A king, Ravana, wanted said immortality so he approached Shiva and asked him for the lingam. Shiva said, fine, you can have my penis statue but DON'T PUT IT ON THE GROUND. I'll give you one guess what happened: Yep, long story short, Ravana was tricked by some other gods with ulterior motives, and the lingam ended up on the ground. Ravana tried to lift the lingam, but to no avail. It remained rooted to the ground and the Mahabaleshwar Temple was constructed around it. Like I said, I wasn't allowed inside, but here's what the outside looked like.

What I DID do was spend about 48 hours straight on the beach. Since my parents believe that family reunions in Utah are the funnest vacations ever, I'd never been to a tropical beach before and it was everything the Hawaiian Tropic commercials make it out to be - azure sky, palm trees, people with cameras in my face ALL DAY LONG. "Madam, one picture?" It's a little surreal to think about how many random photo albums in India I'm in.

The beach I spent the most time at is called Om Beach, named because it looks like an inverted "om" sign.

There was a whole class full of kids in pink uniforms that came with their teachers to play at the beach...

Some children hanging out in front of their house on the edge of town...


There are people whose job it is to scale palm trees - unaided - and harvest coconuts and palm oil. As I was walking along, I heard one such man yelling in the trees...

Okay, I think that's about it. Sorry to post so much at once. In parting I would only say, YOU SHOULD COME TO INDIA. Seriously. It's amazing. And if you come in the next year or so I'll be your tour guide!

Christmas in India

Thanks to all for your happy Christmas wishes. I had a great holiday here in India. I missed things, of course (like family and the Messiah sing-a-long and Grandma's chocolate mint brownies [that I would have eaten this year since I'm not vegan anymore!!!]), but I think this will truly go down as one of my best Christmases. It was refreshingly uncommercial (except for the creepy skinny Santa in a pale-faced mask at the bank), and, as it is not widely observed here, everyone that did celebrate Christmas seemed to do so with a closer eye on the true significance of the holiday. I participated in a hilarious Christmas program at church, went to midnight mass at an Anglican church, spent time with friends, and was fed more food than I have ever eaten in a 24 hour period. I think I'll have South Indian food every Christmas from now on to remind me of the hospitality and generosity I was shown by the wonderful people here. (Mom, I know you always have tamales on Christmas; can we have tamales AND masala dosa next year?)

I know I have a pretty mixed audience on this blog, but I'm hoping you'll indulge me in a bit of reflection about what being in India for Christmas meant to me spiritually. You can skip to the pictures if you're not interested.

I've always loved the Biblical Nativity story but somehow being in a poor, dusty, hot country on Christmas gave me a new appreciation for some of the details of the story. For example, did you know it is 97 km (60 miles) from Nazareth to Bethlehem - the distance that Joseph and Mary traveled to pay taxes in the final stages of Mary's pregnancy? To take a BUS on the rocky, dusty, buggy roads here can be uncomfortable; I can't imagine what it would have been like on foot or by animal on the primitive roads that existed two thousand years ago. And speaking of animals? They stink. A lot. The whole city smells awful, partly because there are cows (and dogs and goats and chickens and cats and camels and enormous rats) roaming around as they please, pooping wherever they feel like it. To give birth among a bunch of them and their poop? Gross. By the way, living in a place with breathtaking economic inequalities, it's easy to observe that money makes things happen. If you can pay you can get what you want because people with less money than you will get it for you. That Joseph and Mary were relegated to a stable speaks not ONLY to the fact that there was no room in the inn, but also that they were poor. If they had had enough money, they could have gotten whatever they needed. That's just the way it works when some people have money and some people don't. Lastly, I was walking home at dusk one night last week and observed a number of destitute families leaving the construction sites at which they work as day laborers, headed for the makeshift shacks along the side of the road in which they sleep at night. Whole families were in transit, weary moms clutching babies, old men and women carrying heavy tools, filthy children (their dirty faces belying the fact that they were not in school but shoveling sand all day), and men that looked like they were too tired to take another step. The thought hit me that these families - poor, dark-skinned, tired, shuffled from place to place - probably look a lot like Joseph & Mary's young family looked, on the run in the Middle East for some number of years with at least one small child in tow. Anyway, it was interesting to have a new look at a story that tends to get sanitized, whether through religious idealism or irreligious disinterest in the origins of the holiday.

Okay, that's enough pontificating for now. Here are some photos of our Christmas program.

This is Elder Janga, as Jesus, and Bobby (in my bathrobe), as the callous sinner who rejects the message that the shepherds offer and then, after having been blinded in a horrible accident, meets Jesus thirty years later, repents and is healed. What, you don't remember that part of the Bible? That's probably because they added it. Anyway, it seems like the TYPE of thing Jesus would do, right? :)

None of my pictures from that night turned out very well, so excuse the poor quality, but this is Aishwarya, an 11-year old girl whose family I joined for dinner #1 on Christmas Day.

These people are roughly my age; here they are performing a little "lessons & carols" (I was at the piano). From left to right is Deepa, Saritha, Chennaswami, Mega, Prebhu, Manuel, Charles, and Pinto.

I cannot get over how beautiful Indian people are. These teenaged girls sang a couple of Christmas songs during the program. (I teach piano lessons to the one on the right, Subashini.)

Scrabble will always be my favorite sport

I'm a little behind, folks. Let's see if I can't catch you up on some noteworthy moments from December. There was a cricket match in Bangalore that I attended with some friends. In case you know as little about cricket as I did, it is a little like baseball except that (and you thought a baseball game was long...) one game lasts for FIVE DAYS and your ticket comes with lunch and tea coupons, a fact which amused me to no end. I went to the first few hours of the first day of the match between India and Pakistan. Given that the contenders were India and Pakistan I was halfway hoping for a good riot to spice things up, but no such luck*. We sat on plastic chairs and waved signs and watched the game and yelled for India, and that was pretty much it. Oh, and we got on television. And I'm pretty sure India won.

*For a little primer on Indo-Pakistani relations, and why I was hoping for a riot**, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_relations.

**I wasn't really hoping for a riot. Riots are bad.

This is what the field looks like...

This is an infamous Pakistani fan who travels to all the team's games...

This is my friend Lizzie and I holding up the witty sign (made by Abhilash) that got us on television...

And these are the true India fans, Shash and Abhilash...

Why you shouldn't take the elevator in a developing country

Here's a funny thing about Bangalore. It's modernizing rapidly, but there are still so many old customs that you see amusing things like a horse-drawn cart cutting off a luxury car, or a Buddhist monk in saffron robes walking down the sidewalk talking on his cell phone. (I have to do a better job of carrying my camera around...sorry.) Or, you can find some convenient modern devices and technologies but then the infrastructure isn't reliable enough to keep them working so you end up with things like daily power outages, or horrible traffic jams because a lot of people can afford cars now but the government hasn't caught up with good roads or parking. OR your apartment building conveniently installs an elevator and then it breaks down and you get stuck in it. That is what happened today.

I never take the elevator, right? I live on the fourth floor and I like the bit of extra exercise. Today, however, I had heavy bags and the stairs were all slick because it rained so I did. Anyway, I'm not sure if the power went out or the elevator just up and died, but all of a sudden it stopped between the second and third floors. It wasn't that far; I knew I could safely jump provided I could get the door open, but the door wasn't budging. So I knocked and banged and yelled for a while, but no one came. Then I tried kicking the door down and that didn't work either. So then I called the 1-800 number posted in case of "elevator breakages", but it turned out to be more like a 1-900 number if you catch my drift. So then I sat there quietly and tried to think of a new plan and in the meantime called my parents just to say hello and laugh at the absurdity of the situation. I accidentally called too late, though, and woke my dad up, and we had the following conversation.

Anna: Hi Dad.
Dad: (groggy) Hi sweetie.
Anna: Oh oops, I called you too late, huh? Sorry about that.
Dad: It's okay.
Anna: I'm stuck in an elevator.
Dad: That's nice. I'm going to go back to bed now.

*Click*

So then I sat there quietly some more and then FINALLY noticed this little lever jammed between the elevator and the door way up high. Praying that it was the "open the door" lever, not the "release the elevator and send it plummeting down to the basement" lever, I gingerly pulled it and was in luck. The door opened and I and my bags jumped down to the second floor and took the stairs the rest of the way up.

Moral of the story: Next time you're stuck in an elevator, don't call my dad. Just pull the lever.