Wednesday

We would visit every women’s group once a week to see how they were doing, to collect their loan repayments and sometimes give them business training. The Wednesday group lived on the other side of town than the Tuesday groups. Only three out of around ten women showed up the first time we visited this group. They were all claiming sickness, but this happened quite often. It didn’t seem like they were all that serious about the loans since they didn’t even show up to the weekly meetings. Five women had their last payment for their second loan, only one of them showed up. We did a post-loan interview with her, it was nice to hear how it went for this woman with her loan and what she used it for. It seemed like it had been really helpful to her, all the training also seemed to have helped her. The next time we did the last four interviews; one of them bought a cow, a male one, that hasn’t brought her any income yet, so she used her other businesses to pay for the loan, but when she sells it she will get 900,000 tsh. Another sells beans in Nairobi, yet another has been sick so she didn’t really do all that much.

The last five women finished their loans some time later, only one showed up, her business was that she makes a nutritious porridge and she was making a lot of money on it, but she needs to expand her business as she was able to make 100 kg a month as it is, but there is a demand for 200 kg. later we did the last post-loan interviews and it is incredible how big the gap is between some of the women, one had 300 chickens that produce a lot of eggs for her to sell, so she turns over a big income, another who sells solar power and something else and also gets a big income, but then there was one who owns a shop, that has very little income. They have all gotten the same amount of loans, but they use it so differently.