Another Year

Things are speeding up here in Honduras; hence my lack of blog writing; my creative activities more on loan to work predicaments such as trying to find a way to get the informations guy here to give me a list of the clients so I can keep doing the survey I was assigned to do, but in the end the solution is less creative and more like first grade, tell the big-boss to get him to do it; others are connecting biblical principals to being a loan officer for weekly meetings with loan officers, not that hard I have discovered, as the job seems comparable to many jobs and situations that occurred in biblical times, such as being a shepherd or the parable of the talents ---biblical style micro-finance at its best. Another would be how to write a run-on sentence such as those I am encountering in the “Alquimista” by Paulo Coelo, oh look, I just did it.

Due to all these somewhat strange creative experiences I have been able to discover in Nueva Suyapa, and being offered a continued position here, I have decided to stay another year. I will continue to work with the Microfinance program; excited to pursue some of the many ideas Yoni, the boss of the microfinance program and I birthed after our two week infiltration of micro-finance at the Boulder Institute of Micro-Finance in Costa Rica, thanks to some string pulling by my dad, who works for the Institute. At which I was able to learn cool new economic Spanish terms that I didn’t always understand in English, like Rentabilidad – (covering your costs…ok I know what that means) and Cartera – Microfinance Portfolio (the Spanish of which I knew months before the English); and equations that ran on like my sentence, these classes with such equations brought me back to college math and economics classes in which I was also lost. At first I just tried to listen and stop my mind running during, as I do in my meditation efforts in the morning, and in the end gave up and started physically running and actually getting lost. What I got out of that particular presentation though, was that Bolivia is amazing at microfinance and due to its stellar performance was able to withstand an economic crash in the country: so, be aware and be like Bolivia during our worldwide economic crash.

Other sat through classes better understood were how to amp up the meetings with clients and provide lessons and training in health, self esteem, women’s empowerment, business management and financial literacy; how to run a more productive program; how to reach the poorest of the poor while still making money and a lot about tariffs and interests, oh wait, I didn’t understand that either, and yes, the class was in English, translated into Spanish.

My father was able to come and teach other terms to expectant loan officers such as Viabilidad – or easy – viability – which in English means making money. But, lesson learned, as when I was with a fellow loan officer friend at the business of her sister in law, she commented, “See, this business is viable.” Commenting on the apparent cash – flow, something she also learned in the class that was easliy floating through this business. In addition to teaching necessary tidbits to facilitators such as how to run effective meetings and prevent “morosidad” which is a cool Spanish term for having debt; it was just good to have him here and introduce him to my friends and community. Which he felt so comfortable in, that he decided to throw a surprise party for me, going out with a bang --- a Dora pinata to be exact, which apparently looked like me. Since he and I and you and me and the entire world are apparently connected on facebook, you are free to view these schannanigans on facebook, free of charge, only giving your internet soul to the multi-millionare social genuises who created the gimmick.

In response to all of this learning some things we have decided to focus on here at MCM, aka Genesis, are: continuing to implement training and incentives for facilitators and clients on issues such as described above; looking into and possibly implementing insurance and savings programs—by linking up to bigger MFI’s (Microfinance Institutions) who offer such programs to smaller MFI’s; starting up a program specifically for the poorest of the poor of Nueva Suyapa, giving small loans of around $50 and providing more intensive training in empowerment and financial literacy; and finally --- finishing the dragged out survey that I am conducting on the clients of the program.

All that to say: I am enjoying myself here, finding a lot of good work to do, and plan on doing it for at least another year. I also plan on posting another creative writing attempt soon. Thank you for reading.