28 November 2011: A Day in the Life

I have realized that while blogging about my time here in South Africa I haven’t given a good glimpse into what a typical day is like for me. Part of the reason for this is that most of my days consist of the same activities and so to me seem unexceptional and unworthy of mention. When I only have a chance to write once a week I always feel more compelled to write about the things that stand out, the things I am learning about the culture and people around me, and what has been on my mind rather than exactly what I have been doing. So today I wanted to give you a glimpse into a day in the life….

I am now living about 2Ks up the road from the actual town of Tsomo in a village called Ntosini.

My Home

So now to get into town to do shopping, visit friends, or go to soccer, I must hitch a ride, but there is almost always transport available as long as I am sure not to leave town too late, which I shouldn’t do anyway. Ntosini is a very small village and I am actually staying in a gated group of flats/rooms that is located right on the main road and the actual village is behind us.

Thats Ntosini right in front with the start of Tsomo to the left

I am told it is safer than town, and it is nice having proper neighbors most of whom are schoolteachers. My room is very large and comfortable. It has a kitchen area with a sink and I have bought a hotplate to do my cooking and a bathroom with a shower. I have electricity (which I must by vouchers), running water, and a water heater if I need hot water. In Ntosini I have been befriended by some of the kids who are especially excited that a white person is staying in their location. There are a group of girls ages 9-12 that are always playing outside that never fail to greet me as I come back home and walk me to my door. There is also a group of boys around 14 years old that sometimes knock on my door to chat or to take me on hikes through the hills and mountains behind our village.

On a typical day I wake up in the mornings anywhere from 5am-7am and the sun is already up (it rises around 5, so i am usually awake around that time anyway). After getting ready I head into town to meet with one of my colleagues whom I will be working with that day. The time I must wake up all depends on when my first activity is and how long it will take me to get there. The centre meetings I usually attend can start anywhere between 8 and 9am and can be anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour away (usually the latter once all the travel time is factored in). At the centre meeting the groups of women (I have seen anywhere between 3 to 22 groups in a centre, each consisting of five women) come together biweekly to repay their loans, deposit money in their savings, and discuss issues surrounding their businesses. If I am not attending a centre meeting, I will either attend a preliminary or final group recognition, where the manager will ask potential clients a number of questions to make sure they understand how SEF operates and that they understand their responsibilities as clients, or a Participatory Wealth Ranking, where we hold a community meeting where 15 members of the community first map out the entire village, and then rank each household in the village in terms of wealth to determine who qualifies for our service.

A PWR

Mind you all these activities are done in Xhosa so I must rely on asking questions, my knowledge of SEF’s operations, and the extremely limited amount of Xhosa I have learned to understand what is going on. For the first month and half of being here I just observed these activities to get an idea of how SEF operates. Lately I have been working on a project where after the centre meetings I will take some women aside who are either on their first loan cycle or on five or more loan cycles to interview about how they spend their loans and what they think SEF could be doing better or should change. I usually attend two activities a day, the first as I said starting between 8-9am and the second around noon.

No one I work with here in Tsomo has a car, so we get around using the local taxi system or hitchhiking, which is how the majority of people travel here. On the main roads there are vans that run on specified routes between the larger towns. Then to get to the villages we either sit in the back of pickup truck taxis, are lucky enough to run into a car that is driving into the village that offers a ride, or walk sometimes very, very far.

I usually get back to Tsomo around 4 and then on Tue-Thurs I make my way down to the local soccer stadium to train. If there is no soccer, I will either find some friends just to hang around with in town or make it back to my room where my time will consist of reading, movie watching, and/or catching up on emails. I have been going to be early, around 9 or 10 because of waking up so early with the sun and the face that the sun sets around 7. These typical days are sprinkled with days where I will just stay at the office in Tsomo if there is some paperwork or work on the computer I must do, or where I will head into Butterworth, where our zonal office is, to meet with the other mangers in the Eastern Cape Zone.

The weekends usually consist of some sort of mixture of playing soccer, doing chores (i.e. hand washing laundry, or sweeping and mopping my floor that always gets dusty because of the cracks beneath and on the side of my windows and doors) watching soccer games at a friends house that has a television, visiting nearby towns with a friend that has a car, hanging out at one of the local bars, and more movie watching and reading. On Sunday mornings I take the 45 minutes ride into Butterworth to attend the only church around that is in both English and Xhosa.

While sometimes the work routine starts to feel somewhat monotonous, for the most part I am not bored. The activities I am doing might be the same, but each day I am going to new places and always witnessing, learning, and realizing new things. There are seven colleagues that work here in Tsomo (and they all speak pretty fluent English) so it has been fun going around with each of them, learning about their stories and family, and learning different aspects of the Xhosa culture in the conversations that spring up during our long periods of travel. Whenever I am afraid that I will have nothing to do one day something always seems to pop up.

It is hard to believe that this is the last week in November already. The 30th will mark the halfway point of my time in South Africa (that is if I don’t extend my internship here). In just three months I have experienced so many things. I have lived in 3 different towns (4 locations), I have met countless numbers of people, and have had so many unique experiences. I am excited to see what the next three months will have in store. Until Next Time…Salani Kakhule

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19 November 2011: Be Careful What You Wish For

The more I reflect about my experience here in South Africa, the more I realize that this is exactly the type of experience I wanted and wished for after finishing school. It is actually a bit crazy, and seems a bit beyond coincidence, how perfectly this experience has come together.

1. Working in South Africa: Ever since visiting Cape Town in the summer of 2010 I knew I wanted to try to return to South Africa if possible. I fell in love with the culture, the landscape, and the issues of social justice that are so prevalent here. In many of my classes I centered my research around South Africa, especially in my Social Entrepreneurship and Microfinance classes. Even other things during my time at Northeastern have pointed towards South Africa such as during my middler (3rd year) in my public speaking course when I was assigned the topic of Nelson Mandela and Apartheid as my final speech. Being able to work here is definitely a fulfillment of one of my goals and dreams and it is cool to be able to apply my academic work so directly.

2. Working in Microfinance: After studying microfinance in school I really wanted to be able to see first hand how microfinance operates and the impact it has on its clients. I wanted to see if in the longer term I should try to focus my career on microfinance or take a step back and look into some other interventions for economic development. During my job search, however, I did not by any means limit myself to only jobs in microfinance. I applied to only one other microfinance institution only to be told that I did not have enough experience for a full time position. I then found the paid internship posting for SEF and applied to that job and went through the interview process and actually did not get hired for that position, but was told that they would pass my resume on because they were hiring an intern in the operations department and it sounded more like the experience I was looking for. I then received an email a few days later saying I was hired for that operations position. I learned later that the man hiring for the operations job had called one of my references, my microfinance professor from school, and they ended up being from the same town.

This experience has definitely given me a lot of insight into the impact of microfinance. I am very grateful for the project I am conducting now which consists of interviewing clients from different centres trying to determine if they really spent their loan on their business or if they actually used some for personal spending, and also seeing if they have any suggestions for SEF to improve as an organization. Without me even asking almost all of these women end up talking about how SEF has changed their lives and how thankful they are for SEF. While it is great to see that SEF is having a positive impact on most clients there are still things that make me not completely sure microfinance is exactly what I want to focus on or at least find an different MFI with a slightly different mindset than SEF. First, I think it could have a lot more impact if it was a bit more holistic. SEF simply gives the women money and does not offer business or money management training. I would like to see microfinance coupled with more education to really empower these women. I am also struggling to figure out exactly how pro-poor SEF is. While it is having a positive impact, I think it might be able to have more impact. We are nearly completely financially sustainable and currently charge a 31% annual nominal interest rate (we used to charge 70% until regulations were put in place, and we now charge at about the maximum we can). While this interest rate is comparable to other microfinance institutions and is necessary in the beginning to even begin to cover operational costs, I talked to some of the management and they don’t see them lowering the interest rate just because they can. The reason I got was they want to improve their financial ratios and increase their possibilities for funding through commercial loans. The other side of the argument that I see is if these women are able to pay this high interest back, in the long term this will help SEF grow and reach more clients. So it’s the ongoing argument of which is better, for MFIs to help its clients get out of poverty as fast as possible, or reach as many clients as possible even if it takes them a bit longer to see positive impact in their lives. In the end it goes back to exactly what I learned in University, that microfinance is one of the tools in fighting poverty, it is not the solution. I am definitely seeing this now and being here has also peaked my interest in looking into small business development/investing (which is what South Africa really needs, jobs) or looking for other organizations with a more holistic view of fighting poverty.

3. Living Among The Poor: I distinctly remember having one conversation with my Mom and saying that I just wish I could take some time and live with the poor to understand the problems they face, which in turn would guide my future career decisions. Then after spending some time in Mexico City this summer I felt like it could be part of my calling to live amongst the poor as well. After getting this position at SEF, and even upon traveling to Limpopo to the head office for my first few weeks at SEF I did not think that this was going to be part of my experience here. SEF’s head offices are in a small but developed town, so if I had gotten any intern position other than the one I have I would have been there. Also there was only one intern in my position before me and he actually lived in East London, one of the more major cities in South Africa. SEF decided to move the next intern (me) closer to their offices here in the Eastern Cape, because while the regional manager has his office in East London he is rarely there because he is both in charge of this region and the Northwest Region (a plane ride away). Finding housing, however, proved to be difficult and the only place that they could find for me was here. And that is how I ended up in Tsomo, staying in the rural areas and living amongst the poor.

While as I have expressed in other posts this has not been easy, especially doing it alone, I am grateful for the experience and all I am learning. A lot of what I have seen has been eye opening and heartbreaking….                                                                                    Like learning that many people often live off meals consisting of only bread….                                                                                              Or, the fact that the  stalls that were built in town for people to sell their wares from have been abandoned and are now used for a drinking spot (as it is right across from one of the bars in town) and is full of broken glass and smells of urine….                               Or, even more heartbreaking are the lines I see at the banks at the end of the month in town. Lines that stretch for blocks, consisting mostly of old women from the villages who are collecting their old age grants, or child support grants and the sense of frustration I feel as I see the people that are supposed to be helping these women receive their grants taking their sweet time and joking around behind the counter while these women wait there all day….                                                                                                     Or, the fact that the bars and shops in town are filled with people in the beginning of the month, but as the month goes on they empty out, as people have blown all their money and must just wait and make due until the next paycheck (this also speaks to the need to training in personal financial management here)…..                                                                                                                               Or learning that many women or girls are not having children within relationships, or even because they want a child, but because they want/need the child support grant that will come with the child, and there are some who then neglect the child or try to pawn them off on family members but keep the grant….

But on the other hand there are other aspects of living amongst the poor and in a new culture that are beautiful ….                             Like the sense of sharing. When a person comes off the field for a soccer game they take off their cleats and give them to the person coming on because there are not usually enough to go around. Or when you go to the bar you do not order a single beer for yourself, you take turns ordering two large bottled beers, which are then shared amongst the group. Or whenever eating food, it is always shared with the people around you…….                                                                                                                                                      Or the tradition of when morning the death of someone you will place a button covered in black cloth on your chest for three months, then after that you will burn it, symbolizing the end of the morning period…..                                                                                Or the dancing to the bass and offbeat rhythms of South African house music that makes me jealous that I am not Xhosa…..         Or the courage of the boys looking forward to becoming men when they will be circumcised at 18 (OUCH! I would not be a man in the culture) and they must go out and live in a shack in the bush until they are healed….                                                                               Or the random breaking out into tradition Xhosa song/chants and dance just because…                                                                             It is these two sides, the heartbreaking and the beautiful, that attract me to living amongst the poor and in new cultures.

I guess what I have learned is that I really have to be careful what I wish for because someone up there seems to be granting me the desires of my heart. Until next time….Salani Kakhule

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12 November 2011: Cape Town

First, on a side note, yesterday was 11/11/11. Ever since I graduated high school I have seen the time 11:11 nearly everyday, even when clocks were wrong etc. I still don’t know why this happens but one of my slightly superstitious theories was that something out of the ordinary would happen on this day. I am happy to report that yesterday was just a normal day, and honestly I did not even know the date until late in the afternoon when I was helping a co-worker with some paperwork.

Anyway…. Last Tuesday I returned from my trip from Cape Town and am missing it already. I am not afraid to say that Cape Town is my favorite place I have visited in the world. The diversity of the people, the amazing landscape, and all of the different activities and places to explore make this a very unique place. I traveled by bus from where I am staying in the Eastern Cape to Cape Town, about a 19-hour drive each way, but it was well worth it. On my way there, as I saw Table Mountain breaking the cloudy horizon in the distance I immediately felt a smile creep across my face and a slight chill down my back. I liken the feeling to returning home after a long, long time away. It is strange a place can feel so much like home after just spending a month there two summers ago.

I met up with a few of the other interns from SEF who traveled there and we all stayed in a hostel together on Long Street in the heart of the city. During our stay we went to the beach (yes the beach, sorry for you people snowed in back home),

View of Lion's Head Mountain From the Beach

explored different areas of the city, and went to Mzoli’s, easily my favorite restaurant. It is a braii (barbeque) place in one of the townships that has become somewhat of a tourist attraction. Every Sunday there is a giant party, which spills out onto the township streets, with DJs and we estimated about 1500 people. Obviously you have to get there early to get a table, which we did at about 11am and stay all day until dark when it is suggested that the tourists leave. When you arrive you go to the butcher shop and purchase your choice of meet. You then bring it into the back of the shop and they braii the meet for you with their special sauce and you come back in a few hours to pick it up. My favorite part about the place is that you get to talk to so many people you would not normally be able to talk to in almost any other circumstance. You meet people from the townships, people from all over South Africa and Africa visiting, college students from the local universities, as well as locals just enjoying the party. I even ran into a friend from back in Springfield and met a few people from Boston there!…definitely didn’t expect that in the middle of a township in Cape Town.

On a more depressing note, I also had my first experience being robbed. On Saturday morning I was exhausted and we were coming back from a walk around the city and I decided to stop at an ATM. My friends waited outside and while I was in there a man approached me. I knew he was up to something funny, but in my tired state I just wanted to get my money and leave. The long and short of it is that he distracted me while another man must of seen me enter my PIN and stole my debit card, the security guard working there (which did a great job just letting this happen) was the one that informed me that the man took the card, I just thought the machine had eaten it, and that they have been doing that a lot lately. Thankfully I am okay but now I am trying to report the fraudulent charges from here in South Africa which is much easier said than done. I spent the rest of that afternoon at the Cape Town police station reporting my first crime, not exactly what I wanted to be doing, but a new experience nonetheless.

The day turned around though that night when I was able to meet up with some of the friends I had made on the trip two summers ago from the townships around Cape Town that I studied and worked with. It was great seeing them, catching up, and hearing how well they are all doing. A number of them could not attend the mini-reunion because they are abroad in Switzerland and Canada and nearly everyone else I talked to was working, some at local banks and one even at JP Morgan. That is no small feat in South Africa where the unemployment rate for people our age is over 50%. They are definitely a special group of people and their warmness and is fun loving spirit is infectious. We grabbed dinner together and stayed out till about 4am dancing.

The Other Interns and an Old Friend

While the trip wasn’t exactly restful with so much travel time, late nights, and packed days, it was a much-needed break. One thing that I was not expecting is that it made me appreciate my time here in the Eastern Cape that much more. Many of the people I met in Cape Town come from here and being able to talk to them about the places I know made me realize how much I am learning during my time here. I cannot explain why but leaving the Eastern Cape and returning also made it feel a bit more like home here. I feel more comfortable and confident in my surroundings and even found myself missing my friend here while away. Talking to the other interns and processing our different experiences also made me appreciate this experience more and realize how unique it is. I could be up in Tzaneen, Limpopo, a small but well developed town working in an office, but I am here in Tsomo, Eastern Cape, living amongst the poor, seeing what life is like for them, and working and exploring new places everyday interviewing clients in different locations and interacting with all the managers here in the Eastern Cape. While it is not always comfortable, this is exactly the type of experience that I was looking for after college and I hope I can take everything I am learning here with me wherever I end up in the future.

Until next time…Salani Kakhule

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01 November 2011: Crime And No Punishment

I have become good friends with a group of people that are from Ghana that live here in Tsomo. One of the surprising things about Tsomo is its diversity despite the fact that it is an extremely small town, I’m talking one block, in the middle of nowhere. There are people here from Ghana, Uganda, Somalia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other parts of the Middle East, China, and I even met one man that was half Xhosa and half Taiwanese. Most of these foreigners have come here to start businesses and almost every shop in town is owned by someone who is not Xhosa (I am still trying to figure out why these people picked Tsomo to start a business of all places). So I met one of the Ghanaians because he plays on my soccer team and he works across the street from where I am staying in a small salon/barbershop with a few other people from Ghana. I think part of the reason why I have formed a better bond with this group is that at least we have the fact that we are all foreigners in common if nothing else. I tell them about life in the U.S. and they always say one day I will see them there. They tell me about life in Ghana and their culture, and give me an outside perspective into the Xhosa culture here. They are all in their 20s or early 30s and came to South Africa for work (they have my business, they give the best haircuts I have ever had). When nothing is going on I sometimes head over to hang out with them in the shop (lol never thought I would be the type to hang at the corner barbershop).

The other positive thing about hanging out at the barbershop, other than having some company, is that I get to meet other people from the community and hear a bit about what is going on in Tsomo. Although many in this group of Ghanaians speak Xhosa pretty well, they still prefer English, so I can mostly understand the conversations they have with their customers, even though sometimes it is hard to put things together even when they understand each other. I have learned African English is much much different than American English. Even in the Xhosa language they have adopted many English words but put a different accent on it and say things differently. For example they pronounce the word “quarter” more like “cotta” and the way they phrase things is often different like “where do you stay” instead of “where do you live.” Last Saturday we were all sitting around, listening to Xhosa house music blasting from a stereo system as one “brother” (they call each other brothers even though they are not all blood related) was cutting a local persons hair. It began to rain and the sound was almost deafening on the tin roof. Over this, we were discussing the big news around town. Over the past week there has been a string of robberies here in Tsomo. They started last weekend when a group of people tried rob a store late at night, the police confronted them and they got in a gunfight, and two policemen died. Four days later the local China Shop (It is literally a grocery store/wholesaler named China Shop), was robbed. Then a few days after that, the largest clothing store in Tsomo was robbed. The burglars climbed in through the roof, cut the alarm system and left with nearly everything in the store. No one has been caught for any of these crimes. This speaks to the inadequacy of the police force here and has raised speculation that these robberies are being carried out by a syndicate from outside Tsomo and that they might even be working with some of the policemen to carry these out. This is the big news around town, and now the stores have been closing early and I have noticed many of the shops are putting up fences and new walls. Its pretty crazy to see the impact that these events have had on town. I can’t talk to anyone now without this coming up and them commenting about how much crime there is in South Africa and how Tsomo is changing for the worse. I am just happy that they aren’t targeting individuals and I hope that this doesn’t affect the already poor economy here too negatively.

So other than these burglaries things here have been going well. I continue to meet more and more interesting people which allows me to learn more about the community here from different perspectives. One of these people is another Ghanaian man who has worked here as a teacher for twenty-five years. He immediately pegged me as an American as I was buying some apples in a local shop. When I told him I had attended university in Boston, he immediately brought up the fact that he knows about the MIT Sloan School. I have learned he is an accountant by trade and keeps up on the latest business news and articles coming out of the U.S. We plan on meeting up sometime soon to talk more. Another is a colored man (that’s what they call mixed race people here) that I met a few weekends ago at a local soccer match. He works and spends most of his time about an hour away from here, but has his family home in Tsomo. He has been calling me every weekend just to check up on me and make sure that I am okay. He was back in Tsomo this weekend and had me over his house for some food and to watch some soccer games (He is also a Liverpool fan and we enjoyed seeing them play for a win). At first I was wondering why this older man wanted to befriend me, but I have learned he just loves meeting people from other places. He works at Mercedes and is also showing a group of German interns around South Africa while they are here. Unfortunately they stay where he is working, but he has talked about bringing me back there one weekend.

Work is going well. I got another project that involves going out into the field to interview clients. I am excited to interact with the clients directly and start hearing more from them about what they think of SEF and what could be improved. Also, as a sort of side job, I have been meeting with a number of people here trying to start businesses and have been helping them develop business plans and seek funding, so that has kept me busy.

The best part of this week is that this Wednesday I am taking some time off and heading to Cape Town. I am meeting some of the other interns from SEF down there. Half of the reason why I wanted to find a job in South Africa was to have the opportunity to go back there. I had gone to Cape Town the summer of 2010 with a school program which really got me into this idea of social business. I am planning on meeting up with some of the friends that I had made there during that program and am looking forward to seeing the other interns again. I will let you know more about the trip on my next post, but until then….Salani Kakhule.

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