After enduring on a four hour bus ride yesterday returning from La Esperanza, I went back to work this morning. After continuing the preparation of a few loan applications, I left with Dilcia to do a Kiva follow-up. We spoke with a lady who sells tortillas (unfortunately I left my notes at the office and I cannot remember her name) and has received a loan from Kiva donors administered by Prisma. She says the loan absolutely helped her grow her business and provide for her family. Unfortunately, she says business has been getting tougher there. She blames the fact that many people have lost their jobs and are now trying to do anything possible to get by.... and that includes selling tortillas. As I can apply from my economics class, the tortilla trade is perfect competition. No matter where you go, tortillas sell "2 for 1 Lempira (about $.05)" and there isn't much of a difference between a tortilla made by one person and a tortilla made by another. Also, anyone can enter the business, all someone needs is a fire and a metal plate to put on top of it and they can start their tortilla business. But as I said, right now the woman we visited said she thinks that more producers are hurting her sales.
After visiting with her, we moved to the ugly part of any finance company - collections. We had to visit a woman and threaten to take her refrigerator if she doesn't find a way to pay. It's really sad to have to go through that and it makes me wonder if microfinance is always a good thing. But after seeing numerous people who have been helped by small loans, I understand that sometimes people fall behind and there isn't much we can do about it. The bottom line is that there are more people benefiting from microcredit services than are losing their refrigerators to creditors.
Back in the office, we reviewed a credit report and saw another person with problems on a Citi credit card. Here there is very little regulation for credit card companies and unfortunately it seems like they may be taking advantage of people. I'll be trying to look into that in the rest of my time here.
I'll leave you with a picture of La Esperanza and I've added more pictures so just click on the Slideshow to the left to view them.
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| From Honduras |
