This week was the culmination of a lot of work and a fair amount
of taxi rides. It all started when we
first came to the village of Akakom and announced that we would be holding a
class for second time loan recipients.
Truthfully I doubt they were much surprised by our news as we visited
each of the past loan recipients who successfully paid their loans off but even
still they were plenty excited. As part
of our visit we made sure they knew when and where the classes were to be and
sure enough when it came time for the first class they were all there. Some were shy and some were bold but all had
hope on their faces and ambition in their eyes.
It was a good sight.
At the beginning they were dismayed when we told them we
were only going to teach them 2 lessons a week.
Before I got too misty-eyed about their hunger to learn, they explained
that because its Cocoa-harvesting season very soon, they wanted to get the
money from the 2nd time loan as soon as possible so their businesses
could receive money from the cocoa farmers.
Seeing as we were needed the five weeks to accumulate the said funds we
apologized and said that would not be possible and set about teaching them the
third teaching phase material.
Some lessons were grasped intuitively. Some they discovered they were already doing
a variation of what we were teaching.
Other lessons saw our students grimly squinting at the board trying to
understand the lesson through our enthusiastic translator Isaak. Occassionally I would joke with my teaching
partner that we would teach good lessons but Isaak taught great lessons. This
likely came because Isaak was a retired schoolteacher and likely taught one or
two of them so we more or less had everyone mentally in the same neighborhood
as us when the lessons would close. Sometimes
we would notice the same handwriting on the different student’s homework or
business plans for different businesses that looked surprisingly similar. More often we would see scrawled in mildly
legible writing answers to the questions we posed the previous week.
We got a taste of this week a few weeks ago when we gave
them back their rebates. The way the loan works is they are put in what we call
pods which are groups of about three to five individuals and if the whole pod
pays every month on time, they get half the interest they paid back free and
clear. This works cause we only have to
send the loan collector once for the money instead of multiple times. Thinking
back, I remember the excitement, the smiles, the dancing, and cheering as we
gave them the money that was theirs to do with as they chose. I honestly expected more of that from them
this time. I didn’t get it.
Don’t get me wrong, they were excited to be funded
again. But in the weeks since, Beverly
and I hammered them on the expectations we had for them and the responsibility
they were taking on. The class
collectively asked for around 14,000 Ghana Cedis (little less than 7,000
dollars). After we ran the numbers on
the board and showed them how much more they would be paying a month for that
number, most conceded they could do with less.
So on the day of the funding we painstakingly read word for word the
contract they would be initialing and answered any last minute questions they
had then had them sign their contracts and the contracts of those in their
pods. When I say sign I should clarify
that they only initialed as writing their name was beyond most. Once every name was signed and every contract
was binding, we took pictures of every page (14 people multiplied by 4 pages
each equals a lot of pictures. That was
only one class. We still have 3 more to go!) for a record to get back to Wasach
HQ. Then came the part they were looking forward to.
We ended up funding them 7,600 Cedis. One by one they came up and we made a big
show of taking a picture with each of them receiving their money. Following which we took one of all of them
together with us in the background smiling like proud parents. In many ways we were. I have reflected many times about how
innocent these people are. Though we
explained exactly what the contract says in detail, most aren’t that
literate. They trusted us, learned from
us, and now it was time for them to go back out in the real world where dreams
are crushed and reality can be bitter.
We comfort ourselves with the knowledge they have traveled this
particular road before.
If we are lucky, Beverly and I can help them when problems
come but more likely the problems that happen won’t be obvious until other interns
are here and then it will be their problem.
We can only hope they paid attention well enough to the lessons in the
classroom and in their businesses to find the path to take.
Indeed, this time there wasn’t the cheering, the dancing,
the excitement that the rebate brought. But I believe I caught a look of
determination in their eyes as they smiled.
That, I believe, is a better portent.
