Iringa Hope visits 2012: On To Nyanzwa!

After visiting five very successful SACCOS last week, we had a disappointing start to our second week of visits when we visited Nyanzwa today. Nyanzwa is located about 3 hours drive from Iringa. To reach Nyanzwa you take the road back towards Dar Es Salaam down the escarpment. At the foot you take a dirt road for about 35 kilometers. Assuming the Masai and their cattle don’t delay you too long you will make it in 45 minutes.

Arriving at the church we were met by the pastor and the SACCOS chairman. The pastor seemed somehow familiar to us – but we could not place him. We have been to Nyanzwa on 4 other occasions – but we were sure we had not met him here. We went into his house where we were greeted by his wife. Suddenly it struck us; we had met him when we were at Kipaduka a few years ago. When we asked if they remembered us from Kipaduka mama said, “No – but then all white people look alike.”

After having coffee we met with the officers of the SACCOS. When we had been here in 2008 we were impressed by the good records and active participation of the members, now we felt that the SACCOS is being poorly managed and needs some changes. We found that recent record keeping is so poor that we were unable to come away with any details. We also confirmed that despite having assets of $33,000 this SACCOS has only $1,350 in cash available. And where is the rest? It is currently loaned to the members – who all seem to be falling behind in their payments!

The Nyanza SACCOS has about 200 members; only 48 of them are women. At our meeting today with the SACCOS leadership we noticed that of the nine members present, only one of them was a woman. Lukia, the woman, was the only member in the roomful of leaders who had repaid her loan in full. All of the other leaders had loans outstanding, some of them small, others fairly substantial (by Tanzanian standards). Sandy commented that in every other SACCOS we visited where the membership and leadership was equally divided between men and women (and heavily favoring women in the case of Mkimbizi), record keeping was well done and loan repayment was close to 100%. She followed with a question of whether or not the men in the room thought there might be a correlation here. This brought smiles. Then Tom asked if this (repaying loans on time) was something that women can do and that the men were not capable of. This brought some frowns and a bit of discussion.

Brown (a representative of the Iringa Diocese head office), Tom, and Itiweni took turns lecturing the leaders about responsibility, setting an example, commitment, etc. We told them they needed to form a committee to go to each and every member with a loan and sit with them and make a plan to repay their loans by the end of June (harvest time). They said we will do this tomorrow. “YOU WILL DO THIS TODAY” Brown told them.

Following the meeting we interviewed Lukia about her dealings with the Nyanzwa SACCOS. Her loans were taken out in the early days of the SACCOS (2007-2008). She had taken out loans twice; her first loan in 2007 was for $50 which she used to plant onions. This loan was repaid and she took out a second in 2008 for $120 which she used to plant beans and onions. After she repaid her loan she bought pigs, and has situated herself so that she hasn’t needed to borrow anything in the last three years. She has used her profits to send her two children to secondary school.

Our second interview was with Salima, a widow supporting two children and two grandchildren. We recognized her immediately as a woman we interviewed in 2008. She is another woman who borrowed money in 2007 and 2008; loans that were paid in full. She didn’t take out a loan in 2009 because the weather that year was such that she didn’t want to gamble on being able to repay a loan. When she applied in 2010 her loan application was turned down, due to lack of money for loans. Salima was probably one of the best credit risks that this SACCOS could have taken.

When we went to start the car to go home we found the battery was dead! “Ooops – I forgot and left the headlights on,” said Tom. Never mind – with a handful of volunteers pushing the car was soon started and we were on our way. Getting back to our house at 6:30 we realized that it had been another 11 and ½ hour day!