A Visit To Cathedral

Today we drove over to Cathedral.  Cathedral is a large church in the town of Iringa.  When we were here in 2008 we visited a SACCOS that was located here called “Amani.”  Amani SACCOS was all privately funded and had been started by some local business people.  It grew to 163 members, but is now no longer working.  We have had no dealings with Amani other than talking with them, but went to talk with the leaders today because we wanted to know what had gone wrong at their SACCOS.

When we got to Cathedral the pastor was in a meeting, but left to come and talk with us.  He told us that the Amani SACCOS had stopped taking deposits and giving loans in 2010.  Shortly after this the chairman started having some personal problems and could not or would not perform his duties.  The members who had loans stopped making payments and when the secretary and vice chairman went around trying to collect, everyone refused to pay.

We next met with the church Secretary.  He was a member of Amani and was the “proposed” secretary in a group wanting to start a new SACCOS.  He agreed with what we had heard from the pastor and added that they had gone to the district coop officer to do an audit.  He said that they were still waiting for the audit.  In the meantime they were trying to start a new SACCOS – but the coop officer was telling them they could not have 2 in the same place.  I asked why they did not elect new officers and fix the existing SACCOS.  He just looked blank and said it was difficult.

Finally the secretary of Amani showed up.  She confirmed what we had been told and added that the coop officer had the books and all of the records so they could not work on collecting loans now.  She said that she and the vice chairman had gone from door to door to try to collect the loans, but the borrowers refused to pay.  She confirmed that there was about $16,000 that was owed by the various borrowers.  I asked her why they had not gone to the police (it is provided for in the Coop Act), but she only looked shy.  She said they were waiting for the audit report.  I asked her when they were getting the report and she did not know.

We asked some more questions, but what happened seemed clear.  Finally we called the chairman; he did not want to come to church.  He said he would talk to us somewhere else, then hung up, apparently not very willing to work on the problem. 

   

We made a tentative appointment to talk with the new group on Tuesday.  We will urge them to work on collecting from the existing borrowers.  They should owe the $16,000 plus 24% interest!  It seems that they could pay some of the interest for collection costs and still come out fine.  It seems there is a fatalism (“God’s will”) that needs to be worked on.  We will see if we can stir up the Amani members to get busy and solve this problem – but it really is outside of the scope of what we are doing here.  It seems that the Amani folks do have the tools but not the push to do this.

Our visits are now over!  This afternoon we were planning on taking Mercy (Itiweni’s daughter) to the zoo.  When we got there we found that the zoo had recently been bought by 7 day Adventists – so no more zoo on Saturday!  Instead we went back into town, had some ice cream, read a few books, did a little shopping and had some down time. 

We went over to Cathedral Lutheran Church to discuss what happened to Amani.  The Amani office used to be located where the small white building is.

We went into the old Amani office to meet and discuss what was going on.

We had been planning on taking Mercy to the Zoo, but it is now closed on Saturday - so we went to the Neema Center instead for ice cream and play time!

Mercy and Grandpa had fun reading books and eating ice cream.

Sandy and Mercy did some shopping.