Week 9: Affecting Government Policy

OK -- so the title may be a bit of an exaggeriation. But we were sitting Thursday with one of OGLM's donors when OGLM's director, Chris, mentioned that based on a conversation he had with me, the Ministry of Microfinance in Uganda agreed to allow the recipients of their grant funding to charge interest and that my ideas would be appearing in the paper in the next few weeks. I don't think my name will be there, but hey, the ideas still count for something! Basically, what happened was, when I arrived, OGLM was planning to offer zero-interest loans in line with the government's policy. But I urged them to reconsider by putting together an Excel spreadsheet that showed how unsustainable a zero interest policy would be. With inflation at 8% and defaults and operating costs also chipping away at the seed grant, in 10 years time, there would remain just $15,000 of the orginal $150,000 fund. So Chris spoke to his contact in the Ministry, and the Ministry agreed that charging interest made a lot of sense!

The trainings also continue to go very well -- my favorite part has to be with the grannies and women's groups at the end of each session. If they like what they learned, they have a huge dance and sing along. So last Thursday my supervisor Henry and I were dancing with 70 older women as they sang songs! Very cool...so far we have trained about 170 people on savings and are moving on to business administration training soon.

Grannies dancing:

So to continue with a topic a few weeks ago about the people, I have to describe my homestay family. This weekend, for the first time, everyone was home. Before that, Agnes, the mother, was studying for a masters at Makarere in Kampala, so she and her 1 year old were there until now. Agnes is really nice, and the daughter Mercy is adorable. She was very wary of me at first but now comes up to me with a soccer ball as big as her and a smile from ear to ear as she tries tossing it to me. Peter, the homestay father, is really one of the smartest people I have ever met. He has had opportunities to work with the WHO and the UN but is aiming at bigger and better things. In addition to being a doctor, he is working in public health, pursuing a PhD and frequently writing in the national papers. I hope he comes to NY so you guys can all meet him. I mentioned Ben, Peter's brother, earlier -- we are still hanging out a lot, and now Peter's nephew Moses is around as well. Moses is studying agriculture and is such a happy go lucky guy. He is alway laughing at my attempts to speak Lusoga:) and is a great cook on top of that.

And I should also talk a bit more about our coordiators, who I mentioned briefly before. Jen is from Canada but has worked in Mexico, South Korea, Japan, the Gambia, and Uganda as well...she is really cool to hang out with and also was instrumental in my securing grant funding (my grant proposal was successful!). Berna is also a lot of fun -- she is Ugandan but also lived in Scotland around the same time I did. So she has this ability to transition between the Western and African world seamlessly...so when we do something dumb, she's always quick to point it out;).