I've always started new undertakings with a delicious sense of excitement. The terms of my contract were simply to determine whether some kind of financial institution for women was needed and feasible. To me, the question seemed superfluous. This was a country where women comprised half the population, yet had no access to banking facilities. Of course a financial institution focused on poor women was needed. The real question was what it would take to make the institution real. My plan was to talk to as many people as I could, learn as much as possible, and then just start building. The work would teach us what was feasible and what was not. Of course, I didn't tell anyone this was my ultimate plan; it didn't make any sense to get everyone's hopes up and not follow through with action.
First step: endless phone calls and meetings. Veronique recommended key people to meet in the economic sector as well as the country's only three women parliamentarians, Prudence, Constance, and Agnes, whose last names I couldn't pronounce.
As I sat at my desk dialing the phone and speaking my still-middling French to assistants all over Kigali, one of UNICEF's expatriates invited me to a dinner that evening at the home of a French couple in town. In Kigali's tiny expatriate community, newcomers were always welcome for a change of pace. I accepted gladly in a spirit of having another adventure.
Given the humble character of Kigali itself as well as the simple exteriors of its houses, I was surprised by the mix of luxury and sophistication I saw at the dinner party. The walls and floors of the impeccably decorated house were covered with Persian rugs and African tapestries. One woman wore a blue taffeta skirt; and all came dressed as if they were dining at an upscale restaurant. The hostess served French food and wine while the dinner guests, mostly Europeans, debated global politics and complained about Ronald Reagan, America, and everything Rwandan.
Intrigued by the women in evening attire, I asked the colleague who'd invited me to the party who they were.
"Most are married to aid workers or UN civil servants," she told me. "Even those who want to work often can't get visas. Though some do significant work as volunteers, other women languish at the country club, wishing they were anywhere but here."
She added mischievously, "And their boredom does wonders for the state of extramarital affairs."
A Belgian man with thick blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a rugged appearance that betrayed a hard-earned weariness took it upon himself to give me a primer on the country. "In Rwanda," he said, "there is a great sense of order and discipline. This country is called the pearl of Africa for a reason. She is the land of a thousand hills-so beautiful and green, and you can get a lot done here, too. The people, they follow rules. You know, the masses were yoked thrice-by the feudals, the colonialists, and the Catholics. It is a lot, but you can see development projects work better here than anywhere else on the continent. It is almost too easy, in fact. But be careful, because with all of this discipline and progress comes a lot of deception."
I would reflect on those words for decades to come.
As the evening wore on, the wine flowed along with stories of Rwandan mishaps having mostly to do with hired maids and cooks. I heard the story of a housekeeper who was asked to whitewash the rims of a car's tires and ended up whitewashing the entire Mercedes, and one about the gardener who found a snake outside and put it in the expatriate's hamper for safekeeping. I found the stories about "these people" demeaning and tiring and later fell asleep thinking about the paradoxes of a physically spectacular country having a soul punctured by the competing forces of racism, colonialism, development, and geographic isolation.
The landlocked country seemed to cut people off from new ideas, so that conversations centered on the mundane, despite some of the extraordinary work people were doing. I pondered the strangeness of expatriate life, realizing that none of us at the party understood much at all about Rwanda or Rwandans, though we were the ones called "experts" I knew that this was just a single snapshot from a single night, but the bored facades of too many of the people at the dinner depressed me.
I awoke early the next morning thinking about what had bothered me most about the evening. Some of the expatriates had put low-income Rwandans in another category altogether-a box marked "other" for people who couldn't save themselves for trying. Yet we were supposed to be here to create real opportunities that would only work if we believed in the people we were serving. I decided to avoid the cynics and the "careerists" and promised myself that I wouldn't remain an expatriate for too long without rerooting myself in my own country. A creeping cynicism seemed inevitable in anyone who is always a visitor rather than someone with no choice but to live with the consequences of what he or she does. I also began to understand why I was so attracted to the notion of giving women access to loans, besides believing in it as an issue of justice. By lending women money instead of giving handouts, we would signal our high expectations for them and give them the chance to do something for their own lives rather than waiting for the "experts" to give them things they might or might not need.
I was changing. Though I'd been uncomfortable about focusing on women when I was first given the opportunity to come to Africa, I'd begun to see that if you support a woman, you support a family. I'd also learned that I definitely didn't like the word "expert" when it came to development. I still don't.
The question for me now was whether Rwanda was ready for microcredit-were there enough people and institutions to support the idea? I also questioned whether the Grameen Bank model would work in Rwanda. Bangladesh had something this country didn't: a history of trading and a feeling of solidarity among the people, especially since nationalism had taken root because of the war with Pakistan. Everything I read discussed how Rwanda operated as a feudal economy composed mostly of farmers living off the land. Some low-income people had started bartering for needed goods and services, but except for the Muslim population concentrated in Kigali, this was not known as a country of traders. I made a long list of questions to ask people and readied myself to present them first to my new partner in the study, Veronique.
Boniface picked me up to drive me to the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs, where we walked down a dark corridor and looked for Veronique in every room. I heard her rich voice before I saw her. As in every other office, Veronique's space was furnished with two desks, both constructed of dark wood, both covered with piles of papers and books, some yellowed, apparently from remaining in the same place for years.
Standing next to Veronique in the dark and dingy office was a shy, unassuming woman wearing a long skirt and flat black shoes. She was just a few inches over 5 feet tall, with a broad face and skin the color of coffee beans. She had large brown eyes that drooped at the sides, projecting a crinkly empathy further emphasized by a gap-toothed smile. Her hair was combed back into a loose crown. Her only adornments were a wedding band and a tiny gold cross on a chain around her neck.
She introduced herself shyly: "Amahuru, Jacqueline. My name is Honorata."
"Bonjour."
Veronique, already a teacher to me, gave me a gentle shove and laughed. "Now you say `Imeza.' When someone says Amahuru,' you answer `Imeza.' It is only polite."
"What does it mean?" I asked.
She laughed and hit me on the back. "So many questions already!" she said, adding, "It's very simple. Amahuru means `What news?' A sort of `How are you doing?' When you say imeza, you are answering back that it is just okay."
"What if it is more than okay?" I teased.
She laughed and shook her head and I knew we would be friends. I reached over to shake Honorata's hand, and she surprised me by clapping her right hand over my left shoulder and her left on my right elbow while leaning her face to the right of mine. My body naturally did the opposite, mirroring her. Then we switched. It was an awkward gesture at first, but a more intimate way of greeting-a double hug rather than a handshake.
Throughout the exchange, Honorata laughed quietly, covering her mouth with her hand. She wasn't showy in a
ny way and seemed genuine in her desire to help women change their lives. Though Veronique was the more effusive communicator about our project, it turned out to be Honorata who knew which people we needed to meet, made the right calls, and set up my schedule. She also accompanied me to meetings while offering a running oral history of her country.
Veronique and Honorata were bemused when I said I wanted to meet tomato sellers, business owners, and priests as well as their list of government ministers, NGO directors, and U.N. aid workers. These were the women we would ultimately be serving, so why wouldn't we start there and assess their needs? They finally agreed, and Honorata added that we should speak with some of the women's groups she knew, as well.
The early days of the project were now filled with meetings, informal conversations, and just watching the way the world worked for women in Kigali. We would ask government ministers and development workers about their economic aid programs for women and found a number of grant-based programs. Several officials told us how they intended to reach millions with programs to give women maize mills and other "labor-saving devices." I would think of a photo I once saw of a rural man riding a donkey as his wife walked alongside, carrying a load of wood on her head. "Labor-saving devices for whom?" I would ask. "And how do we know they are the right ones?"
Ultimately, most agreed that an experiment in providing credit to women made great sense. We sat for hours inside each of three commercial banks; not a single low-income woman walked through their doors. In the Kigali market, women told us they paid up to 10 percent interest daily to moneylenders so that they could run their businesses. Clearly, we were onto something.
Where individual opinions differed was in whether we should charge interest to the women, an ongoing debate in microfinance programs the world over at the time. Many people we met at international agencies felt it was unjust or plain usurious to be charging interest to some of the poorest people in society.
"How can you justify making money off the backs of the poor themselves?" one woman asked.
Though we explained over and over that the organization was a nonprofit and would not cover the costs of lending, our arguments often fell on deaf ears.
"These women have no collateral," one minister told us. "How will you know they will repay?"
"With your grants, you know they will not repay, so this is, to start, a bonus," we said. "Furthermore, everything we're seeing from other programs in the world indicates that poor women do, in fact, repay."
When we returned to the market and spoke to the women themselves, there was great excitement about a program that would lend to them at fair interest rates (we didn't know what it was yet, but we knew it would be much lower than what they were currently paying). We would help them with skills and connect them with other women. Ultimately, it was these women we listened to most carefully.
After a few days, Honorata, Veronique, and I had had enough. Two reasons poor women needed this program were because they didn't have collateral and because they had extremely low income levels. The women themselves certainly wanted access to credit. There would always be naysayers, we told ourselves; in fact, it was this spirit that ultimately inspired the organization's name, Duterimbere, which means to go forward with enthusiasm. Besides, by this time a formidable group of "founders," was emerging, powerful women in Kigali who stood behind the idea of a credit institution for women and were willing to work to make it real. Though we had yet to work out the details, our momentum was building.
Still, we had to revisit the question of whether or not to charge interest, even with some members of Duterimbere's founding group. At a meeting with several of the women, I was asked to explain again why we wanted to make money from poor women.
"We will not make money," I repeated, "at least not in the short term, though we could grow and sustain ourselves if we truly built an institution that covered costs in the long-term. Think of charging fair interest as practice for the women to interact with the formal economy. It will help them build real businesses-and they want the option to borrow! Don't you think the poor women are capable of success?"
"Of course they're capable," one woman shot back.
"Then let's give them a chance to prove to us-and to themselves just how capable they are. In time, they'll be able to borrow larger amounts of money. They'll have a track record for the first time in their lives."
Against local conventional wisdom, our founders' group bet on the strength of the women and the belief that ultimately they belonged in the formal economy. We decided to charge interest at near-commercial bank rates.
The organization was beginning to take shape, but the most important work was establishing the political goodwill to give the institution grounding. Our biggest asset in getting started was the commitment of the three most powerful women in government. Prudence, Agnes, and Constance, the only three female parliamentarians in the country, had emerged from the first generation of women given a chance to succeed in a society where modern political leadership was in its infancy in 1987.
Rwanda had been independent for less than 30 years, and women still had many fewer rights than men. Though they were a tiny minority in the 60-person Rwandan Parliament, these three strong, visionary, capable individuals were paving the way for generations of Rwandan girls and women.
Of the three, Prudence seemed the most grounded, dynamic, and authoritative. She came to every meeting prepared with facts, always knowing the various players involved in any decision we needed to make. She reminded us that opening banks to women would be threatening to the status quo, so we should remember to tread lightly, but with savvy.
"I dream of a day," she told me, "when women will have more power, when they will be afforded the respect that men receive. And you know, I can see it coming," she said, always with a twinkle in her eye.
I adored her.
Prudence delighted in visiting the rural areas with me, always wearing long dresses on her sturdy frame, carrying herself with a regal air that was never at odds with her kind nature. Her soft, melodic voice narrated local stories peppered with colloquialisms that gave the poorest women of the hillsides permission to have a sense of hope. Though I understood barely a word of her speeches because she always spoke in Kinyarwanda, I loved watching her in action, feeling the confidence she exuded and the sense of warmth and comfort she imparted to the women around her.
Prudence and Rwanda's then president, Juvenal Habyarimana, both hailed from the north of the country, so she had some access to high circles. She was also aware of the power of her feminine wiles and unafraid to use them. "To get a man to trust you," she once advised me, her black eyes sparkling behind thick-framed glasses, "wipe off a bit of imaginary dust from the shoulder of his jacket. It will communicate that you notice and that you care-and might slightly disarm him, which can be a good thing, yes?"
If Prudence was the visionary spokeswoman, Constance was the workhorse-a nun with circular, wire-rimmed glasses sitting on round cheeks, always dressed in her brown habit, deeply committed to serving the poor through action, not just prayer. Although she served in Parliament, she spent at least part of her days working more actively with the church and the women's groups she loved. Once when I needed to discuss our new organization's operational structure with her, she told me to come to her parish. She was busy doing something that she wanted me to see.
Boniface drove me to the outskirts of Kigali, where we saw the brick church standing tall amid fields of sorghum and sunflowers. We parked the car and I walked instinctively toward the sunflowers, looking for my favorite parliamentarian in a nun's habit. She walked with a jump in her step, waving her hand back and forth like a fan the way the children did, her bespectacled face beaming.
"Those sunflowers are no competition for the brilliance of your smile," I called out.
Constance laughed. "Oh no, oh no! I am just so happy today. Just you come and look at these sunflowers," she called. "They are magnificent, yes?"
"Yes,"
I laughed with her. "They are wonderful! But what are you doing here?"
Constance didn't respond, but pulled me by the hand so that we skipped like schoolgirls past the fields, where I had to tell her again how beautiful the sunflowers were, and then inside the barn, where boys were riding stationary bikes to fuel a rudimentary contraption that pressed sunflower seeds into oil.
"Good exercise, yes?" Constance grinned.
"Constance! Is this your business?"
"Not my business," she said. "But you know I am supporting women's income-generating projects through the church. It is my real passion and the reason I am so supportive of our work to create a microfinance institution for women in this country. Here these women are growing sunflowers and then they are pressing the seeds into oil so they can sell it. Maybe it will be a model for what our organization supports, don't you think?"
"It seems interesting," I said. "But I don't understand any of it. Does the church own the land? Do the women share the profits or do they at least earn a wage? Do you know what kind of price you can earn from just selling the sunflower seeds? And then again, do you know the price you will get from the sunflower oil?"
Constance looked crestfallen. "We don't have the answers. But look at the women working, and the boys, too. You see, they need jobs and now they are doing something for the community."
"Constance," I said as I smiled and put my arm around her. "I'm not saying this isn't a worthwhile project. I just want to understand how the numbers work a little bit better to make sure that, first, the women and boys really can expect to be paid and, second, that it is a project that can last more than one season without the donor's support. That's why loans are so important. If you depend on grants each year, then the sunflower project will only work if the donors keep giving. If we can make this profitable somehow, then the project can continue whether or not anyone wants to give you money."
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World Page 6