The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

by Jacqueline Novogratz

  The next week, Ginette and I met Liliane at one of the local restaurants in town. I liked her from the moment we met. The other women referred to her as "the blue one" because her skin was so dark, it was bluer than black. She wore her hair cut close to her head so that her dark eyes and smile dominated her face. Liliane exuded a youthful innocence, though her serious air gave both Ginette and me confidence.

  "I graduated from the University of Butare," she told us, "and want to work on women's economic development. I learn very fast and work even harder."

  Ginette explained that Liliane would spend time working directly with the women in the market, helping them with business planning and ensuring that loans were made and repaid in a timely manner.

  "Prudence told me this is a very big position," Liliane responded, "but I've worked toward this and will not let the women down. I can promise you that. I won't disappoint Prudence, either. She's such a big woman and she's put herself behind me, I know that."

  We did hire her, and Liliane and Ginette ended up becoming a formidable team. In the next few weeks, we located a light and airy office to rent above a tailor shop in the middle of town. Its interior walls were painted pale blue, with big windows in both the front and the back. An external staircase ran up to the office, but the stairs were so small and rickety that almost daily I ended up tripping over a few stairs in my long cotton skirts. And, somehow, I never learned to take the stairs differently.

  While setting up our office, we met a kind, talented Zairean artist named Dieu Donne who designed a logo for us depicting women dressed in red and green marching, fists clenched and bodies leaning forward with enthusiasm, toward a rural bank. Prudence teased that the women were walking more like me than like so many of the low-income rural women, who held themselves more demurely. But everyone else seemed to like it and the logo stayed, for this was to be an organization of aspiration.

  In those early days, we spent a lot of time in Kigali's markets talking and listening to the women, this time to understand better why they would want to borrow money. Most were interested in expanding their tiny businesses. "I pay too much to the moneylender," a tomato vendor told Liliane. "I could borrow at a low interest rate; I could sell more and take more money home to my family." Another wanted to borrow enough to buy a goat with the hope that the animal would reproduce and she could earn even more money.

  Some of the women had outsized dreams. One of our first potential borrowers wanted to start a bookstore, explaining that she'd had the idea because there were too few books in Rwanda.

  "True," we responded to her, "but what qualifies you for this business? Do you know how to run a store? What do you know about selling books?"

  She quietly admitted that she wasn't really qualified. "I am illiterate. But I would like to learn to read, and I want my children to have books."

  She didn't get the loan, but her spirit was emblematic of what we were looking for.

  I loved spending time in the Kigali marketplace-the bargaining, the camaraderie, and the constant chatter of vendors and customers. I loved the way barrels of dried beans stood together like stout men at a beer fest; the beautiful red tomatoes piled in pyramids; the bright yellows, greens, and pinks of so many different types of bananas; sunny oranges, blushing mangos, and pale fennel and leeks. I loved the smells of the fruits and flowers and the feel of rice when I ran it through my fingers.

  What I didn't like was that it was impossible to find locally grown coffee. Despite Rwanda's reputation for producing some of the best coffee on earth, locals had to settle for tins of Nescafe instant coffee. And it peeved me that men sold high-margin products like fish and powdered milk while women were consigned to tomatoes and onions, items guaranteed not to make money. I wanted to see at least some women breaking these local economic barriers.

  As we spent more time in the market, we began to see an entire ecosystem unfold. Of course, the moneylenders were there, providing cash at the astonishing rate of 10 percent per day. Most people, strapped for cash, bought and sold a great deal of their goods on credit. Overall, money was scarce in the marketplace. However, the women still managed to save. Just as I would see in Kenya and other African countries, the Rwandan market women had created a traditional system of saving and lending among themselves.

  Known as merry-go-rounds, or tontines, these small groups of a half dozen or so women would come together on a regular basis, weekly or monthly. Each would contribute about $1 each time the group met. At the meeting, one member would be given the total amount collected to use for whatever she required. As the women became more successful, they would sometimes contribute more than a dollar; and sometimes the group as a whole would put the extra money aside for group savings.

  We understood from the merry-go-rounds that women were capable of saving and borrowing and we started lending small amounts, mostly to women selling fruits and vegetables in the market. They would borrow something like $30 and then repay us in monthly installments. The women liked having a passbook where everything was written down, and most of them repaid their loans in a timely manner.

  We still were feeling as if we were just getting started when several international donors approached us to see how they could support us as well. The attention-and money-was exciting. But we were still getting our feet wet and didn't know exactly what we were doing. The real problem with the money from such donors was that it usually came with strings attached-they wanted us to carry out their projects and typically wanted the money spent within a year, something I didn't think we could promise.

  A woman from a high-profile development agency once came to our office and offered us $100,000 to do nutrition workshops for women in rural areas. She looked very professional in a cotton suit with her hair swept up.

  "I've heard you do very good work and I saw Agnes give an excellent speech recently," she told Agnes, Ginette, and me.

  "We're just getting started," I told her. She went on to explain the importance of doing nutrition workshops in rural areas so women would know how to better feed their families. I didn't see the link with our stated mission, which was to lend with the aim of boosting business development to improve women's economic conditions.

  "Healthier women will make better borrowers," she told us.

  While I agreed absolutely, I knew we didn't have a team in place to start conducting nutrition workshops when we were just beginning to build our lending business. "Nutrition isn't part of our mission," I explained. "We are singularly focused on providing women with microloans."

  Simultaneously, Agnes jumped in, saying, "You are right about the needs of women in rural areas and we would be well placed to support them. We would love to partner with you."

  I wasn't amused. I didn't want the organization distracted from its mission. At the same time, I understood that Duterimbere ultimately needed to be a Rwandan organization in every sense-and that meant its decisions needed to be made by the Rwandan women themselves. If, for example, Agnes and Prudence were set on an idea, even after a fierce argument (and there were a few), we would do it. After all, they were the ones who would have to face the long-term consequences.

  Agnes agreed with me that taking on a nutrition project risked a loss of focus, but she still thought it would be better for us to take on the project than to give it up.

  "Teaching nutrition to women will help us find borrowers," she reasoned.

  Prudence agreed with Agnes that the offer was too tempting to pass up, so Ginette began working with Liliane and Agnes to identify consultants who could help train women in basic nutrition. They carried this out over the course of a few months, all the time complaining that our real work-that of lending in the marketplace-was being neglected. Ultimately, while the attendees of their workshops said they enjoyed the lessons, it was never clear that any tangible changes resulted from our efforts.

  Agnes was always inclined to say yes to the money when it came our way, and there were a lot of donors looking to give it, especially give
n Agnes's charm, flexibility, and abilities of persuasion. Liliane was less skilled at fund-raising, but more clearheaded, determined, and unimpressed by anything that distanced us from our core business of lending. I came to cherish her quick mind, her toughness, and her refusal to suffer fools. She expected excellence and pushed the women to be better than they thought they could be. And she had one of the greatest laughs on earth.

  Sometime in our first year, we became concerned when a number of women fell behind in repaying their loans. Determined to discern what was happening, Liliane went to visit the home of a rice trader who claimed that her bag of rice had been stolen by thieves. As she listened to the woman explain why she couldn't make her payments, Liliane noticed an enormous sack in the back room, walked over to it, and discovered that it was filled with rice. The woman began waving her hands, offering excuses, but Liliane was no longer listening. She slowly and calmly explained that she appreciated the woman's good words, but the loan was due and had to be repaid. When the woman defiantly turned her back on her, an infuriated Liliane simply walked out.

  An hour later, Liliane stormed into my office. "Jacqueleen," she cried, holding out her hands for emphasis, "I am too frustrated. We must do something about these overdue loans right away. The women have a responsibility. They have a contract with us. They know the terms of the loan. If they have a family crisis, that is one thing-they should let us know. But this isn't the case with that silly woman. She isn't paying because she thinks we don't really care whether she repays or not. And others are watching what we do about this. We have to show them that we care."

  I thought a lot about Liliane's phrase: "We have to show them that we care." Indeed, several women initially saw no reason to repay. They knew the money was coming not from a neighbor but, in their eyes, from a big, obtuse agency filled with nameless rich people from across the planet who didn't think much of the poor anyway. Why should that institution really expect poor women to repay? And how much would it notice if they didn't?

  Those early women borrowers were testing us, and their approach was rational. If we were the types who made excuses for them if they didn't pay so that they suffered no real consequences, then they would feel like fools if they did pay.

  We have to show them that we care: This meant hanging in there with the tough questions and holding our clients accountable even if the rest of the world didn't.

  Liliane and I got in the car, drove to the edge of town, and continued for another half hour down a muddy road to see the rice trader again. We arrived at her cracked-mud hut and the large woman wearing a white sleeveless top over a long violet skirt welcomed us with tea, declaring immediately how much she loved Duterimbere, showing no memory of the difficult conversation she'd had hours before with Liliane. We, on the other hand, were in no mood for tea and lies.

  We asked about the big bag of rice in her home, and she told us it was her husband's military ration. Liliane wasn't interested in what the husband did. She saw that the woman was not in crisis and wanted to ensure that the woman understood that she had made a commitment and we expected her to fulfill it. Otherwise, the woman should not hope to borrow from us again.

  She promised to do so and offered us more tea. We shared a quick cup, and Liliane began to trust that this time the woman might actually repay. As we walked back to our car, Liliane whispered, "She knows we are serious now. I think she respects that in us, for she sees herself as serious, too."

  Before the week was over, the rice trader visited the office and repaid the loan in full to an again amiable Liliane. Over time, the rice trader would become one of the bank's best clients, taking on increasing loan amounts, repaying, and building her business to the point where she hired three others.

  WHILE THE DUTERIMBERE TEAM worked on understanding how local businesses operated-and how to be simultaneously tough and compassionate-the parliamentarians were focusing on bigger policy issues. They were determined to change the Family Code in Rwanda's legal system. As in so many developing countries, the Family Code was established by government to cover issues such as the roles of women and children, domestic violence, marriage, and divorce. In the mid1980s, Rwanda's Family Code was especially detrimental to women, who had few rights and were often bound by their husbands' permission. The parliamentarians believed this inequality was especially exacerbated by traditions regarding bride price.

  Bride price is a long-held tradition whereby a hopeful groom provides a settlement to the father of the bride. In Rwanda, the bride price might be three cows, an enormous sum given how much people typically earned. For larger Tutsi families, cattle were part of their existing patrimony, but grooms from poorer families ended up paying off the price to their in-laws forever. Prudence, Agnes, and Constance flatly rejected the notion of bride price, as did most women they knew, believing that the tradition inherently created a system of indentured servitude. Women suffered, being treated as chattel while their husbands spent their lives "paying off" their fathers-in-law for what they legally owned.

  The parliamentarians knew they couldn't abolish an age-old tradition without taking politics into consideration. They proposed not to abolish bride price, but to make it less financially onerous while honoring its symbolic value.

  They went to Parliament with a proposal to reduce the expected bride price to three garden hoes, valued at about 1,000 Rwandan francs, or $10. When the measure passed, the women of Duterimbere celebrated the victory with Fantas, cake, and merriment.

  The next morning we awoke to a new world. Instead of jubilation in the streets, rural women were up in arms: "Yesterday," they protested, "we were worth thousands upon thousands." Today we are worth only 1,000." The symbol of the hoes, the object with which they toiled daily, was seen as a further insult. Throughout the country, women were enraged. A number of parliamentarians visited Constance to reprimand her for pushing such bad policy, ignoring the fact that it had passed by a clear margin.

  The next day, our beloved Constance was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Though "witnesses" said she'd been accidentally hit by a truck, people who knew her believed it was a deliberate murder meant to send a signal about pushing for "unreasonable" changes. We were in shock. Clearly, a majority of the 57 male parliamentarians had passed the resolution as well, but that didn't matter. Laying the blame at the dead nun's feet would enable everyone else to distance themselves.

  The day I heard the news of Constance's death from Ginette may have been the day I really grew up. My time in Cote d'Ivoire had taught me about humility: I came to Rwanda ready to listen, but without a critical eye. I saw only good in Rwanda's community orientation, in the way families took care of one another, in the lack of corruption and the simplicity of life. Suddenly, our friend with the big heart was dead, and the power of community revealed itself in the price of an individual. Life was neither as easy nor as free as I had imagined.

  Two men approached me in a restaurant one evening, rebuking me for "ruining their women." I had had nothing to do with the bride-price issue, hadn't participated in the discussions about it, didn't even know it was being planned. The female parliamentarians themselves were apparently out of touch with their own rural countrywomen-not unlike elites around the world today, who often don't really know the poor who elected them. Indeed, today's most privileged individuals are often more comfortable with elites from other countries than they are with their own less-privileged fellow citizens.

  As we mourned Constance, whose commitment to the women of Rwanda had never faltered, life moved along as if nothing happened. I came to know death as a familiar visitor for the first time. Death in Africa is not hidden, but rather woven into the fabric of everyday life. Each week someone missed work to attend the funeral of a family member or friend. The work moved more slowly than I'd expected, but we were making progress.

  Prudence and Agnes continued to make speeches about the need to improve women's economic conditions. Liliane and Ginette made more loans to women in the marketplace. Honorat
a busied herself working with women's groups and looking for potential new borrowers. I wrote a manual for how to build a lending agency like ours, using many of the materials I'd gathered during Chase Manhattan Bank's credit training program, a 10month mini-MBA course used to teach each new lending officer the rules and practices of banking. Distilled to the basics, almost everything Chase had taught us about high finance was relevant for lending to the poor.

  Though we often felt a bit battered, our dream was coming to fruition. In the process, new lessons flowed like the many little waterfalls ribboning down Rwanda's abundant hillsides.

  One afternoon, Boniface and I drove to a marketplace about an hour outside Kigali. We arrived at around 5:00 p.m. after driving along red dirt roads lined with fragrant eucalyptus trees. Suddenly we came upon a huge blanket of color-a rural marketplace, where hundreds of vendors had gathered. Most were starting to leave on foot or to line up for buses to take them home. The sun would be setting in an hour, and the air had a chill in it. I felt the edge of loneliness that was a part of too many early evenings in Rwanda for me.

  Maybe there was something about the sky; more likely, it was just being so far away from everything and everyone I knew. I missed my family. My monthly calls home-at $13 a minute-resulted in little more than frustration over the echo and clipped sentences. "How are you doing? Fine?" was the extent of the average conversation.

  As Boniface and I walked together into the market, we happened upon two women sitting on their haunches, each in front of a single Rwandan basket, the kind retail stores like Bloomingdale's now call widows' baskets, and sell to raise money for genocide survivors. The baskets were identical, both beautiful and well made, though neither had a single differentiating characteristic.