The purpose of our second meeting with Duma members was to tackle several issues revolving around the mechanics of loaning with women who were interested in receiving goats. First was the question of how to pass loans within bounded groups. It is becoming clear that the one-size-fits all model that we envisioned -- where each uniform group receives a goat and passes it down a line of women until they pay the loan back -- is not going to work within the Shimbwe context. One group, for example, has scrounged the money and materials to build a shelter but doesn't have enough pasture land on their personal plots to build shelters or plant sufficient fodder crops. Instead, they've asked a wealthier neighbor with an uncultivated field for permission to plant fodder on his farm. He agreed. They plan to initially build one shelter on one of their plots and to share fodder. Their approach clouds the clear-cut Grameen-esque model Sam and I once envisioned. On the surface, it also goes against the grain of the way women normally like to work in Shimbwe, namely, alone and on their own plots, independent of others. My gut reaction to hearing this plan was to welcome it as a rare instance in which Chagga women were willing, even keen, to work together. But my instant impression that the one shelter/one pasture pasture per group model these women proposed would undercut the concept of individual ownership that last year's research showed to be prevalent in Shimbwe, and that our model (really the Grameen model) of incentivizing the repayment of credit hinges upon.
I brought the issue up with Francis, asking if we need to to take collateral out on owns in cases where group ownership is the norm. In consultation with her members, Francis clarified the issue saying that although a group might start with one shelter, they plan to save money and will build shelters for the other women in the group as resources become available. Furthermore, individual women will retain ownership over specific goats, which will indeed be passed from one group member to the next (even if ownership is marked cognitively rather than by physical location). What appears to be emerging are a cluster of small groups, each of which has a unique set of capabilities, social dynamics, ecological limitations and corresponding solutions that lead them to a particular methodology of caring for goats and exchanging them between individual members. The groups, as I understand them, are going to operate as bite-sized savings and loans organizations. These have formed based on women's knowledge and experience in hearing about and participating in such schemes, and in response to our outside intervention. This intervention appears to have generated what women perceive to be a strong economic opportunity, and to have incentivized the formation of hybrid collectives (with individual ownership and some shared work, credit, and resources) that women find distasteful under most other circumstances.
The internal politics and resource-sharing within each group will therefore depend on the nature and composition of the group in question. Group members themselves will be responsible for determining how to pass goats and how to pay loans back. Duma will work individually with groups, which will in turn operate according to unique verbal bylaws. The women present seemed to like this way of doing things. I do too: It allows us to leave as much to group members as possible while allowing them to respond to a basic set of financial rules and conditions. These meta-rules will be flexible and dependent on factors such as group size and financial capacity. Most remarkably, this approach is actually Francis's idea, which signals her faith in poor women's capacity to manage their own affairs. It suggests her commitment to a participatory process.
The meeting itself was generally participatory - women responded to our various questions and continually posed their own, mostly assuring us that our concerns could be addressed through group work and shared responsibilities. For example, we asked, "What should be done with male goats?" Women replied in various ways: (a) pass within a group, and mandate that recipients of male kids raise and exchange them for females, (b) raise and sell for profit which can be divided in various ways within a group or for individual profit. But Francis suggested women simply sort the issue out in groups. This seem fine to us and we welcomed what amounted to a method for decentralizing the power structure of our loaning program. Personally, I feel the fairest approach to male goats is probably to sell them and reinvest in the group by building shelters or otherwise investing in group capacities. We can suggest this, but ultimately such decisions will be left up to groups.
Another point of controversy we expected to have to deal with was the order in which groups ought to receive loans. Sam and I expected fierce contention over the pecking order. But as different groups discussed their disparate preparations, the solution to this would-be conundrum materialized quickly: groups will receive goats in the order they are ready to receive them. This is an obvious solution in terms of animal husbandry - you can't give a goat to women who can't house or feed them. It has the added advantage of ensuring those who receive goats are (a) serious about the project and making personal investments in order to participate, and (b) that their seriousness is manifest in sufficient group cooperation to get the group off the ground.
One thing worth nothing about the participatory process: a group of relatively wealthy teachers dominated most of the conversation save for a few select others. In terms of project methodology, this suggests that a more inclusive financial strategy might (a) organize meetings so that the poor, rather than the rich and powerful, sit front and center and (b) use smaller group meetings or individual interviews rather than clunky meetings with all interested parties. Since we are going to work with small groups,we will eventually hear those whose voices went unheard in this initial meeting. Another lesson: imploring women to speak when they're feeling overpowered and alienated is futile. When I tried this, several women insisted they agreed with everything said and that they would chime in when necessary.
More on these poorer women to follow. First a note on haves:
Sam and I took an exploratory walk around Shimbwe as women continued to arrive two hours past the announced starting time. We ended up arriving at the meeting a few minutes late. Francis animatedly informed us that there was a group of women already ready to receive goats. These were the teachers who are ineligible according to the loaning criteria I had announced at the first meeting. It was precisely this type of public outburst that, given the criteria, I expected Francis to steer away from. Sticking firmly to the guidelines already in place, I exasperate Francis and the ineligible group which had been angling for the first loan since we announced the project. Sam and I suggested some alternatives to a loan: talk to the Leta School and see if you can get seed goats for your own school after a few years, or get a loan from Duma after the eligible members get theirs. (Given our pending departure date, we can accept a statute of limitations on our criteria if necessary). At first we suggested teachers by goats from successful groups which would both bolster the project and give the teachers some time to raise cash. But they liked the idea so much that they decided to buy goats immediately through Farm Africa. At the same time, they are keen in maintaining ties with Duma. They also seem keen on launching a project that helps their own local community of Materuni, a village just outside Shimbwe, so working with them might help to extend our own reach. In any case, this elegant solution reaffirmed the efficacy of using criteria.
Another potential problem emerged in the course of laying out the criteria which directly affected the poor. When I announced loanees can't operate on under half an acre, women got nervous because most of them have plots of between zero and a half an acre with about a quarter acre being the norm. This could constrain their ability to build a project if they work off their own pastures only. But when it comes to pasture land in Shimbwe, there seems to be something more complex operating beneath the surface of land ownership. The women assured us not to worry about pasture area apparently they get the bulk of their fodder grass for free by cutting it from public hillsides. Unaware of exactly how this process operates and whether or not the available grass would be healthy for Toggenburg goats, we told them we would reevaluate this policy with consultation with Dr. Lockhart. It would be preposterous to loan modern dairy goats to people who can't provide them with the diet they need to provide milk in the first place, but maybe if they buy some feed, cut some, and grow the rest, they can run profitable home dairies.
During the last stage of the meeting, women physically organized themselves into their groups. We asked each group to name a leader to be responsible for attending all training seminars, training fellow group members, and to be the liaison between Duma and their group. During the course of arranging themselves, the women who had already formed groups and formulated plans to participate in the project gravitated into pairs or triplets, many of whose third or fourth members were absent. Among the women who had not yet joined groups arose a vortex of instantaneous group formation. Many of those who came to the meeting without partners thus left as members of groups which coagulated mostly according to seating proximity. Faith, a very poor woman who I interviewed last summer, was seated adjacent to a pair of women who were standing side-by-side to indicate their intention to work together. Faith hovered on an incline slightly above them. Francis asked her what group she was in, and with a two-handed parting motion, Faith attempted to displace the space between the established pair and root herself as a fellow member between therm. The original pair denied Faith's opportunistic attempt to join their group with shaking heads and firm feet. Eventually, Faith ended up joining one of the groups that formed as a consequence, rather than as a prelude to the meeting.
There is something to be said for groups forming continuously as the project proceeds but the last few groups that formed exemplify the sort of transitive, impromptu social interactions, instigated by a poverty-burning peer-pressure cooker, that would likely lead to dysfunction down the line. One good thing about our system: there is already a mechanism in place to deal with such groups. If they are indeed transient and dysfunctional they will fail to aggregate the resources necessary to proceed with the project; they just won't get a loan. If on the other hand, women inspired by the success of original groups successfully form new ones, we will have established just the type of social organization we intend to. Our financial product will be powerful enough to incentivize productive group work in a place where women tend to avoid collective business activity. We are not aiming to destroy the individual ethic that motivates women here. Instead, we are working with an intensely individualistic economic culture to develop the kind of collectivization that might allow women to get past some of the economic hardships they face alone to allow individuals to improve their livelihoods. As groups return loans, they might fracture into individually-managed projects. But at this stage of the game it is hard to think of ways for women to manage these goats alone.
Posted by Jake
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