At Magulilwa

Today we visited Magulilwa.  Magulilwa is an hour’s drive down some rather rough roads from Iringa.  This road will rattle your teeth and shake your mirrors and tailgate loose!  Magulilwa is located in the heart of the maize growing region.  It has many big farms and a lot of small ones.  It is of course the small farmers that we went to see.

As we entered Magulilwa we passed by the empty government SACCOS building.  This SACCOS, like most of the government SACCOS, went broke after about 2 years.  The story is pretty much the same as all of the others we have seen.  The SACCOS started and over 100 people joined and put in their savings.  Soon they found that the SACCOS was making big loans to only a few members.  After awhile the borrowers started defaulting and nothing happened.  Before long the SACCOS was closed and everyone who had savings in the SACCOS lost their money – sounds all too familiar!

We visited here last year.  At that time they had a little over 100 people who were interested in forming a SACCOS.  Just like at Magubike, when it came to putting in money most of them decided to wait.  Right now there are 26 members of this group.  They are planning to go talk to other churches in the area to invite their members to join, which we thought was a good idea.  The pastor said that the members of his parish are very hard working and spend all week on their shambas, so Sunday is the only day to reach most of them.  Peter offered to come on a Sunday so that he could conduct a class.

As we started the meeting Tom gave a talk about how Iringa Hope is owned 100% by the members.  He emphasized that all records are open and no one is allowed to own so much that he or she controls things.  He went on to emphasize that Iringa Hope was “neighbors helping neighbors” and that we work hard to protect our members’ money.  There were lots of heads bobbing yes – but it may take some experience for people to believe this.

Peter gave the lesson today.  He stressed the need to only admit trustworthy people who wanted to work.  He went on to instruct them on what they needed to do to start getting organized and invited the officers to come to our training session in Iringa next week. 

There were many questions and Peter gave good answers.  People here have clearly watched things fail and knew what to look for.  At the end of his talk the group gave Peter their appreciation and asked if they could talk awhile.  The pastor told us that they wanted to plan a strategy for spreading the word about SACCOS and telling others what they had learned.

Before we left Sandy visited with two of the members.  The first one was Odidya Kasike, 60, married with 5 grown children.  She told us that the income here is very low and the area really needs help with development.  She would like to get a loan for her 10 acre farm.  She hopes that she can increase her profit so that she and her husband can build a brick house and improve their standard of living.

Jaklin Mhavili is 37, married and the mother of seven.  She too would like to get a loan to improve her farming.  She told us that she knew how to improve he crops, but she cannot get the capital to do it.  Her goal is to earn enough to have her children finish secondary school.  So far she has helped one finish form 4 and another start form 2.  With five more children needing to be educated Jaklin and her husband need the additional income that they hope borrowing from a SACCOS can provide. 

On our drive home we had two extra passengers – the pastor and the parish secretary.  The secretary needed to bring his motorcycle in for repairs, so we loaded it into the back of the pick-up, and for his benefit, Tom drove at a much slower speed than usual as we headed off down the road.  

This road will really shake you up!

One of the first things we spied was a defunct government SACCOS.

The town streets were quiet today.

Sandy talked about the need for strong women in a SACCOS.

The first member Sandy visited with was Odidya Kasike, 60, married with 5 grown children.  She told us that the income here is very low and the area really needs help with development.

Jaklin Mhavili is 37, married and the mother of seven.  She would like to get a loan to improve her farming. 

We gave a ride to a member and his broken motorcycle.

Tom had to go extra slow when we had the motorcycle in back - still the ride was a real shake up.