Loaning all over the countryside

I'm happy to report that my new placement is great! Micro-finance promises to be a very interesting area to work in and the staff at Simli Pong and at the sister NGOs are lovely and very welcoming.

Simli Pong is part of Ghanaian Danish Community Programme (GDCP) which runs some excellent programmes here, including adult education, a radio station, a school, water and sanitation programmes and more. This week I went out with Ziblim, one of the loans officers, for loan recovery. It was great! The loans officers are legends and they work so hard: they are pretty understaffed, so each has a caseload of about 1,500 clients!! 95% are women, and all are are organised in groups, so every day the loans officers go all over the countryside on their motorbikes to all the villages, some close to town and some in very remote areas. They visit several groups each day, meeting the head of the group to collect the group's total monthly repayment. By the time they have visited all the groups, it's close to the end of the month, so they have a couple of days to sort out paperwork - and then they have to start all over again with the next month's payments!

Because the roads are so bad (very corrugated and frequented by huge trucks that force you to the sand on the side of the road and cover you with dust!) we went along these small winding paths across country, winding around rocks and tree roots and descending into gullies so that I felt like I was in a dirt biking rally! All the women we met were really pleased to meet me, and Ziblim made me greet them and introduce myself in Dagbani, which just cracked them up immediately, so much so that they would call their friends over and then ask me again 'What's your name? Where are you from?' so that i would do my spiel over again. I was also introduced to the chiefs of two of the villages, after Ziblim made sure I knew the protocol (it's always respectful to greet people older than you by bending down, but for the chief you get right down to the ground).

The place where I stay is so lovely: it's a guesthouse for visitors built in the traditional style, so there is a very cute little compound with 3 round huts with thatched roofs, a kitchen and a bathroom. Yet again I have landed on my feet accommodation-wise! Actually the office is pretty remote, so much so that they provide accommodation for the staff to live in during the week unless they happen to be from Dalun. Dalun the town is tiny, you drive through it in about 2 minutes, and it's the kind of place where there are hardly any little shops, there is no market day (they go to the next town, Kumbungu) and if you wanted to buy some takeaway food, the choice would be maybe fried yam chips (which can be pretty amazing if the yams are fresh!) or these little deep-fried bean cakes they make here. Apparently they chose this location because that's one of the few places where you will always have power and running water (it's right next to the dam that supplies Tamale with water).

(Speaking of water, the Jisonayili pipe-line dispute caused more fighting this morning, because people from Kanvili came over to Jisonayili and actually attacked some of the traders who sell by the road, burning their stalls and scaring them away! I went to see my dressmaker to find that she had shut and there were a few charred tables and stalls by the roads, so the whole area is up in arms.)

That's all for now, as I have to get home with my huge box of provisions for the week (including lots of fruit and veg which i can't get in Dalun!). My other reason to get home is drama: I am staying in Tamale for the weekend in my old house and we have all managed to become hooked, in the absence of anything else, to an absolutely ridiculous Venezuelan tele-novela called Secreto de Amor. Actually my subtle research, most of the women and some of the men in Tamale are also addicted. This is interesting because it's amazing that quite traditional Muslim women from northern Ghana really identify with these over-the-top glamorous people living in Miami... but then I also love the show! So if the tv station has no power at 8pm on a Saturday or a Sunday night, women in Tamale experience anguish on a level similar to what the nation felt when Brazil scored their winning goal in the World Cup! (Meanwhile the tv station needs to get a generator, I mean please!) So I must now head off to find out whether Carlos-Raul will actually track down Maria-Clara - his one true love who he has not seen since she was shocked to see him marrying another woman!