Hello Lenders,
My name is Vivien Barbier and I’m a client relationship interns for Zidisha in Kenya. Today, I had a meeting with Mrs Leah Muniu and she showed me the path to her maize and wheat fields.
I meet Mrs Muniu in Karunga village during a meeting organized by current Zidisha borrowers to present the organization to future members. I’m very grateful to her for coming to the meeting. She agreed to share her experience with Zidisha with others. I think that she made a better job than I did to convince others of the advantages of Zidisha. It was wonderful to see how much enthusiastic she was about Zidisha. She explained me that people like her never go to bank because of the high interests rates but also because of the collaterals that are required. She even told me: “I prefer to stay poor than to go to these banks”. She is also grateful to Zidisha because it has been for her an “eye opener” on the rest of the world. It pushes her to learn how to use computers and interact with people outside her community.
Mrs Muniu has inherited 5 hectares of lands for her parents and she is renting 3 hectares from another villager. In February, after having paid the school fees of her three children, she didn’t have money anymore to buy seeds for her fields. She was planning to rent her fields to other farms in order to earn at least a small profit.. But then, in March, she has received Zidisha’s loan and things changed. She was able to buy maize and wheat seeds for her 8 hectares. As you can see on the pictures, the crops have grown well since then. The harvest season should start in October and we calculated that her profit should be approximately 45 000 Shilling ($535) in only six month. This profit almost equals the amount of the loan she took. It shows that microcredit loans can be the nudges to start a sustainable activity that will then be able to finance itself. This is very encouraging for the future of Mrs Muniu business.
Regarding the future, Mrs Muniu hopes that she will be able to buy enough fertilizer for all her fields. This year she didn’t have the money to buy enough of it, so the yield of her fields is not optimal.
It was a real pleasure to spend a few hours in her company; she is a very smiling and lively person. She made me meet many other villagers and taught me a lot about Kenya. At the end of the meeting, she offered me a delicious Kenyan tea prepared with fresh milk from her own cow and fresh tea leafs.
