Betzabe keeps bees in San José, Nicaragua. Hitherto she has borrowed money from a community bank and repaid those loans in a timely fashion. Now she has successfully applied to Kiva for a loan of $3,000.
“Betzabe is an enterprising woman. Through the work she does daily with the bees, she generates income to be able to educate her children. Besides being able to improve her house, she has been able to have a better quality of life by devoting herself to her beekeeping business.
She wants a loan to invest in and grow her beekeeping business. She will use the loan to increase the number of beehives and purchase equipment (wooden boxes and frames).”
I was one of her 107 micro-lenders, contributing $25. This is my 30th loan via Kiva and Nicaragua is the 28th country to which I have lent money. I have had one total default in Kenya that you can read about here and one small default – $5.75 on a $25 loan – by Gertrude in Harare, Zimbabwe. She borrowed to buy food to raise rabbits and chickens to sell. The UK version of Kiva is Lend With CARE. I joined more recently, have made ten loans and had no defaults.
Bertie had visitors yesterday. They came from another blog: svarga on earth. Uppu and Theos are Venetia and Gautam’s sons. They live on a coffee plantation in India usually but are in the UK to visit their maternal grandparents and attend their uncle’s wedding. Here they are at home doing a spot of gardening.
It is a Garden of Eden complete with snakes. One of their dogs was recently bitten by a viper and when elephants move in it’s time to call in officers from the forestry department and perch on the roof for safety.
They played with Bertie who got rather over-excited and went to the cemetery to look at the peregrine falcons through a telescope. Three of the four chicks have now learnt how to fly. Uppu, the eldest boy, has adapted to living in London a lot better than I could manage where he lives.
Dear Christopher,
Do be a little careful in case you over expose Bertie to public scrutiny. Look at the royal children, Princes George and Louis, Harrison and Princess Charlotte. It is a fine line between satisfying public interest and pandering to the popular press. Before you know where you are you will have paparazzi camping outside No 56.
Kiva is a wonderful organization, and it is nice to see you giving it some publicity here. After over 200 loans across 65 countries, the default rate on my Kiva loans is just over four percent, which seems quite good for what probably are fairly risky loans. As you know, the magic of re-lending enables one to lend out the originally “invested” sum many times over. There is something in feeling one’s funds are getting fairly close the the borrower without too much skimming along the way. Something, too, in knowing a bit of the stories of the recipients around the world. An excellent example of the sort of good uses to which technology can be put (I can’t help but immediately think, “up with which I will not put,” but my old English teacher drilled it into us).
Strangely my default rate on Kiva is 4.1%. I haven’t had a default on Lend with CARE, yet.