I am at the halfway mark: I’ve been in Cameroon and month and a half. I have to admit I feel a small bit of pride on being able to adjust to life here (compared to the bumbling, stumbling, and oblivious me who spent 2500CFA on an egg and baguette breakfast). One aspect I’m still struggling with, though, is the slow pace of work at the university. I don’t think I’m behind on my research, but there are days that I’ve felt fairly restless.
To focus some of my energy and eat up my time, I’ve started volunteering with Helps International, a local NGO here in Buea. They work with a wide array of issues, including HIV education, literacy, and computer training. Currently, I’m working with the founder, Genesis (such a great name), on a grant proposal for a microcredit loan program for women in the Southwest province. The program is pretty innovative and well thought out. It aims to provide 300 microcredit loans to women, organizing them into groups of 15 women who are collectively responsible for the loans, so any women who default on the loans have to be supported by the other women in the group. In order to get the loans, the women are required to take small business management classes. In their pilot program, they’ve had a loan default rate of 1%, and a loan return of 100%. In addition, the women also are trained as HIV educators, in the hopes that they will increase awareness of the disease and any business success garnered from the loans will increase their status as opinion leaders in their families and communities.
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