In November, I was exploring Kiva.org and found Magdalene Suri, a lady in Cameroon who wanted to start a business in raising pigs. She is a mother of 6 children and a widow and wanted to start a business so that she would be able to take care of her children. I decided that I should lend her $25. Some people basically told me that I should kiss that $25 good-bye (especially since she is considered a "high risk" loan). I didn't take it to heart. Maybe I am naive, but I didn't believe that Magdalene would take my money and run. And even if she did, $25 means that we would have to skip going out to eat one night. Not a big deal. So I lent her the money. She got her full loan (she was asking for a total of $1,200) on 11/9/07. The agreement of the loan was that she had 4 months from the day that she got the loan to start paying it back (March 2008). I'm assuming that the 4 month time was to give her time to raise the pigs until they are large enough to be eaten. I was just checking out Kiva today (thinking that I would loan another $25 to someone in need) and saw 2 things that made me very happy!
1. Currently, every business on Kiva has been funded!! Apparently a lot of news papers have recently written articles on Kiva and all of the press has made the site very popular and at this moment, every business that was asking for money has been funded!
and 2. Magdalene seems to be doing well! Her first loan payment was not due until March, but she has already started to pay her loan back! As of today, she has paid 4% before the first payment was even due! Of my $25, I have already gotten $1.19 back!
Congratulations Magdalene! I hope that your good luck continues in 2008!
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