Cathedral and The Loan Committee

This morning we walked over to Cathedral church and met with the officers.  We had gone to Cathedral last week to look at their audit report, but they did not have it.  Today they assured us it would be ready.  When we got there we found Pastor Mbogo, the old chairman, the secretary, and the treasurer.  They had prepared a “summary” of the audit – but still no audit.  They claimed that it was being held by the city government which wanted to include all of their expenses in the report. 

AMANI SACCOS was started by a local businessman.  It ran into problems when the businessman (the chairman) went a little crazy, started threatening to kill himself, and would not talk to anyone.  At this same time the treasurer died and the vice chairman left town with the records.  As a result everyone stopped paying their loans and the SACCOS filed to suspend operations.  This was in 2009.

Last year we decided to help resurrect this SACCOS since it was associated with one of the DIRA parishes.  Enock has been meeting with them and the government coop officers to get an official audit so that we can “unsuspend” them, collect debts, and move on.

We went over the summaries that they had given us.  According to their figures AMANI had 163 members when they stopped.  Their total capital was 24,945,900 Tsc (about $15,600).  They had outstanding loans of 19,859,900 Tsc ($12,412) and past due interest of 4,152,700 Tsc.  Throw in some very high (and questionable) office expenses and they had 240,000 Tsc in cash ($150). 

We spent several hours going over the Iringa Hope rules and procedures that they will be required to adopt.  The chairman was clearly concerned since they would have to change most of what they had been doing.  Tom also told them that they would have to throw out all of those who did not pay and bar them from life.  He also told them that if they really want our help they need to understand that we will have people arrested if there are any problems.  Apparently everyone has heard of Nyanzwa and what we have been doing there.  As a result they assured us that they were fully committed and would support whatever it takes.

Our next step here is to hold a general meeting to reconstitute the SACCOS, work on adopting a revised constitution, and directing the loans to be collected.  We also told the officers that we expected them to start collecting now rather than wait (You need to give 21 days notice for the meeting).  Enoch was invited to speak at the church about the things we covered at the meeting.

After the meeting we went over to the University.  There was meeting of the Iringa Hope loan committee today to review and then approve or reject SACCOS requests.  The meeting had been over for awhile when we arrived.  We did not know it but they had all decided to wait for us to come back before they left.  We were sorry that we had kept them waiting – we had stopped for lunch on the way – and wished we had known.  Everyone was happy to see us.  We talked about the applications.  Tom took a look at them and was very impressed by how businesslike and complete they were.  There was only one rejected.  The member from Nyanzwa had failed to show up.  They had tried calling him but he was not returning calls either.  This application was lacking in many items.  They had told the people at Nyanzwa what they needed to do, but somehow nothing was done.  So, one rejected and many passed.

We visited with the members of the committee for awhile.  We knew them all from visits to their villages and from the training session last year.  Finally we went over to see Dr. Richard Lubawa, VP of Academic affairs and an old friend.  Richard was very excited about what has been happening.  He wanted to know all about what we had found at the villages.  He told us that he never dreamed that this would be so successful when we started.

As we were leaving Peter, our intern, asked us to come back to the office.  He had been compiling some of the information we had gotten at Ugesa the other day.  The loan committee members were still there.  We looked at the numbers and then told the committee members what we were estimating about the SACCOS.  We told them that we estimated there were 12,000 people benefiting from the SACCOS and that over 2,000 children were being sent to school.  After they had discussed this for a little while they turned to us and said, “You are wrong.  Your numbers should be much bigger.  We think there are at least 3,000 children going to school.”  

We walked over to Cathedral.  It is right in town.

Itiweni made the meeting.  She is dong quiet well and will try riding with us tomorrow.

The Bishop heard we were here and came over to greet us.

We walked down to have lunch.  This tree is really beautiful.  It is in full bloom.

We walk by the old German headquarters building.  The Germans controlled this area until WW I.

The loan committee had waited for us to come back.  We felt bad we did not know this - we had stopped for a leisurely lunch on the way over.

Our phones had run out of money and we had forgotten how to load in more schillings.  These two thought it was funny as they did it for us.