Emelda Makoga

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Emelda Makoga by Sero Lease and Finance Ltd. (SELFINA) in Tanzania. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 5 months, Sero Lease and Finance Ltd. (SELFINA) will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Mambo from Mbarali! The purpose of this journal is to update you on Emelda Makoga, a SELFINA client and micro-entrepreneur, who received a loan from you through Kiva.

I had the opportunity to speak with Emelda during my visit to the Mbarali branch of SELFINA, Mbarali is a town of 200,000 people in the south of Tanzania and Emelda is one of the first women in the region to receive a loan from Kiva. Emelda runs a butcher shop in Mbarali from which she sells kitimoto, which is pork in Swahili. The origin of the word kitimoto is culturally interesting – the Tanzanian population is spilt about evenly between Christians and Muslims. As Islam prohibits Muslims from eating pork, most local restaurants in Tanzania steer clear of serving any pork because they do not want to alienate Muslim customers who fear that their food might inadvertently include some. Over the past few years, the demand for pork among Christians has grown to the point where there are now exclusive butchers and restaurants serving pork or kitimoto – because pork is in such high demand in these places, it often takes a while to procure and then prepare the meat for the long lines of customers. Thus the name kitimoto – kiti meaning chair in Swahili and moto meaning hot, the reference here is that waiting for your meal will take so long that you will warm your seat at the restaurant rather well!

Emelda used her loan of 300,000TSh (convert this to USD!!) to purchase 15 pigs for her shop, which she has proceeded to butcher and sell to a long line of customers one after another. The loan has helped her business to expand greatly and her monthly profits have increased from $40 to $350!! This is because while before Emelda only had the capital to purchase 10 pigs per month, this loan has allowed her to buy more than 30 pigs per month to satisfy the huge demand for kitimoto. She is a wise woman who has put this huge increase in profits to good use – in addition to repaying her loan, she is using the money to build a house, pay school fees for her children, pay utility bills, and buy more and better food for her family. Emelda is married with two children, one of whom is in school. In the future, she is planning to take a second loan of $450 from SELFINA in order to renovate and refurbish her butcher shop and equipment, as well as to continue to be able to buy pigs in large quantities for her business.

SELFINA aims to continue to assist Emelda and other women like her and empower them towards financial security and increased confidence through microloans. Thank you for your generosity in supporting Stella! To continue to lend to SELFINA borrowers, please click here:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=90&status=All&sortBy=New+to+Old&_tpg=fb