Saturnino

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Saturnino by Microfinanzas PRISMA in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 6 months, Microfinanzas PRISMA will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Mr. Saturnino Quispe Soliano is a potato farmer in the small village of San Juan, a three-hour bus ride away from Tarma, Peru. His village sits on the ridge of a farming valley that gradually descends from the sierras to the beginnings of the jungle at La Merced. Saturnino has the fortune of not only owning a house that sits a hundred meters from the village plaza but also having his field located right next to his house. He used your loan to buy fertilizer when he planted his latest crop of potatoes; the fertilizer ought to help improve his yield. Saturnino owns his field and pays a minimal 28-30 soles in taxes a year on it; his house is likewise his own and he has lived there for 30 years. Mr. Quispe Soliano has a 22 year-old son who also lives with him. Saturnino works from 8am to 5pm in the three hectares that he owns. During planting and harvest seasons, he often hires 4 or 5 peones (day laborers) to help him. He pays them 15 soles a day and their work is usually needed for 2 or 3 days at a time. Each potato crop brings in about 8000 soles in profits from the 15,000 kilos it yields. His next harvest comes in March/April. Thank you for supporting Saturnino; if all turns out well, the capital you lent should lead to a bigger harvest for him in the months ahead.

There is a 38 second clip of my framing the shot with Saturnino in my longer video about that day as a Kiva Fellow that you can find here: http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/12/21/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-kiva-fellow/. My flashback to Saturnino is at 2:54 if you don't want to watch the whole video.