Apu Curi - Quiquijana Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to APU CURI - QUIQUIJANA Group, consisting of GABINA TTITO MAMANI, CYNTIA BRINILDA ALVAREZ CHINO, HECTOR CAMANI REYES, DORIS HUAYPA PACCO, VICTOR RAUL CANCHARI TTITO, YOVANNA YAURI YAURI, ELBERT QUISPE TORRES, VILMA HONORATA APAZA PACCO, JULIO CHAVEZ BAEZ, ROSA TANCO CHOQUE, CARLOS CONDORI MAMANI, ALICIA MAMANI YUPANQUI by Asociación Arariwa in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 3 months of this loan, Asociación Arariwa will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

I visited the Apu Curi group Tuesday afternoon for their first loan repayment meeting in the town of Quiquijana, about an hour and a half outside the city of Cusco. The town is so small that even though I didn’t know where the meeting was going to be held or recognize any of the members by sight, I was able to find it just by asking around. My search eventually led me to Rosa Tanco’s niece, who brought me to Carlos Condori’s store, where the group holds its meetings.

The group is named for a nearby hill. Apu Curi is a brand new group; just one of its members has taken out a loan before (Gabina Ttito, a former member of another Arariwa village bank). The members are so excited about their loan that most of them showed up early to Tuesday’s meeting—a rarity at village bank meetings. The group has decided to impose a 50 centimos (US 17 cents) fine for any member who comes late to the meetings, but no one had to pay this time around.

Victor Raul Canchari didn’t come to that day’s meeting, but his wife, Doris Huayta (also a group member), came early with both of their loan installments. Doris has to walk for two hours from her house in the countryside to Quiquijana, the small town where most of the group members live. She carries her baby girl on her back the whole way, and has to return in the dark, since the group’s meetings finish around 6pm. Doris and her husband took out 100 soles each. They haven’t yet invested the money, but they plan to use it to buy guinea pigs (“cuyes,” a Peruvian delicacy). She plans to buy the California breed, which she says bring a good price for being quite large but lack flavor. She usually buys baby guinea pigs for 7.50 soles apiece, then raises them and eventually sells them in the market in the larger nearby town of Urcos for 30 soles apiece. Doris learned about village banks from her aunt, Gabina, who had previously worked with another one of Arariwa’s village banks and told her niece about the opportunity.

Hector Camani and his wife Cyntia Alvarez are also members of the Apu Curi group. They each took out a loan of 250 soles. They pooled this money and used 150 soles to buy 20 hens, 150 soles to buy 20 guinea pigs, and saved the remaining 200 soles to pay off the first of their loan installments, since they won’t start seeing returns on their investment for a couple more months. Hector expects to be able to sell each hen for 30 soles and each guinea pig for about 25 (though he will have to spend a bit more on caring for and feeding the hens). Hector says that all of the animals are growing well and are healthy. A number of the guinea pigs he bought were pregnant, and three have already given birth. The babies will spend two weeks with their mother before they are separated and given solid food. Hector works as a taxi driver during the day, while his wife takes care of their home.

I gave the group a copy of their Kiva loan profile photo, which caused a lot of giggling as they noticed Elbert sticking out his tongue. In this video, I am interviewing Hector as he and Elbert laugh about the photo (sorry for the lack of audio and long shot!).

Note: Because of the delay between when repayments are made to Asociacion Arariwa and when they are reported and sent to Kiva, the Apu Curi Group appears to have repaid 0% of its loan, when in fact they have made one loan repayment. Repayments may take up to six weeks to be recorded and deposited into lenders’ accounts—please be patient!

Thank you for supporting entrepreneurs in Peru. As you may know, all Kiva loans are actually administered by local field partners. For the past couple of months, I have been working as a Kiva Fellow with Asociación Arariwa, Kiva’s newest field partner in Peru.

Arariwa (which means “protector of crops” in Quechua, Peru’s main indigenous language) became a Kiva partner in August 2008, but did not begin posting a significant volume of its clients to the Kiva Web site until early 2009. Arariwa’s executive director, loan officers, and Kiva coordinator are palpably excited about what they call “Project Kiva.” They are working hard to visit village banks in isolated, rural areas of the Cusco region so rural clients can tell their stories and fund their loans through Kiva.

Raquel Villafuerte, Arariwa’s Kiva coordinator, is passionate about traveling and visiting the communities of the countryside around Cusco. In this sense, she is perfect for her job. Others might resent the long, often uncomfortable hours of travel on dirt roads, and occasional overnight stays in distant communities far from family and friends that come with the job, but Raquel enjoys the work and always has a smile for her clients and her co-workers. Unfortunately, Raquel and an Arariwa loan officer were injured in a motorcycle accident last month while returning from a visit to a Kiva group. Her scrapes and bruises didn’t dampen her enthusiasm for her work, although she has avoided motorcycles since then.

Arariwa’s loan officers serve different communities in the Cusco area. Some loan officers work within the city of Cusco and hold their group meetings at the Arariwa office. Others work up to two hours outside the city and hold group meetings in clients’ houses or businesses. These loan officers still report to the central office in Cusco each day. Other loan officers work even further from the city (three to nine hours away), live in the communities they serve, and only report to the central office every few weeks. One of these loan officers is Marco, who lives and works in the community of Lares. To illustrate how small Lares is, here’s a conversation I had with Marco about a week before I went to visit one of his village banks, Tikarisun de Ccachin:

Me: I should get your cell phone number so that we can coordinate when and where to meet up.

Marco: There’s actually no cell service there, so I’ll give you the phone number for Lares instead.

Me: Oh, Arariwa has an office in Lares?

Marco: No, it’s the phone number for Lares. The town has one phone. Just leave a message with whoever answers, and they’ll come find me and give me the message.

The Tikarisun Village Bank is located in Ccachin, a rural community high up in the clouds in the hills outside Lares. Like Lares, Ccachin has just one phone, but it is a much smaller community and it has even less contact with the outside world. Ccachin is just thirty or forty minutes from Lares by car, but it is much more isolated due to its small size, its remote location in the hills, and the lack of public transportation connecting it with any other nearby towns.

For me, getting from Cusco to Ccachin meant a nearly four-hour ride in the company pickup truck down bumpy dirt roads. The trip was tiring, even though I had the luxury of traveling in a private vehicle. It was easy to see why villagers in Ccachin don’t travel to Cusco to get loans.

My visit to Ccachin really opened my eyes to the importance of extending microfinance to rural areas. When we talk about people living in developing countries, we don’t always distinguish between urbanites and rural farmers. In Peru, however, that distinction is very important. Peruvians in rural areas are much more likely to be indigenous Quechua-speakers, to be living below the national poverty line, and to have little or no formal education. They typically cook with wood fires instead of gas stoves, live in adobe houses instead of concrete or stucco homes, and have more children to support than do city dwellers. Loans are readily available to a shop owner in the city of Cusco, but not to a small farmer in the countryside.

The credit and education that Arariwa offers go a long way in rural areas like Ccachin, because micro-loans are usually the only source of external support available to small businesses like Señora Ernestina’s grocery store, Señora Victoria’s pig farm, or Señora Hipolita’s chicheria (Chicha is a traditional Andean corn beer). Marco, Tikarisun’s loan officer, is already the godfather of three of his clients’ children, an indication of the respect and gratitude the community has for him. Another Arariwa loan officer, Tula, who works in the remote jungle town of Pilcopata, says that her clients often encourage her to run for mayor of Pilcopata.

Arariwa’s staff is working hard to provide journal updates for all of its Kiva clients. Because so many of Arariwa’s clients live quite far from the central office in Cusco, reaching each and every Kiva client for a follow-up interview is simply not possible. Nonetheless, 27% of Arariwa’s loans have journal entries, compared with just 12% for all Kiva field partners.

I hope you have found this journal entry to be interesting and informative, and I’m happy to answer any comments or questions you may have. I have been lucky enough to see the effect that Kiva loans are having on the ground here in the Cusco region. Arariwa’s Kiva clients, the staff and I are extremely grateful for your support. I hope you continue to lend to Peruvian entrepreneurs through Asociación Arariwa!

Read the Tikarisun Village Bank’s Kiva profile and read about my visit with Evarista, one of the group members:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?action=about&id=95881&page=businesses&_te=mj

View all Asociación Arariwa loans that are currently being funded:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=119&status=fundraising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_te=mj

Best regards,

Cynthia McMurry

Kiva Fellow

Apologies: photo accidentally left out from last email.