Post for Kiva Lenders

Each Kiva Fellow, at the end of his or her placement, composes a note to all of people who lent money to clients of their partner microfinance institution. This is what I wrote:

My name is Alexis Ditkowsky and I am writing to you today to thank you for your generous support of microfinance clients served by Women’s Development Businesses (WDB) in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. I served in the 14th class of Kiva Fellows and was the second Fellow placed in South Africa.

Over the past three months, I have seen for myself the impact that small loans have had on the lives and businesses of rural Zulu women. While each woman’s situation was different, most were supporting multiple family members with their earnings, most were eligible (and enthusiastically used) government child support grants to send the children in their care to school, many had lost multiple family members to premature death (I never asked why but KZN has the highest HIV infection rate in South Africa, estimated at 40% for women aged 15-49), and all of the women I met just wanted to see their family well fed, living in a sturdy home, educated for as long as they wanted to be in school, and taking advantage of the opportunities they did not have for themselves.

If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to explore the posts about South Africa on the Kiva Fellows blog, I encourage you to take a moment to read more about specific borrowers, life in KZN, and what WDB has been working on during their pilot partnership with Kiva. Here’s a list of posts from my time in the field:

Spazas + Tuck Shops: Corner Stores in South Africa
Photos from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Database Detective: South Africa Edition
The Meaning of “Now” in South Africa
Next Steps for Kiva’s Partner in South Africa
First Borrower Visit (Take 350+)
A Hand-Delivered Kiva Fellow
Drawings from Training and Greetings from Boston

I’ll leave you with a short video that provides a snapshot of the gratitude WDB’s clients express at the start of their group meetings. The hymn translates to:

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful grace
We raise our hands
With our knees we bow
With our mouth we sing
For this wonderful grace

From all of the borrowers who have benefited from your support, Siyabonga! (We thank you!)

Alexis Ditkowsky, KF14, South Africa

Blogging Break

Well, to be accurate, I’ve still been blogging but in my capacity as a Kiva Fellow. I just haven’t had much to say on the personal front, mostly because Richards Bay is without a doubt the most boring place I’ve ever lived and we’re still playing the waiting game when it comes to Dan’s continuing education this fall. Just doesn’t make for riveting dispatches. So, while Dan is forcing himself awake right now with some coffee, I’m going to post a few more Thailand pictures so at some point I can finally, officially move on to safaris pics and Mozambique.

First full day in Bangkok

Classic BKK pic. I think tourists are pretty much required to take a picture like this.

Wandering around by the train station

Waiting for our night train to Chiang Mai

Trains always have the best lighting schemes

Interior detail

It's so nice when everyone gets along...

Doesn't Dan look like he's having a great time?

Getting close to Chiang Mai. A few more pics coming soon.

Our Peace Corps Story

This blog post will be longer than most (and with fewer pictures) but I promise there will be plenty of juicy details.

So, like many people in their early to mid-twenties, my now-husband and I decided that we were ready for an adventure and actually had a few skills/experiences that might be of value to someone. So we applied for the Peace Corps in June 2008, had our interview in September, and were nominated to go to Jordan by October or so. We received our medical forms in the mail, went to our appointments, and sent everything back.

We were expecting a wait since our placement wasn’t until October 2009 and you have to be married for at least six months before getting sent anywhere. But then the letters started coming. I, like just about every woman at some point in her life, had had an abnormal pap smear. I hadn’t been concerned since my doctor, my friends, and the Internet had all made it quite clear that this was very common, wasn’t a big deal, and just required occasional monitoring. Unfortunately, this was a show-stopper with Peace Corps and it became clear that their de facto policy was that you couldn’t receive medical clearance until you had a normal pap smear. I wish I could have taken pictures of the expressions on all of my medical providers’ faces when I told them that. The general response was something along the lines of “Based on what medical reason exactly??!!” My doctor even wrote two very strongly worded letters pleading my case and arguing with the validity of their policy.

This was frustrating but I was being a good sport. My husband and I extended our time in South Africa by a month, got our Teaching English as a Foreign Language certifications when we returned to the States, and ended up moving back to the east coast for seven months to work on short-term projects. (Ashoka’s Changemakers for me, the US Census and the New York Philharmonic for Dan.)

But at a certain point in March 2010, I snapped. I had been in active contact with the medical office and kept hearing the same story. Finally, I decided to reach out to our recruiter to see if she had any suggestions or a new perspective. After over a week of no response, I started getting really worked up. I was sick of being stonewalled and was ready to get a little reckless. My friend suggested I just send an email to the Director of the Peace Corps since he was a former volunteer and might be sympathetic to our situation. So I did that. And I found the email addresses for recruiters in the many cities in which I’ve been based. And I emailed them. And I emailed the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of Medical Services, and the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity to initiate an investigation into whether or not this aspect of Peace Corps’ screening process was discriminatory against women. And then I emailed my senators in all the states I paid taxes in last year. I even mulled going to the press but thought it best to wait until we had exhausted our other channels. What can I say? We were still optimistic (or at least curious) after all of the nonsense.

In the meantime, I did more research and found discrepancies in what Peace Corps claimed their policies were versus the pdf of their screening procedures that I found online. I took a lot of pleasure in pointing these out to someone in the Office of Medical Services one morning after a poor night’s sleep. Let’s just say, I was definitely not having it.

Also, I wouldn’t shut up about it. I was telling everyone I met about Peace Corps’ ridiculous policy. And then one night, I met someone with a direct connection to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s office. Let me say quickly that I heard back from Senator Schumer’s office, Senator Feinstein’s office, and Senator Boxer’s office but Senator Gillibrand’s office was on the ball. I have no doubt that her office’s involvement contributed to a very satisfying conclusion by the end of April.

Before I get to the conclusion, I should tell you that the night of my first email blast, I felt sick to my stomach. I wondered if I was actually so crazy and so stubborn as to email several dozen strangers about my medical situation and expect anything good to come of it. But I really am that crazy and that stubborn so I just went for it and interacted with a number of very thoughtful people along the way. Many couldn’t do much but offer me moral support but compared to the non-attention I’d received before, this felt pretty great.

On April 17, 2010, the Office of the Director of the Peace Corps got back to me. They had changed their stupid policy. Now women with certain abnormal results can serve provided they get a note from their doctor. In addition to being ecstatic, partly for the benefit to myself and to other women and partly for winning after a protracted battle, I couldn’t help but feel that democracy might actually work provided you’re annoying enough to get shit done but not so annoying that people think you’re crazy.

~

Ironically, after all that hard work, my husband and I have decided that Peace Corps service is not in our future. We’ve got other exciting things going on – working and volunteering in Malaysia, a Kiva Fellowship in January, and plenty of other potential plans ranging from intensive Spanish and surfing lessons in Costa Rica, hanging out with my brother on a wine farm in Slovenia, boat-building apprenticeships in Greece, and maybe even getting traditional jobs at some point (or maybe not). But, like many things that have happened this past year, Peace Corps has given us a whole helluva lot to talk about so thanks for that, Peace Corps! I also hope that my efforts have opened up service to more women, who, quite frankly, are the key to connecting with families in the developing world. Why Peace Corps doesn’t make every possible accommodation of female volunteers is a mystery to me. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about it any more.

To end things, two pics from our “home” in Malaysia. New definition of “home” – anywhere you can actually unpack your bags.

Day

Evening

Santa Cruz

Until you actually decipher Adam's handwriting, his evaluation looks more like a threat than a compliment

This post has nothing to do with social enterprise (other than I did get to finish reading Ellen Johnson‘s biography and I started re-reading The Bottom Billion while on the plane).

Last week, my family converged in Santa Cruz, CA for my brother’s final dinner for his culinary program. Adam summed it up best on his evaluation card, “It was like a party in my mouth and everyone was invited.”

As always happens in Santa Cruz, we ate lots of delicious food, drank fantastic wine (courtesy of JP’s employer Bonny Doon), spent hours walking around town and along the beach, and generally had a very vacation-y vacation. In fact, I didn’t want to leave. If I’m going to be working from home, why not work from home 1/4 mile from the beach? I think I learned an important life lesson on this trip….

And now for a few random pics:

Mega Shark

Acrobats

The boys

Bonny Doon

Lamps

Blogging and Family Pics

Well, it’s up! Check out the Acumen Fund Blog to read about how three generations of women connected to Jacqueline Novogratz’s The Blue Sweater. Plus, you can see a funny picture of my family on a stagecoach in Utah circa 1991.

In honor of that picture, I’m going to post a few pics from a family vacation to Hungary and Romania in 2007 that are hopefully a little less embarrassing. Enjoy!

JP and Adam in Viscri, Romania

Adam at the airport

My mom and Adam in Budapest

The parents

Three long lost relatives. Just kidding. Those are creepy dolls.

I think there's a reflection of me in here somewhere

Cross Cultural Experience: Kiva

From Behind the Brasov Sign

I pressured my family into going to Romania a few summers ago (August 2007). One brother would have preferred the Czech Republic, the other wanted to play video games, and my parents were just angling for “family time”. So I suggested Romania, a country I hadn’t been to before and that I hoped would take me a little further from my comfort zone. To be fair, I love the familiar routine of travel: packing, departing, arriving, orienting myself, getting lost, learning a few phrases, attempting to communicate said phrases, eating, catching a few sites, and most of all, feeling like I’ve made the acquaintance of someplace new (and hopefully of a few new people). So when I travel, I try to go to places that will introduce me to new ideas and cultures and histories; places that will challenge me to reconsider my relationship to the world.

Which leads me back to Romania. In Brasov, my family rented an apartment in a Communist-era building outside of the Baroque city center. While it was no Hilton, it was actually quite spacious, complete with a balcony and an elevator that worked most of the time. More than anything, it gave us a taste of what it might be like to actually live there. At the little grocery store across the street my mom and I practiced whatever Romanian we could muster, primarily “good day”, “please”, “thank you”, “how much”, and “goodbye”. And at the restaurants in town, we tried the local specialties. Sarmale was a family favorite, but we also took it upon ourselves to visit a few pizzerias lest we forget Romania’s Latin history.

We used Brasov as a jumping off point for exploring Transylvania. I even played chauffeur one day, which led to a near altercation with the backseat drivers. My mom and I wanted to go down a dirt road that, according to our map, would lead us to a Saxon village. The men in my family weren’t pleased, but as far as my mom and I were concerned, this sounded like just the adventure you hope for while traveling (although I will grant them that the weathered old woman ahead of us carrying an enormous scythe could have been perceived as a bad omen). But despite their protests, I kept driving and we had quite the time dodging potholes, taking in the scenery, and occasionally pulling off the road to let other cars pass.

We eventually arrived in Viscri, where the undisputed highlight was a tour of the town’s fortified church led by a local Saxon woman. Born in Transylvania before World War II, she told us that, for her son, German was his Muttersprache (mother tongue), Romanian was his Landsprache (country’s language), and he studied Russian in school as his Fremdspache (foreign language). Her statement was disarmingly straightforward, but it managed to convey her family’s experience of the changing borders and transient nationalities that have plagued Europe since the rise of the nation-state. She, like millions of others, had been caught in the middle of the twentieth century’s power plays and political machinations. And here she was, telling us about it in German and French. This for me was the perfect travel moment: taking a chance on a dirt road, meeting someone who brings history to life, and learning a little more about the lives of others.

Saxon Bed

Saxon Steps