the view from our porch!

A whirlwind summary of my whirlwind month in Chile:

Week one, May 1-7
Saturday: Arrive at 3:45 am, sleep on the airport floor for 4 hours until the buses and metro started running; arrive at the apartment I found on Couchsurfing; SLEEP; spend the afternoon with Sebastian (aka “Gato”) and Lily, my Couchsurfing hosts, Sebastian’s sister Katy (yes! the name exists here, which means no more having to repeat myself infinitely during introductions!), and her baby Sophia

Sunday: Go apartment hunting, find a number of pretty places and potentially cool roommies, but decide I would rather stay with Gato and Lily … make the proposal to them, negotiate terms of rent, and unpack my bags! Meet Isa, my supervisor at Fondo Esperanza (the microfinance organization I’m working with in Chile), and take a tour of Santiago

Monday: Day 1 at the central office of Fondo Esperanza (FE for short), meet-and-greet and set up my schedule for the next few weeks

Tuesday: visit a FE branch office in Santiago and attend my first communal bank meeting to meet clients!

Wednesday and Thursday: On the road to visit FE offices and survey borrowers in towns Curicó and Talca, about 2 hours south of Santiago, and the clients amaze me in their efforts to reconstruct their lives post-earthquake

Friday: back in Santiago writing up reports

Week two, May 8-14
Saturday: To Isa’s house in Peña Flor, a community in the vineyards outside of Santiago, to celebrate the first birthday of her niece. Drank wine, pisco sours, and discover that Chileans are also fanatics of dulce de leche (though they call it manjar)

Sunday: Let the cooking festivities begin! Turns out that roommate Lily is an avid and fantastic cook (not only because she insists on drinking wine while cooking), and that she loves to teach!

Monday and Tuesday: Back to the south visiting FE offices in Talca then Linares for more communal bank reviews; looking over piles and piles of client files makes my head swim, but it is really special to share the Kiva concept and webpage with borrowers. Technologically Chile is on a different level than Honduras was, which means that in many cases, FE clients actually have the capacity to check out Kiva.org and look at the information that’s posted about them there. Cool!

me with the group of women I worked with at Corazón Emprendedor

Wednesday and Thursday: To Valparaíso for a conference called Corazón Emprendedor (translates like “Heart of the Entrepreneur”). Put on by FE and other institutions, this conference brings FE clients (all micro-entrepreneurs) together to learn about business best practices, network amongst themselves, and to compete for the title of Corazón Emprendedor (this title comes with a hefty cash prize to boost the winner’s business, and a scholarship to a local university). INSPIRING!

Friday: FE’s annual reunion, where 240 employees from 30 offices around the country come to Santiago. Sitting through hours of presentations by motivational speakers, analyses of operations by directors, and workshops to discuss how to improve services is meant to promote team-spirit within the staff members. But we all know that the real bonding happens during the tug-of-war competitions in the rain and the costume dance party:)

playing dressup with the FE finance team – I love these ladies!

Week 3, May 15-21
I start to settle into my adventurous routine! In Santiago all week, I attend the first meeting of the Super Star communal bank which I’ll be following through their entire loan cycle. This means I get to help their loan officer Nancy lead bi-weekly meetings, where the bank members register repayments and participate in the business training course. Topics we’re covering now: How to identify characteristics that make you a good entrepreneur.

Lily helps me add more delicious recipes to my repertoire, and more inches to my waist. Good thing there’s an awesome gym a few blocks away, where they are giving me discounted membership in exchange for English lessons (again! what luck!)

Week 4, May 22-29
The 9-6:30 daily grind at FE honestly starts to wear on me. Mostly because we need to get reports submitted to Kiva in order to push FE to the next phase of the partnership (FE is a new partner as of December ’09, and still isn’t fully active on Kiva). Because of the earthquake in February, there’s a certain measure of disorder in the bookkeeping and we have trouble tracking down all the information we need for the reports. We are still working on this one, but all this wrestling with spreadsheets has built a lot of solidarity between Isa (la jefa), Valeria (the Kiva coordinator here), and me.

Friday: I escape to Cobquecura (7 hours south of Santiago by bus, and the epicentre of the earthquake, as it so happens) with Gato and Lily for some time with friends on the beach. Ceviche on the beach by day, asado and live music by night. Excellent.

roomies!


Week 5, May 30 —
So far we’ve had two types of cake to sample each day at the office because there have been a number of staff birthdays this week. This weekend Gato leaves for South Africa to follow Chile as they play in the World Cup. Everyone here is dying of envy, and poor Lily is anxious about her man leaving for two months. So she’s cooking up a storm, which means that there are also two types of cake to sample each evening at home …