Farewell Mr. Capstick

I've had long bouts of bachelordom. When I'm home alone for weeks on end, what do I do? I rent documentaries.

A few years ago I acquired one of my favorite possessions: a pass to the San Francisco Library. A good way to spend a Saturday morning is to walk down Valencia to Market to the main branch in city center. The VHS rack is my FAO Schwartz.

Netflix can't touch the selection at the Library. You know how many good documentaries have never been distributed on DVD? So many! Plus, the Library is faster. I can walk there in 30 minutes and have a stash of VHS in short order. Try to put that in your queue.

Back when Kiva was a dream, I had a dream of Africa as well. I think many of us Mzungus go through a stage like that -- Africa as the final frontier. It feels so remote, so exotic and beautiful. The sky is so big. More importantly, it's a place where I can have an impact, and that makes me feel good (or powerful). I'm needed there.

My Dad spent much of his childhood in Ceylon and South Africa. From these places came great tales of adventure that filled my six-year-old sleep. It was post WWII and times were good for an American living abroad. Dad grew up in primarily British colonial settings. Hired help, Landrovers, snakes, small planes and skin diving are images that come to mind. English Patient material. I wanted to be like Dad.

In my recent adult life, my thirst for information about Africa took me to the documentary rack. I've rented old movies on the Serengeti, Maasai, Amin, gravel, big game, mau mau, gorrillas, leopold, liberia, mandela, leakey, pygmies, nubians, witch doctors and more. Because VHS are old, they are almost always shot through a white man's lens. The dream continued.

Kiva provided me a vehicle to live out a boy's dream of the white man in Africa. There was certainly something sub-conscious there that fueled countless late-nite work binges...the desire to reach through my computer screen to a land half a world away...to *connect* to something much more tangible than code. I've been to East Africa three times in the past three years and am hardly well-versed. Now, Kiva has a host of expert staff that make decisions about Africa much more rationally than we did in the first year after the Kiva launch. They do the traveling to Africa. I spread the word closer to home.

It hasn't been easy in Africa for Kiva in the past 1.5 years. The parabolic velocity of lending in late '06 and early '07 caused us to rush into partnerships during that time. Our lack of budget prevented us from visiting before partnerships were initiated. Lenders wanted to send their money to Africans, so they did. They sent a lot. In the majority of cases, this has worked out well. However, there are some notable disasters that took forever to resolve. This below is no shabby (sh**)list of partnerships that closed in bad faith:

WEEC
SEED
AE&I
WITEP
RAFODE

Behind each of these break-ups, there is a story. Usually, there lies a patriarchal figure who viewed his organization as an extension of himself and a Kiva which was way too naive. The abridged stories don't always make it far beyond the inboxes of the lenders and the partner pages deep in our website. But I've arranged them neatly for you here. The extended versions live in my mind.

Am I disillusioned about working in Africa? No, not at all. Do I have a distrust complex. Probably. It's an interesting question, why Kiva had so many early problems in one region relative to others. Here are some possible reasons:

1) Kiva's first partners were in Africa and Kiva was a very small organization during this time
2) There is more corruption in Africa than in the other regions where we work
3) Kiva was over-eager to work in Africa because it felt pressured by the lender demand for African loans
4) The microfinance sector is much less developed in Africa as opposed to other regions

I don't have the time to write an essay about which answer is correct. It's certainly some combination of the above, IMHO. Gotta go. In case you were wondering, I didn't work the whole weekend. I watched a documentary too. Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains, if you get a chance. On DVD!