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| Joy Kania stands with her husband Richard Wamara, their children Shiella, Silva and Sharlot and their cattle herd in Nyakatonzi, western Uganda. (©2005 Ami Vitale/CARE) |
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The large, long-horned cattle awaken as dawn creeps into the sky above Nyakatonzi, Uganda. The sun will be high in just minutes and a new day begun on the flat pastures of this herding community in the western part of the country, not far from the Congolese border. On cue with the first light, Joy Kania's household of 11 begins its morning routine.
Two nephews and a hired cattle keeper milk the cows and monitor the nursing young. Joy starts a fire in a small separate hut to cook porridge for breakfast. She dresses her youngest daughter, Sharlot, 2, and her son, Silva, 4. Eldest daughter, Shiella, 5, gets herself ready for school and helps her mother. Husband Richard Wamara supervises the boys tending the cattle and gets himself ready to move the heard of 60 out to graze. His mother, Ketty Nduho, rhythmically shakes a hollowed-out gourd filled with milk to make ghee, a kind of butter. In fact, everyone seems to be moving to an unheard rhythm, all perfectly synchronized with years of practice.
After so many stories about the dire poverty in so much of Africa, it's refreshing and remarkable to watch the utter normalcy of this family's routine. It's not that Joy and her family aren't poor — they are by almost any measure. But they have moved well past the daily fight for survival, and are in a stable place from which they can plot their future.
Joy, 27, began working with CARE in June 2005. Her basic literacy skills and natural leadership made her a candidate for CARE's "train the trainer" program for economic development. Under this plan, various community members like Joy learned how to help their neighbors form small savings and loan associations (SLA). Put simply, the women meet weekly to contribute a small amount of cash — sometimes less than a dollar — to create a pool from which individuals may take small loans. They repay the loans with 10 percent interest, which grows the pool, and the cycle continues.
| A meeting of a women's savings and loans group in Nyakatonzi. (©2005 Ami Vitale/CARE) |
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Joy says she appreciates the system she learned from CARE. "I had been in a savings group before, but the group disbanded. Under that scheme, they [a charitable organization] told us they would provide the capital. With the SLA, we know we are responsible for generating our own savings. This makes us stronger when we don't depend on others." By the end of September, Joy had trained four groups with 15 to 30 members each.
"I train them on the meaning and purpose of the group, formation of a management committee, setting rules, conflict resolution and saving," Joy says. "At the beginning, I had to convince women to join the group. Now, women come to me and say, 'Please, I want to join a group.'"
The reason is clear: It's the fastest, easiest way to get cash when you need it. "Women feel confident they can run businesses, but they lack capital. With the savings and loan association, some people who started with nothing now have some small capital of their own," says Joy.
Despite the obvious benefits, some husbands remain leery about their wives joining a women's association, usually citing some concern about the sort of ideas she might bring home. But Richard says when he meets a man who opposes the SLA, he has a ready answer: "I advise him — convince him, in fact — to allow his wife to attend meetings. I tell him just what the women do at the meetings and the benefits she will get. The family will have more income."
Joy explains that women generally undertake fairly simple enterprises, such as buying milk and making ghee to sell in the market, or buying other items at wholesale cost and selling them for a profit. "People have totally changed," she says. "Before, we depended entirely on men to buy necessities like soap and eggs for the children. Now women have coins to buy what they need."
Richard emphasizes that it's more than a few "coins." For herders like him, a family's well-being lies in this simple question: Are you buying cows or selling cows? With Joy's extra income, the family has bought three new cows.
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