Yours Truly, Salamatu Kamara

I will forego the philosophical in this post, and give you some concrete details of what I've been doing since I arrived in Sierra Leone last week.

My first few weekdays have been spent with Hope Micro, a micro-finance subsidiary of World Hope International-Sierra Leone that provides small loans for the Sierra Leonean poor. They have served over 26,000 clients since 2002 and operate out of 7 branches around the country. I spent time with loan officers from the Central Branch in Freetown, asking them questions about their work and visiting clients with them. These clients fall into one of two categories: petty traders, and low-wage workers.

The most exciting part of my time with them was a visit to the Sierra Leone Armed Forces Headquarters, where we collected 45,000,000 leones (~$11,000) in loan payments. There are so many soldiers who borrow money from WHI to supplement their income that the Army deducts the monthly payments from their salaries and pays Hope Micro in one lump sum. The soldiers use their loans to help their wives start businesses, to cover emergency expenses, or improve their standard of living. A corporal that I spoke with today used his loan to pay the tuition to finish secondary school (equivalent to US high school) requirements so that he can go to university. This will allow him to get a promotion to lieutenant.

Tomorrow I go to Makeni, the capital city of the Bombali district for two weeks to learn about the Mango Outgrowers Project, a WHI initiative to help villagers sell mangoes to Africa Felix Juice Company, the first tenant of WHI's FIRST STEP Economic Opportunity Zone. I will be visiting the villages to talk to ask them about how the experience of working with World Hope has been. Most Sierra Leoneans in the north are subsistence farmers. Selling their mangoes to Africa Felix Juice will be the first experience many of them will have with commercial farming. FIRST STEP wants to make sure that the process goes as smoothly as possible, so my job will be to interview them about both the challenging and positive aspects of the process.

I am adjusting quite well. I’ve been staying with a woman who’s been a missionary in Sierra Leone for 20 years working with various organizations. Two other women are in the house also, and they’ve connected me with a rather vibrant expat community, two of whom are from Grand Rapids. Small world.

Communicating and connecting with Sierra Leoneans becomes easier every day. The loan officers at Hope Micro gave me an African name: Salamatu Kamara. One of them said that it meant “beautiful woman,” because I am a beautiful woman. I asked her if she was flattering me, but she didn’t understand the question. I’ll take it anyway.

Yours truly,

Salamatu Kamara