Missionaries of money

"Today we are going to go to Rongai," James tells me definitively, and then, with a chuckle, "to spread the gospel there!"

The more time I spend working for a microbank, the more I really do feel like a modern type of missionary, spreading the word of Adam Smith up and down the African countryside. Meeting with the hardworking, yet extremely isolated Kenyan women who live and work in small rural communities, most of whom have never been as far as Nakuru not to mention traveled abroad, is an experience of culture shock the likes of which I did not expect in coming here.

On a typical day, our group of six missionaries convenes at around 8am in the office. The boys, James, Peter, John and Harun, are all dressed quite smartly for this town, in contrast-collar shirts and untailored pinstriped suits that hang a little loose at the wrists and run a good four inches longer than their legs. They don't seem to notice. Doreen, the receptionist/bookkeeper/all-things-office-management, looks elegant as always in an Italian wool skirt suit and pearl necklace, in which she must be unbearably hot all day but never seems to be the least bit uncomfortable. At 10am she brings us all hot chapatis and chai, and spends the rest of the day scurrying around taking care of all sorts of office housekeeping.

After a couple hours of paperwork, transferring onto the computer the registrations of new members from the previous week and verifying our accounting from loans disbursed, we head out into the field. In order to get to wherever we're going, we take a matatu, a fourteen-passenger rickety old van that usually has at least sixteen passengers, no seatbelts, and certainly no air conditioning. Depending on our destination, it may be as short as a 20 minute trip, or up to an hour and a half, each way. There are usually screaming babies, the radio blares local Kenyan music, and because the roads are so ill maintained and potholed (if paved at all), it is an absolute roller coaster of a ride.

Every trip is a combination of existing loan management and marketing. When we arrive in the village - three men in fancy suits and a red-haired mzungu - it is all too conspicuous that we are there for business. And yet, to my surprise, there is no resentment, or skepticism, about this. In the United States, when someone is in business, they are expected (or, rather, required), to bring themselves down to the level of their client. If your client wears jeans at the office, it would be inappropriate for you to show up in a suit. If your client is a blue collar union boss and has only a high school degree, it would be seen as snobby for you to discuss your Ivy League bona fides or deliberately use words you know to be too sophisticated for your audience. Indeed, I think as Americans we take incredibly for granted the emphasis on a "horizontal" society. As I've been recently re-reading Emily Post's Etiquette, I'm reminded that many of the customs of American business and society are borne out of our rough-and-tumble, anyone-can-do-anything, you're-not-better-than-me-because-of-your-upbringing, attitude. This is, perhaps, why we end up electing presidents who are "just like us." But this makes America unusual, if not completely unique, in the world. Most other cultures, in fact, want leaders who are better than them, more educated, of a higher social status. Here in Kenya, if you exhibit wealth, it means you are successful; if you are successful, it means you are smart; and if you are smart, it means I can trust you. There is no wariness of intellectualism here; in fact, for a people who lack basic access to education most of their lives, there is only reverence for those who have achieved it.

Nor are they wary of the presence of a mzungu. I thought, for sure, that I would be received coldly by tribal people who would think I was there only to take advantage of them, as generations of white people have done before. But to the contrary, they are excited to see someone different, and admire me for coming such a long way to meet with them. They also trust that I wouldn't come all that way just to deceive them, and that being American, I must be smart and successful in my own right. They want to hear everything that I have to say.

So when we arrive in the village, everyone is excited to see us. They know that we are bringing something that will help them to lead better lives. They also know that we are offering something that will benefit ourselves, and our business - and make no mistake, this place is a business. It is run by four men under the age of 30 with the ambition of having a national micro bank within five years, becoming shilling billionaires, and having their pictures on the paper for being the most powerful financiers in Kenya. But the ambition and - for lack of a better word - greed of these businessmen does not bother clients, because they are thankful only that someone has come to their village to pay some attention to them.

They are particularly intrigued, and excited, that a mzungu has come. I am starting to be this company's best marketing tool, not because I have anything interesting to say, but because having a white person come at all seems to lend a lot of credibility to the business. It's as though they think, well, this white woman has endorsed Imara, so it must be good. I feel a little uneasy lending my endorsement to a business that I barely belong to, and have occasionally had to keep my antennae open to the possibility that there is a scam involved here, but so far I can't see anything underhanded about the business model. One woman said to James yesterday that she was so happy I had come, because it proved to her that Imara really cares about her and her business. If they are bringing mzungus over from America to talk to us, than they must really want us to succeed!

I think it is worth mentioning that these women are not what I would consider, necessarily, "poor." To be sure, by American standards they are not wealthy: they live in small huts with mud walls, newspapers tacked up to provide some insulation, and have no televisions, no computers, only cheap cell phones to communicat. They own small little fruit stands or clothing stalls and they wear the most bizarre collections of Western clothes that come from secondhand stores in the U.S. (The best: a Saint Anselm's jersey, a pleather mini-skirt, a crocheted shawl, neon green Crocs, and a giant Stetson). But in their own right, they are prospering. They are fat, clean, and healthy. They have access to sanitary drinking water, there are schools in the community, they have all received their vaccines, and they sure do eat a lot. This is a different kind of poverty, not one of starvation and deprivation, but one of not having the sorts of things you might want in life at the top of Maslow's pyramid.

It is really incredible to watch what happens in the community over the course of our meetings. We usually have arranged to meet with an existing loan group, to accept their savings deposits for the month, calculate interest, and help them disburse new loans to group members (all of which they do entirely on their own, without us ever touching their money). But word spreads while we are meeting, and soon more women have arrived to hear what we have to say - some sit in and listen, others come at the end and ask if we have time to meet with them too. Sometimes three or four additional women's groups will form over several hours, and each will excitedly gather around to hear exactly what it is we're doing for people in this village. They listen to a sales pitch about the importance of saving and the opportunity from responsible borrowing, and they look on with fascination as they learn about the awesome power of money. To them, money has always been simply a utility - like toilet paper, or soap - something you use briefly but regularly, but that has no intrinsic value. The idea of accumulating money, of having wealth and growing your own net worth in time is so foreign to them that it bewilders me. And it is for this reason that, seeing the look in their eyes as they dream about a life where they will own a plot of land and send their children to school, I feel like I am part of a mission to bring them the knowledge of a better life after this one, and the means of achieving it. I think I know now what it felt like to be a Christian missionary in colonial Africa, spreading the gospel of salvation and heavenly reward. Except in today's world - for good or for bad - it is the power of money and earthly reward that takes precedence.

After our meetings, the women always ask if they can take pictures with me, and they line up one by one to have photos taken that they will never see. It's genuinely bizarre. They ask me to come back and before I leave to say a blessing for their house and their businesses. This was awkward for a while, but then I just committed to memory a few old Swahili proverbs and started reciting those when asked. As our group of missionaries departs the village to wait by the side of the road for a passing matatu headed back to Nakuru, children are just getting out of school, and they run past us in their neatly pressed uniforms shouting "Mzungu! Mzungu!"

These are long days, and most days are very like the one that came before it. But I am loving it - I've probably been here for so long now that I'm not even realizing all the amazingly weird things that happen every day. It has become quite routine to hop on the back of a bicycle on the way to work, or to stop and buy a cob of roasting corn while I'm heading home. I don't even think twice about haggling over the price of my newspaper in the morning (when I know for a FACT that the price they charge non-mzungus is only 30 shillings, I refuse to pay 50), or eating with my hands because it is simply an easier way to handle ugali and spinach. I am incredibly thankful for the experience - as routine as it has now become! - to come and really experience life working as a missionary in East Africa.

I also know, though I think I had very little direct impact while here, that I have been a part of something that will be life changing for the women involved, and perhaps completely revolutionary the world over in the coming decade. Just seeing the viral growth of interest in banking in communities that have had no previous access, it is like witnessing a Third Great Awakening, one in which the regular, working people of the world will have a chance to make something of themselves beyond what they were born into. And that, alone, is a satisfying mission.