Alana Solimeo, KF9, Costa Rica

I am a seasoned gringa-tica.  I have made it through the rainy season and now enjoy the warmth of the sun…much deserved.  It’s a hard thing to reason with your expectations of a big life event, such as a 3 month placement in America’s favorite destination, the happiest place on Earth, because we know we’ll deal with the good and bad, fun and scary, beautiful and horrific.  The only catch is that just as the beautiful is more enlightening and refreshing than you could ever dream, the scary is darker and more lonely than you’d prepared for...

By Victoria Kabak, KF9, Nicaragua

Since arriving in Nicaragua for my Kiva Fellowship about two months ago, my time here has been marked by a range of new experiences. I have become surprisingly adept at pouring juice from a plastic bag into a glass. I am intimately familiar with the smell of burning garbage, the most common way trash is disposed of here in Managua. I have perfected (and passed on) the art of wagging my finger to tell a taxi driver that I don’t want to get in when he already has another passenger. And for the first time, I’ve gotten to see how...

By Victoria Kabak, KF9, Nicaragua

As the holiday season fast approaches, I imagine many of you back at home are starting to make lists (checking them twice?) of presents or of people you’re going to buy presents for or even of presents you hope someone else gets you. It’s no secret that businesses in the United States – and in other countries – experience a significant uptick in sales in December.

But I’ve learned in the past few weeks that this phenomenon isn’t unique to the United States or to developed countries. Many of the borrowers I’ve met with recently have...

By Victoria Kabak, KF9, Nicaragua

Before I left for my placement as a Kiva Fellow in Nicaragua, I was browsing my microfinance institution’s web site, trying to see what I could learn from it and to familiarize myself with the organization, AFODENIC, a bit more. I clicked on a link in the left sidebar called “Fuentes de Financiamiento,” or “Sources of Funding.” After the page loaded, I realized that, subconsciously and perhaps naïvely, I had been expecting to see a particular logo we know so well, that comforting, familiar green logo, with its...