Cameron's Mozambican Kiva Fellowship – The Story
Posted in Maputo on Aug 24th, 2009
The Maputan Ex-pat community often complains about not going out to enough “real” Mozambican establishments. I don’t have this problem as most of my friends are local Mozambicans who take me to the most Mozambican of Mozambican spots. At this point my favorite bar in Maputo is called the Casa da Cultura (the house of [...]
Posted in Microfinance on Aug 20th, 2009
Over the past couple weeks I’ve started to devote more of my time to Kiva MFI (microfinance institute) recruitment. Essentially I’m selling Kiva. This involves meeting with any number of people in hotels, cafes and government buildings, giving them a Kiva education and trying to bring them online as Kiva partners. While there is a [...]
Posted in mozambique on Aug 19th, 2009
ISH YOWE!!!The office has been full of laughs this week as I’ve been struggling to learn the basics of Changana, one of the native Mozambican dialects. The office maid really gets off on it, she started doing extra sweeping around my desk so that she can teach me more words and laugh at me. It’s [...]
Posted in General on Aug 19th, 2009
This has nothing to do with Kiva, microfinance or Mozamique and is mainly geared towards the middle aged reader. What the hell is bannaple gas? It’s the title of a Cat Stevens song and the lyrics are the following:
Banapple gas, oh Banapple gas
Everybody’s sniffing it Banapple gas
O-o alas!
All the world is stuck on it Banapple [...]
Posted in Maputo on Aug 16th, 2009
I spent two hours reading in a garden with this view
And then spent several more hours eating, drinking, chatting in this garden with my friend Cecilia from Peru.
Not bad, right?
Posted in Maputo on Aug 16th, 2009
A couple weeks before my Moz departure two of my friends, Tim and Kirsten, were taking a gander at my Mozambique lonely planet book (which by the way is about 50 pgs thick, not much is known about this place). What was the most interesting thing they found in the book? Ilha da Inhaca, Pemba, [...]
Posted in Maputo on Aug 16th, 2009
Someone once told me that my sister was getting married to a Swede. It was many years ago, and I’m not sure if I believe that person because it has yet to happen. Either way, yesterday while wondering the streets of Maputo I ran into the Swedish Embassy. Here is a photo of the Embassy [...]
Posted in Books on Aug 16th, 2009
I’m about 50 pages into King Leopold’s Ghost and it’s already rote with great quotes.
Congolese perceptions of slave traders
“The whites were thought to turn their captives’ flesh into salt meat, their brains into cheese, and their blood into the red wine that Europeans drank”
The Congo River
“So great is the drop and the volume of water [...]
Posted in Microfinance, Technology on Aug 14th, 2009
Today I met with people from GTZ (Dutch-German Partnership Energising Development) about a solar product that they are attempting to launch both here in Boane and in Matutuine in districts that are off the energy grid. There are two products 1) a solar lamp with built in radio ($40) 2) a larger battery unit that [...]
Posted in Housing, Microfinance on Aug 13th, 2009
That’s the title of a piece I just posted to the Kiva Fellows blog.
Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe, right? Well, yes and no. Although that text is lifted directly from the about us section of Kiva’s website it doesn’t tell the [...]
