Our tour of Opportunity International Bank of Malawi continues! After some discussion it seems that Marissa and I will be working with OIBM to construct their website and train employees on how to publish to the web. Today they took us to the homes of a few of their “success story” clients. I have heard so much wonderful hype about “microfinance” that I really enjoyed the chance to meet some of the people that have benefited from it directly.

We first meet Essime Mussa and her husband who now run a profitable grocery store in a town called Kaliyaka just outside of the capital city Lilongwe. The grocery is a one-room storefront with a large service window extending across the face of the building. An inventory of everything from soap, sodas, to breads is stacked up against the back wall from floor to ceiling. Several steps lead down from the store to the road in front and display the stores stock of maize and cooking oil.

Essime told us that her and her husband had decided to sell their stock and return to their village just before her husband heard about the group loans available from OIBM. Essime received a group loan in which payments where guaranteed by the assets of herself and 10 friends. If one friend could not make the bi-weekly loan payment, the missed payment was divided among the remaining nine friends and paid. Essime used the loan to diversify the offerings of her grocery and expand its stock. She said with the loan of 20,000 malawian kwacha (about $148.00), she was able to begin to offer more high demand items like maize and cooking oil at her store.

Since that time Essime has received and paid a group loan of 40,000 MK (about $296.00), and individual loans of 65,000 MK ($481.00), 100,000 MK (about $740.00), and 160,000 MK (about $1185.00) each time expanding the monthly gross income of her business. We asked Essime how the microfinance loans had affected her life she told us that now she is able to make a better life for her family. When Marissa asked for more specifics, she proudly told us how her store now has a brick structure and that she has been able to build two houses – one for her family and another to rent. She says with the expansion of her business she has also been able to buy two cell phones, a home theater system (yes… a home theater system… we know we all want one), and has been able to install electricity and water to her house.

Essime’s goal for the future is to expand into wholesale and to become a supplier for the other grocery stores in her town.

The next client we meet was Silvia Kamphonje who is currently repaying her seventh loan to OIBM. Silvia, a true Malawian renaissance woman, is a single mother of seven who has used loans from OIBM to diversify her struggling second-hand clothing importing business into a poultry farm. Both the clothing business and the poultry farm are run from her backyard.

Before receiving loans from OIBM, Silvia says that the stock in her business was not enough to produce the income needed to support her family. She says that the loans helped Silvia expand her stock of chickens and that now se makes enough to send all of her kids to school, buy clothes, pay school fees, and purchase enough feed to keep the chickens healthy.

Silvia received training through OIBM, along with her loan, which she explains helped her to give herself a regular salary and to know how to re-invest profits back into the business. She says her future goal is to build a second house that she could rent… Sounds like real estate is booming in Malawi.