A promotional loan (or "bonuslening") to Kakakuona Group from Tanzania

This post will be in English and will be translated later.

Today I noticed a new "trend" on my twitter account: Kiva was (and is!) doing a promotion where they give you a code for a $25 free loan when you retweet a certain tweet, or make a picture of yourself with the slogan "I'm with U". (See also here).

Well, I retweeted and so I was the lucky winner of one free opportunity to change someone's life! And why choose one person when you can also choose ten? May I present to you: the Kakakuona Group from Tanzania.

That's them!

This blog is dedicated to my Kiva-loans, and it's in Dutch because that's my language and I live in the Netherlands. So normally I translate the information about my loans into Dutch. This time I can just copy and paste the text:

Hamis who is in his early 30s is married and has one child who goes to school. He has been running a stationary store for three years now. He works from 06am to 07pm daily and is able to make a fair monthly profit.

This will be Hamis's 10th loan from Tujijenge Tanzania. He used the previous loans to buy more stationary and has paid back all his loans successfully. He used the profit to buy bricks, sand and covered household expenses. He is really happy with the loan and appreciates Kiva for supporting their group. He will use this loan to buy the missing items in the stationary store. He dreams of building his own house.

Hamis will share this loan with his loan group "Kakakuona" which has ten members who will hold each accountable for paying back the loan. 

There ya go. I love stationary stores... They're like candy stores to me, with all their stickers and pens and papers and little notebooks. Hamis must be about my age and is trying to build a life for his family, including building them a home. I like that.
When group loans are described on Kiva, most often only one member of the group is described in detail, this time Hamis. But I'm pretty sure the nine other men and women in his group are also worthy receivers of my $25.

They live in Dar es Salaam, and their loan will be for a total of $3,850... Right now they still need a little over $1000, by the way... (hint, hint). They will repay their loan to the microfinance institution Tujijenge Tanzania biweekly during a period of roughly four months.

Because this was a promotional loan, the repayments won't go to me, but will go to Kiva. That's perfectly fine by me. I liked the opportunity to choose where the $25 was going.

I hope Hamis succeeds in his dream of building a house for his family, and giving them a safe home.