Learning from the poor

In his 1999 essay, “The Poor and Their Money”, University of Manchester academic Stuart Rutherford challenged modern-day assumptions and paradigms about the financial lives of the poor by defending his thesis that “the poor can save and want to save”:

“…when they do not save it is because of lack of opportunity rather than lack of capacity. During their lives there are many occasions when they need sums of cash greater than they have to hand, and the only reliable way of getting hold of such sums is by finding some way to build them from their savings. They need these lump sums to meet life-cycle needs, to cope with emergencies, and to grasp opportunities to acquire assets or develop businesses…”

With this assumption- that the “microfinancial landscape” in poor communities is a vibrant and necessary one-I have approached my research. So what has it looked like thus far?

1 Survey

This 32-item questionnaire assessses respondents’ present participation in community savings groups. It asks about everything from the size of the group to the total amount saved to the reasons for which the money is saved in the first place.

To intimidate people as little as possible, I walk around the community (two different ones, at present) with a community member I pay to help me gain community access. This person (for one of my communities, the guy in my previous posting) also translates the survey as it is administered verbally.

The survey usually takes about 20 minutes, depending on how shy the respondent is, the number of groups they are participating in (1.5, I would say, on the average), and how busy they are at the time we come upon them.

2 Database

My Excel database records the quantitative aspects of the survey. Meticulous data-entry matters because I will be analyzing it at the end of my time here to sketch the microfinancial landscape of my two target communities in a way that is accurate, insightful, and accessible.

Whoever wrote the Excel program deserves a Nobel Peace Prize or knighthood or something. For amateurs such as myself, it is an easy way to make yourself feel legitimate.

3 Field Notes

The third step of my research process is a qualitative one. While numbers and exact answers help one to compare, make generalizations, and think systematically about the nature of one’s research, each respondent’s feelings, attitude, and experiences concerning savings helps to add nuance and insight to my research-and that is not an un-important thing. As such, I regularly write notes about my time in the field, and then analyze them through both reflection and color-coding, where colors represent different labels, such as “generalizations”, “user’s feeling about savings”, “effects of participation in savings groups”, etc.

If that makes no sense just click on the image below.

4 Mapping

Finally, each survey is numbered. These numbers are pin-pointed on aerial maps I have of each community, so we can see how the “savers” and “non-savers” are distributed throughout the community. In short, this is mainly for fun, since I’ll essentially only be able to talk to a handful of people (relative to the entire population of the communities). In other words, a cluster of “savers” in one area doesn’t mean anything more than that-we can’t assume that that is the community’s hot-spot in general for saving money. We can only assume that those households are themselves homes of people who save money.

(Map 1: Sweet Home Farm, an informal settlement. Map 2: Mannenburg, a so-called “coloured” township. Because of the scaling differences (1:1,000 and 1:3,500, respectively), it is hard to tell how much smaller the dwellings in SHF are-they are shacks, where the dwellings in Mannenburg are largely formal, permanent structures.)

5 The Caveat

As I mentioned in the paragraph above, the size of my surveying sample (ie the number of people I talk to) will not be big enough to reliably represent the nature of the community as a whole. For example: even if it is the case that 85% of the people I talk to (say, 80 people in one of the communities) save money in 2 or more groups, this doesn’t mean that 85% of the community’s population save money in two or more groups. So, while my research will be hopefully yield some insight into the nature of group savings in these communities, it will not be information from which it is possible or “safe” to infer things about the communities as a whole. Needless to say, my conclusions and analyses will need to clearly reflect this reality

6 And then what?

That’s a good question. For now, I’m sticking to the above three steps, working hard to spend as much time in my two communities as possible, talking to locals about their participation in savings groups. That is my only goal in the coming 2-3 weeks.

So you want to learn Xhosa?*

*One of South Africa’s official languages that is spoken by several Warehouse employees, as well as in the informal settlement in which I am conducting research. Prepare to feel ashamed of your mother tongue’s technical simplicity.

Taxi Rides

In Ancient Rome, transportation was largely limited to one’s own two feet. Thousands of years later, in the Western world, cars became popular after the Industrial Revolution, and today many households own at least one sedan or SUV. In many of today’s developing countries, however, technology and per capita income limit the transportation of common folk to something that is neither pre-modern nor post-Industrial Revolution, but somewhere in between. Behold, the taxi microbus.

Holding anywhere from 15 to 20 people and fitted with wheels that, almost always, have spun more kilometers than the vehicle’s original maker would ever have guessed it might, the taxi microbus is the city’s modus operandi for low-income residents commuting to and from work, the grocery store, and other business. It is loud, dirty, and cheap.

Waiting on the roadside, you need only to flick your eyes in the general direction of its careening trajectory to earn a “Hey, my bru, you want taxi? Come, my bru, taxi ride!” from the in-cab fare salesman. You nod slightly, gather your bags and jacket into your chest and squeeze into your allotted portion of seat somewhere, inevitably, in the back of the taxi. Once aboard, you find yourself a participant in the enigmatic, unspoken rules of the taxi ride. Rule #1: no one talks on the taxi, unless someone calls you on your phone. Talking is neither strange nor rude nor peculiar; it is simply and entirely inconceivable. Rule #2: you take up as little square meterage as possible. Pinching your shoulders together is not a good idea; it’s an ethic. Rule #3: you pay your fare of 80 cents or so at an exact moment that is neither specified nor agreed upon. In Pamplona, when the bull turns the corner and, panting with anger and madness, streaks down the dirty street, the bull-runners do not question the bull’s timing. They simply run. So with the taxi fare. You do not know when the paying begins. But when it does, you do not question it. You simply pay. (Note: the bull analogy is also fitting, as the average taxi driver seeks to maintain a cruising speed of 90 km/h. Again, this isn’t daring or defiant or because he’s in a hurry; it is status quo; it is thoughtless; it just is.)

When you are within 300 meters of your destination, you awkwardly yell “driver” from the recesses of the back seat. He does not hear you the first two times, so by the third time you say it you are yelling and from the corner of your eyes you can see the stares of the audience you’ve gained (they are only centimeters from your face, anyways). If you’ve timed it correctly, the driver stops within 50 meters of your drop-off spot, and again you gather your belongings, say excuse me to the overweight woman sitting in front of you with her three children and four grocery bags, and, ducking, trip your way to the sliding door in front. By this time, the entire taxi has seen your behind, and you feel, in a way, violated. Stumbling into the light of day, you feel like Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption or Noah from the Flood. You make an altar to commemorate God’s faithfulness to His people and, straightening up, carry on with your day.

Real life, abroad

Last Friday was a crappy day, for a number of reasons; progress in my research continued to be slow (more on that soon!), it was raining, and I was unable to accomplish several things I had meant to that day. Then, I was caught in the middle of a not easy Skype conversation with Rachel, and was unable to finish it because my ride home was leaving. So, when I got home, I took a crowded taxi to a flashy mall that is nearby to find a place I could use the internet, and to my surprise, found one. The waiter assured me it was free, which was surprising. So, I found a secluded part of the quasi-coffee shop and logged onto Skype, to call Rachel back, and to call my sister, Lily (with whom I’ve been trying to talk for literally 5 weeks). My internet browser then informed me that the free internet was free for a grand total of 10 minutes. I stared blankly at the screen for a moment, attempted said communication (to little avail), shut the lid, and went to this little place I had heard about that is, ostensibily, rich in culture, frequented by locals, and quite obscure. It’s called McDonald’s.

I bought a medium Coke, a medium french fry, and found a seat by the windows, watching the rush hour foot traffic and dim winter drizzle of rain from a place of sterility and convenience.