Dia: 7

El 6 de junio:

Practica:

Made it to work on time, que bueno! Except no one else did. I waited for a half hour for someone to let me in and then I waited another half hour for Marta to come to work. Marta and I were suppose to go to Etla at 9AM to collect a loan, at least that was what I thought. Instead, when she got there at 10ish, she asked me to go to the market with her, so I did and then we made some salmon sandwiches? (very Mexican, I know). After this, we finally made our way to Etla with her husband who drove the company van, my bosses second in command (I still need to figure her name out) and Irma. First, when we got to Etla, Marta's husband accidentally hit a huge cement block that was in the middle of the road so, needless to say, that made the ride a little "bumpy". After that little miss-hap, we met up with a group of 7 ladies that are considering loaning from Fuentes. This was nice because my co-workers gave them an information session, which helped me out a lot. I learned that one cannot loan from Fuentes if they have loans (they call it credito, or credit) with any other micro finance institution like Compartamos and how the repayment structure works. After this we met up with the next group of ladies. This group is an exception to Fuentes; they call them "the rebels". This group has not paid in about 5 months and they do not want to meet. Apparently, the reason for this is that three family members were in the group together and they had a falling out, which caused the rest of the group to split up as well. Now, Fuentes tracks them down individually to attempt to collect. Today, just like every other time, we did not get any. However, I did see some interesting things. For example, we went to a market where Marta bought red cactus pears (delicious, by the way) and to a live stock market. How many people can say they have done that? I saw bulls, horses, cows, tons and tons of pigs, chickens, literally every kind of live stock animal in Mexico. Finally, after this exhausting trip, we went home. They left me with something to think about: what do I want to do for the rest of my time at Fuentes? Now, it is my responsibility to come up with a project to occupy my time with, and something that will help the empresa. I think I have decided to collect data to measure which variables contribute the most to loan repayments and defaults.