Microfinance with a whole new outlook

Back in beautiful Tassette, my co-trainees and I happened to stumble upon a women’s microfinance group meeting. The meeting was apparently scheduled to take place under the glorious and shady Neem tree that we study under every day, so the meeting actually kind of came to us. I was so excited to sit in on the women’s tontine because I became interested in Tontines while I was studying in Cameroon and ended up doing multiple studies about them in the States. A tontine is a group of individuals who meet periodically and each contribute an agreed amount of money (or good or service) for every meeting. The sum of money is then given to one investor of the group, who can spend the money how he/she wishes. Every investor takes a turn taking the money and then the cycle is repeated. It’s an informal type of credit and lending, but is extremely important in rural Africa and to the informal economy. The tontine we sat in on was only for married females in the community. It began with about 30 women but now consists of 140 women who meet every 10 days and contribute 2000 CFA (about 4 USD). That equates to 280,000 CFA (about 560 USD) for each participate to take once a cycle. We talked with one of women in the tontine, and she spent her money on buying a refrigerator for her family, which she uses to sell ice and bisaap (ice cold sugary drinks) in her community.

Not only do tontines serve an important economic purpose in Senegal, but they also serve an important social function. The attendees were dressed in their finest clothes and make-up all done up. No men were allowed to attend the meeting. The women showed up with babies on their backs and greeted and chatted for a while. Then a few women flipped over some tin bowls and started jamming out (I haven’t met anyone in Senegal who doesn’t have crazy awesome rhythm). Women got up in 2s and 3s and started breaking out some crazy dance moves and then there was some crazy skirt flapping. The dancing evolved into women whipping open their wrap-skirts and flashing a sexy loosely knit under slips and “bins bins” (sexy beads). Up to this point, I was told that it was inappropriate to show your knees in Senegal, so I was pretty taking back when I witnessed the “vagina dance” with all these conservative married women. The dancing also involved a decent amount of pelvic trusting and thrashing – sometimes in your face. There were a few times when the women would pull me and the other female PCT up to the center of the mayhem to bust out our moves. I have to say, I wasn’t able to go full frontal with the village kindergarten teacher present (who, by the way, is the best / craziest dancer of them all). Perhaps that would be the moment when I can say I have actually assimilated into Senegalese culture. Something to ponder. Anyway, so informal microfinance institutions just took on a whole new spin for me. Loving it!