Women ending poverty: WORTH notes from the field: The ordinary: beyond extraordinary

"I’ve just returned from a full-packed week in Mbale, Uganda after a one-week Management Committee Training in Nazareth, Ethiopia. Before we got down to model discussion and further training, the Uganda team had organized two days of “surprise” field visits where we appeared unannounced in front of startled and often flustered groups. Ugandans, usually so hospitable, were dismayed that visitors had arrived who they had not had time to prepare a song, a dance or a small meal for. We squeezed ourselves into the Treasurer’s house of the first group and I soon found myself sitting on the dirt floor, legs stretched out in front of me, hands in the hands of the women sitting next to me as they went about the business of paying their weekly savings and loan payments. Five women were making loan installment payments that day on business such as wholesale fruit and vegetable stalls, mandazi selling (a sweet fried dough) and school uniform tailoring. Each woman spoke about how she had been able to start or improve her business through taking her loan from the group and passbooks were shyly passed around showing the total amount that each woman had saved. The Management Committee proudly brought forward their rough, hand-made cash box and produced the 3 keys that kept their money safe. It was the biggest cash box I had ever seen! They laughed that they were expecting lots of money to come to their group and so they wanted to be prepared. We read the opening pages of “Road to Wealth”, the second WORTH book, in Lugisu and the woman sharing her book with me patiently helped me sound out the words in an unknown language. She told me she had also had troubles at the beginning.

These women were changing their lives- right there in the two room house they crowded into every week. In a way they were nothing but an ordinary group, hundreds of similar groups were meeting throughout these hills every week. Some of the other groups we visited were made up of HIV positive women, joining together to fight stigma and make a better life for their families. Another group had adopted a baby girl abandoned in the marketplace. This group hadn’t done anything heroic or noteworthy in their community- yet. But when I looked at the faces of the women sitting around me I was struck by precisely how Unordinary each woman was as she smiled and hoped and committed herself to her group and to her future. Sometimes the ordinary can be the thing that moves you the most."