Life of a Juhudi Kilimo Microfinance Officer

MFO Nathan Ng'etich at Juhudi's Head office

By Nila Uthayakumar, Kiva Fellow

“It was my first day on the job,” Nathan says with a wide grin.

“I wore a coat and tie, I looked very smart! I was going to work for a bank, sit in a swiveling chair, and swing my legs!”

Nathan and I are standing on the side of a road. The occasional share-taxi barrels past us, but mostly we are surrounded by the hush of farmland that stretches as far as the eye can see. We’re in the Southern Rift Valley of Western Kenya. Nathan is neither sitting, nor swinging his legs. We cross the road. The mid-morning sun casts our shadows long across the hot asphalt.

“I got to the office that day and they told me to go and get a cow from a farmer who was not making his loan repayments. So I walked ten miles pulling a cow back to the office. On my first day.” Nathan laughs, and I am incredulous.

Read more about Nathan and the life of a Microfinance Officer at Juhudi Kilimo on the Kiva Fellows Blog at Nathan's Office.