Os Emprestimos

When I started learning Portuguese, I learned the word for "loan." Emprestimo. I thought that it would be a useful word to know when dealing with microcredit and business development.

I didn't realize how often I would hear it from individuals asking me for a loan. Queria um emprestimo, por favor.

Of course, the request is never that direct. Not in Africa.

We've been asked for many loans or gifts (the lines are rarely so clear) over the past months. This week, it was our empregada who asked for a loan. The conversation went something like this:

"Good morning, patron. How are you?"

"Good morning, Alzira. I'm doing fine, thanks. How are you doing today?"

"I'm fine as well. Laura is at school today?"

"Yes, she's at school."

"My mother is sick right now, but she's in Chokwe and I don't have enough money to visit her."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

(Notice my Western-style response: directly responding to the explicit statement. I didn't detect a request for a loan buried in there!)

I had inadvertently forced her to ask more directly:

"Could I have a loan for two hundred so that I can travel there this weekend?"

Even here, when my ignorance has forced her to be more direct, she avoids using the key words that I would understand: dineiro or meticais. Money or dollars. I almost missed the question. Then I realized that I had heard the key word: emprestimo. Still, I wanted to clarify:

"Two hundred meticais?"

She looked embarrassed, perhaps because I made the request more direct by using the word meticais. Or perhaps because she was asking for a loan in the first place.

Some people have advised us against lending money to Mozambicans. Their reasons vary.

Some people think that when Africans ask for a loan, they really have little intention of repaying it. In this case, if she had've asked for the $8 outright to visit her sick mother in a different province, I probably would have obliged.

Some people argue that we're not doing anyone any favours by helping them to live above their means. I'm sympathetic to this point, but I'm also sympathetic to her sick mother. And I would rather let her make a bad decision about her life than force my own decisions onto her.

In a perfect world, Africans would save their money so that they had some left over for a rainy day (or perhaps a more apt metaphor would be for a drought). In a perfect world, they would have enough to eat every day as well.

I can give her a loan because I can secure it against her future wages -- after all, those wages come from my wallet. But that's not the point. The point is that we have a cultural bias towards savings, in part stemming from the comfort that comes from a stable political and economic climate.

Africans have had too turbulent a history to be able to count on their savings having any value tomorrow.

Instead, African culture permits the borrower, not the lender, to determine the level and legitimacy of their request. In some ways, that's a freeing thought. At least this time, I won't worry about whether or not I'm helping or hurting.