Carmen Beatriz Choy - FAPE - Guatemala

Carmen Choy and Three Year Old Lacey Welcoming Guests to Their Tienda

This Wednesday I had the pleasure of meeting Carmen Beatriz Choy, an entrepreneur who was funded through the Spartan Global Development Network on my birthday back in February. http://www.kiva.org/lend/173362

I started the day in Quetzaltenango, where I'd been staying for almost 6 weeks doing volunteer work. Around noon I hopped on the long winding highway through the mountains and volcanos that stretch across the southern half of Guatemala on my way to the capital to meet with Manuel Garcia, the director of FAPE, a local microfinance organization that is dedicated to promoting development of micro-entrepreneurs.

Manuel had arranged my first meeting with one of our entrepreneurs so I couldn't have been more excited!

In an effort to stay connected to the actual needs and concerns of their clients, Manuel likes to get out into the field as often as possible, so he even offered to accompany me. After about an hour of fighting through a little bit of Guatemala City traffic and climbing the snaking roads that lead out of the surrounding valley we finally arrived to San Juan Sacatepéquez, about 20km outside the outskirts of Guatemala City.

This is where I first got to see one of our loans at work!

Carmen's store is located on the corner of a dirt road a little ways outside the hustle and bustle of San Juan, but with the bus traffic and local demand, it seemed to be in a good location. Her store, Tienda Jerusalem, mainly sells common household stapes such as bean, rice, sugar, flour, and some other snacks and beverages.

After we were introduced and I had a chance to explain my story about how I'm traveling from the United States through Latin America trying to personally connect the ends of the long chain that started in East Lansing, Michigan, passed through kiva.org, touched FAPE, and finally ends with Carmen.

Carmen jokingly mentioned, "Good things are coming my way if you guys are bringing another gringo all the way out here to my little store!"

She was referring to the first kiva volunteer that had come out to visit her as part of putting her loan up on the kiva website and how she had been able to grow her business after this injection of investment into her business.

We slipped around the back of the main counter in the store where we could talk for a bit while her sister attended to any customers that came by.

Carmen started off telling me how she began several years ago selling traditional clothing such as huipiles, the elaborate woven and embroidered blouses worn by the indigenous community. Eventually the volatility in sales of a product that takes several months of labor to make, and costs so much that most can only afford to buy one per year, left her thinking of moving to a market where sales would be more stable. In Guatemala, you can't get more basic and stable than the consumption of beans and rice.

One day when Carmen was going to buy some more huipiles with all the proceeds she had in the business from selling the last batch, she was held up and robbed. Everything the had worked for was gone. She had depleted her inventory, and all the cash proceeds were taken. She still tears up at the memory of the difficulty of this time period and the uncertainty that came with it.

Later, with the help of a loan from FAPE, Carmen was able to open a new store, this time selling beans, rice, sugar, juices, and all the necessities that sell everyday. She's been able to slowly build up her ability to stock more and more items to meet customer demand as well as purchase in bulk to keep her variable costs as low as possible.

Before it was time to go, I'd been traveling on dusty roads for quite a while and really needed something to drink. I asked Carmen if she sold water which of course I knew she did. She definitely knows how to drive a hard bargain. I wanted to help support a business I'd invested in, and she was intent on giving it to me as a gift. I ended up winning as she reluctantly relented to letting me pay...

Now that I think of it though, she only charged me 1Q($0.12) for the bag of water. She may have got the best of me.