Fatuma Anawari
Location: Kenya
Business: Raising Chickens
Organization Link: Yehu Bank
Personal Facts
Age: 32
Marital Status: Single Parent
Formal Education: Two Years
Literate: Functionally Illiterate
# In Household: 4
Distance From Birth Home: 0 km
Rural/Urban: Rural
Microcredit Facts
First Loan: Fall 2003
Amount: $20 (US)
Monthly Business Income: Approximately Ksh. 700 (US$10)
From Daughter to Mother
Fatuma was born in a Kenyan village, the village she has never left. She attended primary school for two years, but family hardships forced her to drop out in 1982. Eleven years after dropping out of school, she married her first husband. In 1993, that same year, she had her first child. Three years later she had a second child. In 2000, she had another son. Her first child, a son, lives with his father.
As Business Owner
Fatuma lives as a single mother in a semi-permanent house built of poles, mud walls, and a makuti (thatched coconut palm leaves) roof. Her biggest personal challenge is to provide education to her children and to rise above poverty. In the fall of 2003, Fatuma found a way to do this. She joined a group in her village and, through social collateral with her fellow villagers, received a loan from Yehu Bank in the amount of US $20. This allowed her to buy chickens, which she began to raise and sell.
This simple loan of $20 helped Fatuma to follow her dreams. With her business, she has been able to fulfill the basic needs of her immediate family. Additionally, her three children are now able to regularly attend school. Her dreams are not limited, though. In time, Fatuma intends to build a more permanent house, obtain goats and cows, and purchase a piece of land.
Fatuma's biggest business challenge, she says, is in expanding her business. She struggles because of her lack of professional know how and skills in building her business. She has dedicated a lot of her time and energies to her chicken-raising project. Despite the challenges, though, Fatuma says she finds joy in the success of her project as she now feels she can attain her goals, albeit slowly.
Fatuma was nominated by the members of a local chicken-raising group to take up the challenge of being the main breeder. As the main breeder in the program, she was to raise 12 hens that could provide a high yield of a variety of eggs for hatching by the local chickens that she was raising with the other poor women in the village. This assignment could only be given to one of the most progressive and determined members of the community. The high-breed hen and cock are raised according to commercial-bird management standards, being fed and raised under intensive care. This calls for commercial feeds and medicine. At this stage, Fatuma saw the need for transferring the project to the villagers as an incentive for them in the project, and she has decided to concentrate on rearing her own local breeds. The ideas she passed on to the other villagers were well received and her impact is being felt through the new efforts of the other villagers. Fatuma also had a new daughter born in 2004, but remains a single mother—retaining the direct care of three children.