The Finish line is in sight

I wish I could just download my mind instead of writing out all that happened on our most recent trip to Haiti. Luckily, we were able to kill two birds with one stone and while the Bloom Women's Conference was going on we were also able to graduate our 145 loan recipients. Yeah. Not 300 but what can I say? When you sign on to sponsor 300 loans at $25 bucks only to have the amount go up and up and up and end at $350 a piece you can only do so much.

So here's the plan. 145 loans. $150 each for product and $75 each for their first 3 months of booth rental. Yeah, they have to pay 3 months of booth rental up front. We didn't know that so as we are sitting in the office of the Marketplace Director he asks if we are ready to pay for the booths. Of course, Alisha and I look at each other with looks of pure panic. He needs a check for almost $10,000 that we weren't anticipating we would have to pay. Seriously. But I have to back up for a second because the marketplace isn't done yet and its been raining in Haiti so there is mud. Alisha was primping herself in our room before our meeting and I was just going as I was. I asked, "Why are you primping yourself?" She said, "because the director is very business savvy." I think you guys can maybe see where this is going. So we get dropped off at the front of the marketplace and have to trudge to the back to get to our meeting. Alisha is wearing fancy flip flops and she steps into mud. And proceeds to sink and then fall on all fours. I kid you not. The.funniest.thing.ever.
ROFL it makes me laugh just remembering it. It would have been a million times better if there hadn't been a huge container of water that she got to wash off in. Ha!
On this trip we had to also open a Haitian goudes account. We already have our US dollar account at Soge bank and so silly us, we thought it would be a snap to open another account. Alisha and I only had our passports for identification and the ladies were demanding a second form of ID. Which we didnt have. Never mind that these are the same ladies we dealt with the first time we opened the account and I know they recognized us. After an hour of getting passed back and forth we were finally able to get our answer - No goudes account for us. Well... in the mean time I had asked for our balance and they had written it on a tiny scrap of paper. Being the bad ass that I am I turned to Nick and told him to translate exactly what I say. I slid the tiny piece of paper in front of the nose of the manager and pointed to it and said, "I want to withdraw all of this." Ok. So I was bluffing. Badly. Because I knew if I walked out of that bank with that much cash we'd get robbed. It's a well known fact that the tellers in banks are the ones who will give someone the heads up when there is a lot of cash being taken out of the bank.  So back to me and my badassery - of course they immediately start back peddling and telling me to hold on and they would see what they could do. After 4 hours we walked out with a Haitian goudes account and the ability to manage our money online and transfer from one account to another.