So... can you guess by the title of my post where this is going? Sure you can. You probably knew it all along. Us, we are a little slow thinking we could make a difference and be successful. We have Franck, who lives where the marketplace is and Nick who lives 4 hours away. Both have something going for them. Franck is local and Nick is loyal. That's the only thing Franck has going for him. If I had my way I would have fired his ass months ago. It is unbelievably frustrating since their 2 salaries are the biggest expense, besides giving out the loan money, of course and yet Franck does not respond to me in a timely fashion and skirts around what I have asked him to do. Note to self: If you do this again DO NOT pay salary in advance. Even if you dont think you'll get back to that country in awhile. Never. Ever.
We have had two loan repayment collections... correction - that I know of. Don't get me started. Nick is the bomb. He calls everyone the Monday that their payments are due and reminds them. As for Franck, I need him in the OH office where the OH safe is on collection days and entering the payments into the computer. But I can't even get the guy to answer my freakin emails about the collection days etc... We have paid Franck and Nick until the end of March so we are going to have two more loan repayments before we end this tragic scene, take the horse in back of the barn and shoot it.
You know, this would have worked had Love a Child not hired an outside management company to run the marketplace. Funny thing is dude is a Haitian businessman and we have the Haitians best interest more than he does. The marketplace is not doing well. After many emails I find out that at least 35% of OH loan recipients no longer have a booth in the marketplace b.c they can't afford one. Remember the booth fees are almost $20 US a month which we balked at but nobody listened to us and now the shit has hit the fan (again) because the booths are going to be empty. People can't pay that much money a month. That's more money than some of them have maybe ever earned. But what do we know? We just want the people to thrive, feed their families, you know... the basic kind of stuff and they can't do it the way the marketplace is being run. We have found out that some of those OH loan recipients have taken their products and are trying to sell somewhere else. Our first collection day was a pretty good success. Now we'll see what the other three hold. Nothing comes easy. It's infuriating. Oh and then it gets a little more shady - we were supposed to have 156 loan recipients but we only have 149. So there should be an excess of $1,300 US dollars of OH money that we wired down to Franck in order to pay for the loans. But... drumroll please.... Franck has $559 dollars and I swear to you I can't get this guy to fess up to save my life. And my sense of injustice continues to beat a dead horse because I want him to know that we know that he is a thief. He keeps telling me he gave out 4 more loans but he can't tell me the names of the people because we only have 149 people on our list. WTF?
That being said, I am going down swinging and I'm pissed. Alisha and I have decided that after March's repayments that Nick is going to go to F.P. and collect the money that is in the safe and tell the recipients their debt has been forgiven. Adios. Caput. Nada. Zilch. Done. I cant get the hell out of F.P fast enough. There is shadyness going on and I sure as hell refuse to pay for an employee who has stolen or can't account for a $700 difference. And the marketplace isn't thriving. We did not start this thing in order for the people to be worse off than when we gave them the loans. So forget it. We (as in Nick) are grabbing our safe and getting the hell out of dodge. Or Fond Parisian. Same difference.
