A Jamii Bora Story-the Power of Tech Meets the Power of People

I’ve written previously about Jamii Bora’s biometric card and POS microfinance banking system, but I haven’t written about the amazing people we met there.  For as much as we talk about the power of technology, I think it’s important to remember that the power of technology often pales in comparison to the power of the people using it.  With that, here’s a story from our visit to Jamii Bora, one that I won’t be forgetting for a long time:

Jane* is tall, slender, and strikingly beautiful.   She walks and speaks with grace and with the kind of presence you feel around people who’ve figured out how to live in the moment for the most worthy of purposes.  Only with Jane, you get the sense that this peacefulness is still a source of joy for her every day.

Many years ago, married young with two children, Jane left her husband’s town for a few weeks to visit her ill and dying mother.  After her mother died, Jane returned home to find her husband had taken a new wife, leaving Jane penniless, homeless, and alone.

To feed her children, Jane joined a brothel where she would live and work for four years until, one day, a woman from Jamii Bora came to the brothel asking who among them had skills that they could teach one another to earn income and leave the brothel.  Several of the women raised their hands and from them, Jane learned how to sew and tailor clothes.

Jane and 94 other women left the brothel that year, were issued Jamii Bora’s state-of-the-art biometric banking cards, and began saving money and taking out loans.  Jane bought a used sewing machine and began making dresses and clothing to sell in the market.  She soon saved enough to rent a small room, then enough for furniture, then enough to provide for her daughters secondary educations.

When violence erupted after the 2007 elections in Kenya, Jane lost everything.  She and her daughters spent many weeks sleeping in the safety of the neighborhood Jamii Bora branch building.  Slowly though, with help from Jamii Bora, Jane rebuilt her life and her business.  Jane recently saved enough buy a house in Jamii Bora’s new housing settlement, Kaputei, out of the slums.

The whole room sat transfixed listening to Jane tell her story, but Jane wasn’t finished yet.  For Jane, helping herself and her daughters wasn’t enough.  On the day she moved into her new home in Kaputei, she said:

“I went back to the brothel and saw three girls about to enter. I stopped them and said I had been there and…they shouldn’t go through that door, and I could help them make money to have better lives.  I bought three other used sewing machines so they could get started and now they live in my house with me and until they can be on their own.”

When not taking care of her children, training her 3 young apprentices, or keeping up her sewing and tailoring business, Jane spends her time in her old neighborhood, teaching people how to avoid HIV/AIDS and counseling those who have the disease.

It was then that Jane shared with us that she has been HIV positive for 9 years.

Had we been anywhere but Jamii Bora, this would be a story of what might have been. Instead, it was a moment of celebration, of what Jane and thousands of other determined Jamii Bora members accomplish every day.

Visiting Jamii Bora, I expected to learn about technology, about how it helps the poorest of the poor.  Instead I learned about people, about tenacity and hope; and how technology isn’t always about changing people, but about setting them free.

*Not Jane's real name