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I have to confess that only 12 months ago, I didn't know the Grameen Bank, I didn't know anything about microcredit, I didn't know anything about your fantastic experience. But since last September, when I heard for the first time about you on the French radio France Inter, I am gradually walking out of my distressing ignorance, after reading your book Vers un monde sans pauvrete and some other articles in different papers.
I would like to relate a modest story.
In February & March of 97, during a long travel trough Cuba with two of my friends, and while I was discovering this surprising country, the difficult daily life of the kind people who lodged us at different places of the island, the great situation of penury, I felt one more time, as I had felt earlier during my previous stay with children of the streets in Colombia, or in Mexico: an extensive sensation of being powerless in front of our broken down old planet. But at the same time, I became aware of the evident fact that with a ridiculous little few "here", we can do a lot and so much "there".
In Trinidad city, in the south of Cuba, we lived in the old house of a very nice, hard working and honest family. The only way for them to get over the economic crisis and poverty was (and always is) to rent bedrooms and open a little home-restaurant for tourists. But they lacked the ridiculous little capital to begin the adventure. We discussed during hopeful Caribbean nights, making plans and measuring rooms and windows, and imagined the colors of the walls and... laughed a lot!
Then I came back to France and took my decision (of course, some people thought that I had lost my mind!).
I'm just a below middle-class French worker, without any assured job. But a few weeks later, the precious dollars traveled from France to Cuba in a friend's suitcase. The friendly and "moral" deal was: from 15 $ of profit $ I "pay back", emphasized by the historic and solemn declaration of Ruben, the father: "Mi palabra vale mas que una firma", in Spanish text!
A year later, I very frequently receive letters or telephone calls from unknown French people just arrived from Trinidad, which relates the very nice time they had in my "adopted and sympathetic" family, the improvements really made in the house, and the evident betterment of their daily life.
I am 36 years old; I'm actually working in logistic in a center of adult education. One of my hobbies is to teach Spanish and I have a lot of activities in Spain and Latin America. My project, in the near future in about working for intelligent and efficient cooperation.
France Gavarone
49Cheminde I'English-38240
Meylan (France)
Fax: 0476150128
February 15, 1998
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