Qasaba...

…is a suburban slum on the outskirts of Kabul, behind the airport. Dust devils spiral lazily through the garbage-strewn tracts of dirt, which are broken only by stunted grey bits of scrub. Kuchi nomads drive their goatherds through these parched strips between derelict Russian apartment blocks.

Goats really will eat anything.

I was there to do some market research for a poster advertising campaign. Since most microfinance clients are illiterate, I’d hired a local firm to do a sort of comic strip, showing the benefits of microfinance. The ladies I interviewed gave me some great feedback, which I won’t bore you with.

After the focus groups, I visited some client businesses in Qasaba. It made me want to get back to actually delivering microcredit rather than just “supporting” it. The women were doing amazing things. One had taken out a loan for a small private school, with computer and English classes for the local kids. I walked in on an English class, and the children were too stunned to do more than blurt out their names to me.

My guide then led me down a dark and twisting passage, through a curtain made from plastic flour sacks and into a bakery. The only light source was a hole cut in the ceiling. A beam of sunlight shone through it, so thick with flour and dust motes that I was momentarily transfixed and nearly tumbled into the pit where the baker worked. She slid flat bread into the wood-burning oven as another woman slapped the dough into shape. Another woman owned a bakery, but had been plagued with insufficient funds for a steady supply of wood fuel and flour. Of course: no fuel, no flour, no bread to sell. Now thanks to her $100 loan, she can work steadily.

Capitalism is a great thing.