Here's what kept Kalaiselvi from building her toilet

Our day on the field began early; Perur, a village about 20 kilometres from the town of Musiri, was a good 30-minute drive away from the Musiri office of GUARDIAN (Milaap’s field partner in Trichy.) Though the village was filled with many borrowers who had borrowed sanitation and water loans, meeting them was proving to be a challenge as many had left for work before our arrival. Kalaiselvi, was one of the few borrowers who happened to be home and we met her to discuss the impact of the microloan on her life. She had borrowed a loan for constructing a toilet more than a year ago. Kalaiselvi’s house was nestled among a row of houses a little off the village’s main road. With space being a constraint on expanding one’s house, I was interested to see how she had utilized the space for building her toilet. After we exchanged greetings, Kalaiselvi informed me that she had not constructed her toilet. Before I sought to understand why she hadn’t started construction on the toilet, she launched into a narrative of an unfortunate incident that led her to spend all the money on medical expenses. “A few days after I obtained the loan, my little son, he was a little over 3 years old at the time, accidently inserted a battery into his nostril and we had to rush him to the hospital,” she said. “Removing the battery required an operation that cost us a lot of money,” she added. Today, her son is out of danger and is attending 1st standard at the local school.

Coming back to the loan and the status of her toilet, she said that she had planned to construct both a toilet and a bathroom in the limited space in front of her home before the unfortunate accident. “I don’t want my children to fall ill often and it’s very inconvenient and unhygienic to use the open fields,” she explained. Besides her son, Kalaiselvi also has a daughter who is in the 5th standard. Her husband works in the town of Namakkal in a textile shop and his income supports the family. Kalaiselvi faces no difficulty in repaying her loan but she is eager to have it repaid in full and try and obtain a new loan. The next time round, she is determined to build a toilet and will even plan for any emergencies that might arise. 

As Kalaiselvi was the only borrower who was present at home during the time of our visit, we were only able to arrange a meeting with her. The other members of the group had all left for work when we arrived. Maybe our next visit to the village of Perur would offer us the opportunity of meeting the other four members.

Correction: Due to a data entry error by our field partner, the wrong photo of the group borrowers was uploaded at the time of funding the loan on our website. We are working closely with our field partner to eliminate such errors in the future. The error is deeply regretted.