On the Ground: VSLA Group Profile
Members of Oberabic’s VSLA group wait for their weekly meeting to start
The village, Oberabic, meaning Five Mosquitos in Luo, is not unlike the hundreds of other small villages carpeting the countryside of northern Ugandan. Subsistence farmers separated from one another by vast swaths of farmland are its residents. Its roads are mottled paths tunneled by head high grasses. Its nights—electricity and light bulb-free—are cloaked in deep, penetrating shadows when clouds float thick. There’s no bustling town center. No large restaurants or modern internet cafes. Because they pull their livelihoods from the earth beneath their feet, season by season, many people in Oberabic exist on the fringes of a money-based economy, relying on bartering and infrequent money-based purchases to survive. Which is why, on this day, the meeting taking place is more remarkable: farmers who have never done so before are pooling their cash, balancing financial ledgers, and taking loans.
