A $25 loan...
Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2022 4:10 pm
About 100 years ago, no, probably more like a decade ago, I made a $25 loan to a young Indonesian lad who seemed very keen to go to university. I'm a great believer in education, it lifted me out of a not very good life. 
This was done via an NGO who specialises in using micro-loans to empower people to set up their own businesses or similar. (This loan thing was long before the days of crowd-funding.) The youngster defaulted on his loan, which didn't susprise me in the least. I never really expected to get my money back. And anyway, I'd not lose sleep over 25 bucks.
After all this time I just had an email five minutes ago to say he's repaid me the $25 (so I can lend it again to someone else). I don't care about the money but this makes me very happy. I wonder what happened. Did he make a successful career or business for himself? Did my $25 help?
If he's repaying ancient loans like this he must be doing well (and must have some kind of conscience). Yes?
This was done via an NGO who specialises in using micro-loans to empower people to set up their own businesses or similar. (This loan thing was long before the days of crowd-funding.) The youngster defaulted on his loan, which didn't susprise me in the least. I never really expected to get my money back. And anyway, I'd not lose sleep over 25 bucks.
After all this time I just had an email five minutes ago to say he's repaid me the $25 (so I can lend it again to someone else). I don't care about the money but this makes me very happy. I wonder what happened. Did he make a successful career or business for himself? Did my $25 help?
If he's repaying ancient loans like this he must be doing well (and must have some kind of conscience). Yes?