After Leigh had been in Sibetan four months, the water system was built and running. Leigh then returned to Kuta Beach, where he and David came up with another project idea. Motorcycles were quickly replacing oxcarts and bicycles as the main means of transportation in Bali. The trouble was that the Balinese were not very good at maintaining their motorcycles. David financed a repair shop nearby where Leigh, with his extensive background in motorcycles, would train young Balinese men to repair motorbikes. When a person Leigh had trained became proficient at motorcycle repair, David would loan him money to set up a repair shop of his own.
Soon after the repair shop was set up, Leigh confessed to David that the job was more challenging that he had first thought it would be. The whole concept of repair and maintenance was new to the Balinese, and the young trainees often made a mess of the simplest jobs Leigh assigned them. One day, when a young man managed to strip a thread on an engine he was fixing, Leigh lost his temper. He yelled in frustration at his understudies and picked up the engine and threw it out the window while the young Balinese men watched in stunned silence.
David continued to encourage Leigh. In time, he told him, the young men would understand, but for now the whole world of motorcycle mechanics was new to them, not something they had grown up around. Leigh went back to the classroom and persevered until the young men began to get the idea of motorcycle repair and maintenance. Before long, small motorcycle repair shops, a number of them financed by loans from David, were popping up around Bali.
Toward the end of 1979, a Sri Lankan man named Hillary de Alwis arrived to stay for a few days at Dhyana Pura. As he and David talked, the Sri Lankan confessed half jokingly that he had come to Bali to have a nervous breakdown. He explained that he was the Indonesian representative of the Institute for International Development Incorporated (IIDI), headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. A man named Al Whittaker, who had been the chief executive of the Mennen Company, had founded the organization in 1971. As a Christian, Al had been deeply touched by the poverty he encountered on his travels for the Mennen Company, particularly in Latin America. Eventually he had felt challenged to do something about the conditions he saw, and he resigned from the company and started IIDI.
According to Hillary, Al felt that the real issue with poverty was that people needed jobs. IIDI thus set about forming joint ventures between American donors and businesspeople in Latin America, loaning them money to expand their business and in the process create jobs. Its first venture was in the nation of Colombia, where the organization had loaned money to a businessman who ran a tea and spice company. The man had been able to expand his business, create eleven new jobs, and repay the loan in two years. Based on the success of its first project, IIDI began similar ventures in other countries throughout Latin America.
IIDI had now decided to move beyond Latin America into Indonesia. With money provided by USAID (the U.S. government’s aid body), it hoped to identify potential businessmen with whom to form joint ventures. But for IIDI and USAID to get visas to stay in the country, the Indonesian government had required them to undertake a number of development projects in Indonesia.
Hillary de Alwis had been dispatched to Indonesia as IIDI’s representative. He had identified several businessmen and established joint ventures with them, loaning money for them to expand their businesses and create jobs. Hillary also explained to David how he had committed IIDI to several development projects—building a hospital and a school on the island of Sumatra and overseeing a large water project in Java. Unfortunately, Hillary didn’t know much about development, and things were not going well for him on these projects. To make matters worse, several of the businessmen he had loaned money to were now reneging on paying back the loans. Hillary explained to David that he didn’t know what to do next and thought that a few days in Bali might do him some good.
David listened patiently as Hillary unwound his tale of woe, stopping him to ask questions about the various projects and assess just how bad the situation was for him and IIDI. He quickly came to the conclusion that the situation was desperate.
David told Hillary that he had some knowledge of development projects. Over the next several days he took Hillary to Blimbingsari and to some of the other projects in Bali. Hillary seemed stunned by all David and Leigh had managed to accomplish in such a short time. And when David told him about the small-loans program, he watched as Hillary’s jaw dropped. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing the same kind of work—making loans and overseeing development projects—that IIDI does,” he confided in David. Before Hillary left to return to Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, David gave him some pointers on managing development projects and wished him well.
Several days later an American showed up at Dhyana Pura to see David. He introduced himself as Barry Harper and explained that he had just taken over as IIDI’s executive director. David learned from Barry that when Hillary returned to Jakarta from Bali, he had called Barry in Virginia and told him there was a man in Bali he had to meet who not only was making successful loans to start small businesses but also had the skills to help IIDI with its development projects. Barry had made his way to Bali as fast as he could.
David showed Barry some of the development projects that had been undertaken in Bali. Then later, as Barry and David strolled together along Kuta Beach, Barry got right to the point. “Can you sort out this mess for us in Jakarta?” he asked David.
After talking about the projects for a while, David agreed to help and became a consultant for IIDI in Indonesia. Soon after Barry left to return to the United States, David traveled to Jakarta to begin untangling IIDI’s development projects. He talked with Hillary and met with government officials, architects, and engineers to straighten things out and get the projects moving forward. He then made repeated visits to the various project sites to check on their progress and give any needed technical advice.
With his work for IIDI, as well as the ongoing projects in Bali and running the hotel training school, David was busier than ever. He was relieved when Pak Sus took over managing the Dhyana Pura complex. Pak Sus was an able leader who had previously managed a large hotel and served as the head of catering for Garuda Airlines, Indonesia’s national airline. David felt comfortable turning over control of the complex to him.
On some of his trips to Jakarta, David would sit in on meetings between Hillary de Alwis and the various Indonesian businessmen to whom IIDI had loaned money. The purpose of the meetings was to get the businessmen to start paying back the loans. Since Hillary spoke no Indonesian, he had to use a translator in the meetings. Although David spoke fluent Indonesian, he did not let on to the businessmen in the room that he could. Instead, he sat and listened to the conversations as they unfolded. From meeting to meeting the pattern was the same. The meetings were nothing but a hoax, and the translators were in cahoots with the businessmen, none of whom intended to pay back the borrowed money. David explained to Hillary that he was being scammed. The two men then came up with a different strategy for dealing with the businessmen, who slowly began to repay the money they owed, much to Hillary and IIDI’s relief.
At the end of 1979, David met Al Whittaker. The two men had much in common. They were both motivated by their Christian faith to do what they were doing, and they held similar views as to dealing with poverty and working with the poor. They eventually came to an agreement that IIDI and David and Maranatha Trust would partner together on a number of development projects.
Back in Bali, David decided it was time to formalize the management of the small-loans program. The program had run fairly informally to this point, but as the number of loans began to grow, so too did the need for a better management structure. Together with the Bali Church, David set up Maha Bhoga Marga (MBM), which in Balinese means “The Way of Prosperity.” MBM was an independent organization that would make and maintain small business loans to the Balinese. The organization had its own board, which David trained, and it was funded by a grant from IIDI and continued support from Maranatha Trust. Ibu Nyoman Yulia, a young woman from the Bali Christian Church, became MBM’s first employee. She was hired to be the administrator of the loans program. Of course, hiring employees and administering the loans cost money, and to cover these costs it was decided that MBM would begin charging a minimal amount of interest on the loans it made.
David also tapped Priyadi Reksasiswaya, the son of Pak Sus, manager of Dhyana Pura, to be the manager of MBM. Over the next several months, David mentored Priyadi, teaching him all he would need to know about developing and setting up a small-loans program. David had learned that a process was involved before loans could be made to people. First you had to get to know a community, build trust, and identify the leaders among the people. Then you had to identify the needs of that community. Did the community need a clean-water supply so that the fields could be irrigated and crops grown? Or did it need an access road so that things produced in the community could be easily transported to market? Only when such issues had been addressed was it time to begin making small loans available to members of the community. And then it was important to identify those people who had an aptitude for business and would develop businesses that would create jobs for others in the community, thus magnifying the effect of the loan. Priyadi was a fast learner and proved to be an effective manager of MBM.
Among the first loans MBM made were to a number of small farmers to raise poultry to supply the ever-growing number of hotels and restaurants in Bali. Things went well for these farmers until a large poultry producer in Java flooded the Balinese market with bargain-priced chickens. Suddenly the economic viability of the small poultry operations in Bali was threatened, as was repayment of their loans to MBM. Concerned about the situation, Priyadi came to talk it over with David. As he thought about it, David knew that the Javanese producer could not continue selling chickens so cheaply in Bali for long. What the producer was doing was making a play for market share and hoping to drive the local producers out of business. The eventual answer to the problem, David knew, was outlasting the Javanese supplier, and so he set to work on a plan.
Hidden from public view at the rear of the Dhyana Pura property was an unused storage facility, beside which was a secluded space. On this space David built a chicken slaughterhouse and processing plant, and in the storage facility he installed huge freezers. The Balinese poultry farmers would bring their chickens to the slaughterhouse at Dhyana Pura to be killed and processed. The hotel would pay them for the chickens so that the farmers were able to pay back their loans to MBM, and then the processed chickens were flash frozen and stored in the large freezers.
Soon the freezers were bulging with thousands of frozen chickens. However, as David had predicted, the price of the Javanese chickens quickly began to rise, and when it reached a certain price, Dhyana Pura began selling frozen chickens in Bali. And because it had such a large stockpile of frozen chickens, it had an advantage over its competitor from Java. Now a hotel or restaurant could call and order a hundred chickens, which would be delivered within half an hour. This convenience alone allowed the Balinese poultry farmers to win back their market share. In fact, the approach worked so well that it continued as the way Balinese farmers got their poultry to market.
