Cashews to Cash

Cashews in the shell

How some cashews in NYC led to microloans in Africa in five steps:

1. Yesterday I met a friend for lunch in NYC. She knows I have a thing for nuts (the edible kind not the human kind) so she asked the waiter to bring a bowl of spicey cashews over from bar. They disappeared quickly.

2. Late last night, while browsing a stash of bookmarks saved for possible future posts, my eye coincidentally landed on a link about cashews. Click. It led me to "The Secret Life of Cashews" a mildly interesting article focused, in part, on the health benefits of cashews...

...from what I know it sounds like you might want to craft cashews into your daily diet. They're high in copper and calcium and they're a good source of monounsaturated fats. Supposedly eating a lot of them helps you avoid both weight gain and cardiovascular disease. They're also high in magnesium, which is a big thing for the cardiovascular health. And they're also high in protein and fiber.

The article also mentioned a fair trade cooperative in the Choluteca region of Honduras that apparently turns out extremely delicious cashews.

3. My appetite now primed to try these specific cashews I Googled "Choluteca cashews" and up popped a link to a cashew reseller in Choluteca who was looking for a Kiva microloan to purchase more cashews. Click.

4. The Kiva cashew loan was already funded but clicking thru jogged my memory that I had an outstanding credit with Kiva to put to use.

5. Click, click, click, click...several seconds later four microloans were made to women in Uganda, South Sudan and two in Ghana.

I never did find a way to order the Choluteca cashews, other than in 25lb bags, but those cashews in NYC serendipitously led to a much better outcome.