Diarist 31 borrowing has been mostly howlats (interest-free loans from family and friends). She had an account at MFI Grameen Bank that went back many years but she never borrowed more than 10,000 from them, a small amount compared with the howlats she took for her husband's illness and later on for building the house. Grameen tried to persuade her to take more and bigger loans but only managed to irritate her and she closed the account in early 2023 mainly because she was tired of being pressured.
In all she took more than a quarter of a million taka in howlats, from neighbours and family, principally from her eldest married daughter. After her husband died these were most often used for the building work on the house. But she also took rehan loans on her land - a form of borrowing in which she gave over some land for the use of the lender until and unless the loan was repaid in full. There were two of these in late 2017, of 35,000 and 40,000 taka, repaid two years later. After the building work concluded and she had left Grameen Bank she has been making a big effort to repay many of the howlats, as chart 03 shows (over 300,000 since mid-2023). These payments were funded from remittances, which have been plentiful in the period.
She has also given howlats to members of her wider family. This includes money sent to her daughter overseas when she needed emergency medical treatment.
