When Michael Kariuki first heard about Ekeza Sacco in 2016, he was quietly excited. He was listening to Kameme FM, the popular Gikuyu language radio station, when host Njogu wa Njoroge began talking about a new savings opportunity live on air. What wa Njoroge described was intriguing. Ekeza’s promise was of a middle-class lifestyle embodied in homeownership, entrepreneurship and family success. Through such radio broadcasts, television adverts and even its own campaign bus, Ekeza exhorted Kenyans to join the Sacco in order to pursue their dreams and aspirations, to use loans for “putting up a residential house, buying a dream car, purchasing a plot/piece of land, start a business or any other venture.” Like other Savings and Credit Cooperatives in Kenya (Saccos for short), Njoroge explained how Ekeza was offering its members the opportunity to withdraw three times the amount of their savings in the form of a loan.

But there was an important twist to Ekeza’s offer, one that gave members a distinct advantage. Unlike other Saccos, Ekeza was offering loans without the need for guarantors—other Sacco members who personally put up their savings as a guarantee for another member’s loan. Instead, at Ekeza, the title deeds and logbooks of the properties and vehicles that members would eventually purchase with their loans would act as loan securities. In other words, Ekeza was offering easy access to capital that is hard to come by in contemporary Kenya where banks charge high interest rates and Saccos require social membership. For Kariuki, that a guarantor was not required made saving with Ekeza an attractive opportunity—the chance to obtain capital that would allow him to purchase a car and become a taxi driver without having to undertake the difficult task of finding other Sacco members to stand in as his guarantors. Along with thousands of other Kenyans, Kariuki soon joined the Sacco.

A construction worker who worked long, hard days in the heat of Mombasa, Kariuki went on to save KSh180,000 with Ekeza over the next two years, sending money to his Sacco savings account directly from his MPesa account on his mobile phone. It was the first time in his life that Kariuki had ever saved such a large amount of money. He told me of the sacrifices he and his family made so that he could put more of his earnings into his savings, that there were “some things”—basic necessities and even food—they had to forego in the hope that his savings, and the taxi business that he would start with the loan, would allow him to build them a better future.

But in December 2017, Kariuki started to realize something was wrong. He had gone to withdraw a loan of KSh25,000 from the Sacco’s office in Thika. After filling out the paperwork, he was asked by Ekeza staff to wait the normal 60 days that it would take for the loan to be cleared and arrive in his account. Kariuki went back to Mombasa and waited, but his loan never arrived.

In January 2018, he returned to the office to find out what had happened with his loan. Ekeza staff assured him that his loan was on its way and he was asked to wait again but this time Kariuki refused. Suspecting something was wrong with the Sacco itself, he asked to withdraw all his savings at a fee of KSh1000. Kariuki filled out the paperwork and was once again asked to wait for 60 working days for his savings to reach his bank account.

In March 2018, four days before he was due to receive his savings, Kariuki’s wife called him. She had seen on the news that Ekeza had been officially deregistered by the Kenyan government pending investigations into its accounts. With the SACCO’s accounts frozen, Kariuki could do nothing but wait; he returned to the Ekeza office three times in 2018 and 2019 asking about the status of his savings, to no avail. Like tens of thousands of other Ekeza members, he has been stuck in limbo ever since.