Tashbubu Halimova

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Tashbubu Halimova by MLF MicroInvest-Tajikistan in Tajikistan. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 10 months, MLF MicroInvest-Tajikistan will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

In an ethnic Kyrgyz village several kilometers outside the city of Isfara in northeastern Tajikistan, I interview Tashbubu who is busy at work finishing up a beautiful black and ocher carpet that measures a substantial 4.5m x 3.5m. She does all the work herself and it takes her 2 months to finish a rug of this size. Not only does Tashbubu weave her carpets by hand she also spins and dyes her own yarn, using wool that she purchases from local shepherds. As her young granddaughter runs around the garden Tashbubu shows me how she creates her beautiful works of art, a skill that only she has mastered out of all the women in her village. The working space takes up an entire room in her house and pieces of cotton string are laid out wall to wall, in order to provide the surface upon which Tashbubu weaves her woolen yarn. She sits on the partially finished carpet and pounds a tokhmokh (a tool made from apricot wood used to compress the yarn) against the newly woven design. It is quite a time consuming, laborious process, yet Tashbubu says that she enjoys her work very much, and is quite proud of her finished products. She pays around 1000 somoni (around $292) for raw materials and then sells each carpet for 2200 somoni, making a profit of around $350. She makes six carpets a year and therefore earns a relatively decent income for this part of the world. With her Kiva loan Tashbubu has been able to purchase some sheep, bringing the total of her flock to 6, which has cut down on the money that she spends buying wool from shepherds. Each sheep produces 3kg of wool and considering that it takes 30kg of wool to make one carpet, she can only provide 1/12 of her annual supply with her own animals. But, every little bit helps and she is quite happy to have her small flock. Tashbubu started weaving when she was seven, after her mother died and she needed to contribute to the family income. She tells me that she has tried to teach some of the women of her village to weave, but so far none have been able to demonstrate Tashbubu’s natural talent and she often spends much of her free time helping her neighbors and relatives with their carpets.

Today I visited Tashbubu at her home outside of Isfara near the border of Kyrgyzstan. She's a very cheerful woman and was eager to show her carpets and demonstrate how she creates them. In the mountains of the region, there is a natural red ochre pigment which she uses to dye the wool she collects from her sheep.

She is widely known throughout the region for her high-quality carpets and she receives orders from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and from throughout Northern Tajikistan. With her loan, she has been able to supplement her own wool production by purchasing from local sheep farmers. She sends her thanks to Kiva lenders who have enabled her to produce even more carpets - now as many as 1 each month - to keep up with demand.

Under the watchful eye of her granddaughter, she demonstrates how she creates the woolen yarn used to weave her famous carpets.