Ekubchon Haknazarov

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Ekubchon Haknazarov by MLF MicroInvest-Tajikistan in Tajikistan. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 8 months, MLF MicroInvest-Tajikistan will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

I go to interview Ekubchon at his family home in the small town of Shakhristan in the mountains of Northern Tajikistan. Shakhristan is around one hour south from the nearest city and is quite a rural place where cows, sheep, and other livestock outnumber cars on the road by a significant order of magnitude. Almost all homes here are made in the traditional Tajik manner using mud brick and finished over with a type of plaster made from mud, sand, and hay and Ekubchon’s house is no exception. He is covered in this building material when I meet him as he has been busy at work constructing a new wing of his family home to house his brother’s young family. Ekubchon says that his Kiva loan enabled him to buy a cow, a calf, and one sheep which he buys for a lower price in the winter and then fattens up during the summer on the abundant natural grasses that grown in the nearby mountains. Sometimes, Ekubchon sells the animals and sometimes he keeps them for himself and his family, but he says it all depends on his financial situation. Essentially, these animals serve as insurance that, during the brutal Tajik winters, Ekubchon’s family will always have enough to eat, and in better times he can sell them for needed cash. When Ekubchon got married one year ago he sold some of his livestock in order to pay for the costly wedding celebrations that are demanded by Tajik custom. Ekubchon lives a simple, rural life in his isolated town of Shakhristan, yet he tells me that he is very content with the way he has been able to improve the quantity of his livestock through his Kiva loan.