Kiva Stories from the Field

Tajikistan is quickly becoming a nation of women and children… and a diminishing number at that.  The low incomes and lack of jobs have resulted in more and more men leaving for Russia to send money back to the family.  With a minimum wage here of 20 Somoni a month ($6 US), people are working multiple jobs, opening side businesses, working abroad and generally doing whatever it takes to survive.  Inflation is clicking at about 20% and the price of bread is $1 a loaf.  Imagine a loaf of bread in the US at $150 – a rough equivalent as a percent of the monthly minimum wage.  People here dream of going to Russia, America, anywhere, somewhere.

Traditionally the families here are large and many from the older generation have a half dozen or more

Gavkhar is a Kiva client - she sells recycled aluminum

siblings.  I met with a Kiva client last week – Gavkhar – and she lived together with her 11 children and grandchildren huddled in a cinder block building which lacked electricity for 16 hours of the day.  The stairway was so dark we had to use our cell phones to light the way and I traced my hand along the crumbling wall.  For most of the last century, Tajikistan had the highest birth rate of any of the Soviet republics.  But younger families are having fewer children because of the difficulty in providing for them.  In the market stalls you can buy a single diaper for 1 somoni (30 cents) and they are reused ‘until the tape loses its stickiness’ by replacing the absorbent liner with cloth.

What’s far more noticeable than shrinking family sizes is the number of absent husbands and fathers who leave for Russia to find work.  Many of the women in the Chkalovsk market told me their husbands had been gone for months or even years.  In some cases they simply disappeared and the money stopped coming.  Most take jobs as laborers working construction jobs in the city.  Tajiks are generally looked down upon in Russia and have been victims of many racially motivated violent crimes.  There is even a Russian sit-com which features a caricature of a Tajik laborer, often bumbling and incompetent.  In reality there are many highly educated Tajiks here, but there is more money to be made as a workman in Russia than there is teaching at a university in Khujand.

Nearly everyone here will confide that they want to leave for Russia, America, somewhere, anywhere else.  Estimates are that somewhere around 1 million Tajiks are living abroad – roughly 15% of the population.  Standing out in the cold earlier this week waiting for approval of my visa registration, I mingled among the modest crowd of Iranians, Afghans, and Uzbeks.  A man from Kyrgyzstan who spoke English asked me, ‘Why are you here?  Nobody comes here.’  He was visiting family.

This sentiment is even more prevalent in the winter and already the power was on and off several times yesterday here in the MicroInvest office.  My fingers are numb and I wear my down jacket sitting at my desk.  Occasionally I’ll lean back, blow on my fingers, and wonder how I ended up here.  But every

Accordion on the square - daily life goes on in the winter

Kiva client I meet reminds me that there is a real need for credit here and that it does make a profound difference in their standard of living.  Tajikistan’s poverty looks like drudgery and everyday hardship – families split apart, sharp minds reduced to swinging hammers, shivering in dim candlelight.  But despite it all, people find a way to survive.  Early in the morning the buses are overloaded with women bringing satchels of goods to market, students arrive at school, and officeworkers wipe the dust from their shoes.  Life goes on and, while the country lacks enough fuel to heat their homes, there’s more than enough fuel behind the dreams of those wanting to move on from the conditions here and find a better life somewhere, anywhere.

Rob is a Kiva Fellow in Khujand, Tajikistan working with MLF MicroInvest.  For more information on MicroInvest, please follow this link.

For a slideshow of Tajikistan photos you can visit here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/29346838@N05/sets/72157608467919856/show/