Business Photo Slideshows

The Wedding Planner

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

With a $4,000 loan, restaurateur Haji Abdul Satar set up kiosks to sell soda, candy, and cigarettes at his Kabul wedding banquet facility. The extra sales inside his two halls—where men and women in this traditional Muslim society still hold separate celebrations for the same wedding—now earn him up to $100 on a big party night.

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Dresses for Successes

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Shakila Ghaznaway, 25, is in the wedding business, too. After opening a bridal beauty parlor, a videotaping service and a seamstress business, she launched a shop selling plastic flowers. The mother of two has not only repaid all four of her loans, which totaled $1,100, but also used extra profit to buy her husband a power saw so that he could start a carpentry business.

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Urban Rancher

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Zaigul, a 50-year-old widow who lost her husband and a son in the war against the Soviet Union and subsequent civil war, obtained $360 in loans to buy a cow and 10 sheep. She keeps the animals in the courtyard surrounded by mud walls and inside a building next to her house. Her house, which she shares with several relatives, has several uninhabitable rooms because a roof caved in.

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Overcoming Setbacks

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Zaigul lost money when her cow died while giving birth to a calf. She has had better luck with her sheep, which she feeds until they are ready to be sold to butchers. She has paid back her loans and would like to take out another, she says, to buy more lambs. Because there is almost no grass for the animals to graze, she spreads out feed for them to eat.

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Neighborhood Baker

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Like many people, Nasrin, 45, returned with her family to Kabul after the Taliban was toppled from power. With the help of a $360 loan, the mother of seven bought a tandoor oven and wood to open a bakery, which now provides bread for her neighborhood in Sara Kotol, an unlawfully developed area on a hill overlooking Kabul.

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A Mother's Pride

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Nasrin now spends her days in her smoky bakery, slapping dough between her hands and throwing it against the inside wall of the glowing oven. Wearing a thick, soot-covered glove, she reaches into the tandoor and pulls out toasty round pieces of naan, a thin bread. The bakery's profits allowed her to arrange a marriage for her 17-year-old son and pay $3,600 for the engagement and gifts.

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Changing Fashions

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Inside their tiny tailor shop on the first floor of their two-room mud-brick home, Sharifa, 42, and her 45-year-old husband Mohammed use hand-operated sewing machines to make clothes. Under the Taliban, Sharifa could only sew men's clothes. Now, 70 percent of their clients are female. “Younger women ask for shapelier cut clothing,” Sharifa says. “The older woman request more roundly shaped dresses.”

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A Better Life

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Before Sharifa and her husband opened their tailoring business with $600 in loans, they peddled clothes in the market and earned as little as $3 a day to support their 12 children, all under 17. To make ends meet, they sent three kids to work as carpet weavers in Pakistan, where they were physically abused. The parents now earns up to $10 a day—enough to feed all their children and send them to school.

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Growing and Prospering

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Inside Abdul Wakil's butcher shop, his hatchet cracks rhythmically, making music out of the cacophony of honking car horns and gunning motors outside. Before taking out three loans totaling $8,500 in the last two years, he used to sell only two or three sheep a day. "After the loan I purchased a lot of lambs to keep as stock," the butcher says. "Now I have a contract with hotels ... and sell 20 a day."

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Expanding the Flock

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Ghulam Nabi, a 47-year-old married father of six children, grows potatoes and melons on his farm. He used to own just one ox and a few sheep. Three years ago, he took out his first loan and used the $1,000 to buy two oxen to help him plow fields. He then took out $2,700 more in loans to buy 50 sheep, to produce milk and lambs.

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Making a Better Life

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Nabi now clears $4,000 a year in profit and has paid back all his loans. “If you have nothing in your hand you can do nothing,” says the farmer, whose property is still riddled with bullet marks from fighting in the region some years ago. “If you have money you can put it toward something and make a profit out of it.”

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Thinking Big

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

When Fatima and Hassan Ali returned to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban, they decided to open a bookstore in a neighborhood full of schools. A $660 loan stocked their shelves full of books and a glass counter with notebooks and pens. Profits from the tiny store “improved our lives,” Fatima says. “In the future, we hope to grow our business by removing a wall so we have more space.”

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Economic and Spiritual Gains

Photo by Joseph Sywenkyj

Farkhonda, Faima, Masada, Shabana, and Mastroa (from left to right) are neighbors who grew up together in Pooza Ashlan, a village in northern Afghanistan. After each took out $500 in loans to buy a cow, they now sell milk and yogurt at a market. “Before [the loan] we weren't doing anything,” Mastroa says. “Now we are busy with the cow. Economically we are doing better and spiritually as well!”

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