Of Student Loans and Chickens: Huobu Mozige

Huobu Mozige is the mother of a family of five members. When we met her, she was already doing farm work on their 10 Mu of land—a fortunate venture and resource to have at home despite suffering from leg rheumatism. Her actions are mostly limited, and she cannot perform tasks as productive as she used to. We are impressed that even with her condition, she was able to grow potatoes, buckwheat, corn, and other crops. She also tends to their farm animals such as their two cows and four pigs. Sometimes they sell these livestock, but in other cases, they slaughter them for food.

Her husband also helps with their household finances by working in Fujian Province. Every year, they make about CNY 30,000. For a family with three children, that is not enough, especially when her eldest is already attending university in Chengdu. We visited her home in Chengdu to see how they were doing after providing them with chickens during our Chicken Farming Program.

When we arrived, we found the couple carrying their corn from their field to the fireplace. It was a cold month, and her husband was out of his seasonal work. Their surroundings showed how busy they had been the past few days: crops were scattered on the ground, chickens roamed freely, and Huobu wore a warm and welcoming expression toward us.

When we asked her about the training prior to getting the chickens, she candidly mentioned her inability to speak Mandarin, hence not learning much from the training. On the brighter side, chicken farming was not new to her, and she preferred using traditional free-range methods. When the chickens were younger, she fed them twice daily with a mix of feed and corn, but now she purely feeds them with cornmeal once a day. Her methods did work because all 20 chickens she received from us survived. She had already sold 18 of them and still had 2 roosters remaining. The heaviest weighed 9 jin (4.5kg) and sold at CNY 16 per jin.

Huobu is aware that their household income is higher than their neighbors’, but their expenses are also high. Her children’s education fees take up most of their income, and living costs are barely enough for their families. Fortunately, the existence of student loans alleviates their financial pressure. Without it, she would not know how else to survive. She expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to grow chickens because it has added another income stream to their already struggling household. She mentioned that she thought they had already exhausted all their resources before the chickens arrived, and for that, she is truly grateful.

She knows that their hardships are temporary. They always prioritize their children’s education because they believe that it could end the chain of poverty in their family. For now, all they could do is try their hardest, and hope for the best.

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