Jizi Mogezha: No Longer Health For Income

In November 2024, we visited our Chicken Farming Program beneficiary, Jizi Mogezha. Jizi is the mother of a family of eight members: her husband, four sons, and two daughters. While their family is huge, their income is low. When a job is available, she takes up labor work in Butuo while her husband works as a forest ranger in the village. Although two of her children are already married and no longer rely on them for financial support, she still has to look after four more—one of them is ill and staying at home. Surviving alone is already a challenge to them, let alone covering medical costs for their beloved son. Jizi, herself, suffers from her own illness. She has chronic stomach problems that need serious medication. But with the state of her family, it’s hard to maintain doctor visits and medicine purchases.

When visiting families, we often keep track of their income and expenses. Jizi’s family makes about CNY 35,000 (USD 4,854) annually, while their necessary expenses go up to CNY 50,000 (USD 6934.3). In addition to the jobs that Jizi and her husband do, they also use their 10 mu (1.6 acres) of land to cultivate potatoes, buckwheat, and corn. They also have one cow and three pigs, which they plan to sell and add to their annual income. In their home, raising livestock is no new thing, hence, we know they would take good care of the chickens. As you can see, the family needs more money than they make to sustain their necessary expenses and give themselves and their son the proper healthcare they need.

When we arrived at Jizi’s home for the visit, we found her and her husband busily gathering firewood for New Year’s. The husband greeted us warmly in straight Mandarin, immediately signaling that this was going to be a smooth session with no struggles in the language barrier. We looked around in their well-kept yards and saw a few chickens roaming freely. We visited the cows and the pigs, and they were housed separately in tidy environments.

We started talking about the program and how it impacted their lives. Jizi’s husband could not help but be in tears. This year had been especially difficult for their family. They needed to spend more than they were used to, hence taking out loans while his sick wife forces herself out of her bed to work for extra cash. It truly broke his heart to see her like that, but he felt helpless. When our project started, the family felt a glimmer of hope. Jizi no longer needs to leave the house to work, and she could just stand back and do the light load of feeding the animals and cleaning after them.

To raise the chickens, Jizi said she learned exactly what to do through our training. Out of the twenty chickens, 3 died while 17 survived. Sometimes they slaughter a few to put on the table, while the others are sold to satisfy their household necessities or to buy new chicks for continuous chicken farming. Jizi observed that the chicks we provided them are much healthier and more resilient than the ones they usually buy, which explains why they survived for so long.

Before we said our goodbyes, Jizi and her husband expressed their delight at us for visiting them. Now, Jizi would no longer need to put her health at risk because she can work on their new source of income at home.

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