Businesswoman Teacher

Written by: Aqsa Sediqi

Manufacturing staff always pay attention to the improvement of their production. Along with good quality products, they try to change the design of the products or produce new items and present them to the market.

AEPO’s writer/producer has talked to Zainab, a resident of Takhar province who is now a teacher in one of the schools in Kabul city.

Zainab says: “at the beginning, I was embroidering and tailoring dresses. Once I took part in an exhibition in Tajikistan. There I saw a special embroidery which they call it Qursdozi and these embroideries had many customers. I took a pair of embroidered lady shoes with me and when I came back to Kabul, I found a woman and she helped me to learn Qursdozi. Later I bought the machinery and started our work with the help of some other women.

Qursdozi is usually embroidered on shoes, dresses, pillows’ sheets and on robes with braid.

At the beginning, we found more customers and our daily sale reached to 100-200 pairs of Qursdozi shoes and also, we had been receiving foreign orders.

During our activities, I considered that people need pure cooking oil and I asked my brother, who lives in Takhar province to buy a machine for purifying mustard and flaxseed oil and we started to produce mentioned oil.”

Special Ice Cream:

Each province of Afghanistan has its special foods and these foods have their special customers.

Muhammad Azam, a resident of Arghandab district, Kandahar province, the last year student of Kabul Medical University says: “I had heard from many people that Kabul has a good ice cream. When I came for the first time to Kabul and ate the ice cream, I considered that the ice cream prepares in Kandahar is better than this one.

I had a car and I sold it and opened a shop here in Kabul. I prepare various kinds of ice creams, Faloda, Sheer Peera (a kind of sweet made from milk and sugar), plum jam, sandalwood syrup and paste of pomegranate.

25 people are busy with me in the shop. I pay about 250 thousand Afghanis salary to the workers each month and pay more than 100 thousand the rent of the shop and my monthly net benefit reaches 70000 - 100 thousand Afghanis.

My customers are from Kabul, Mazar, and Herat provinces and some people order sandal syrup from abroad too.