Author Archives: Steven Werlin

About Steven Werlin

I moved to Haiti in January 2005. I’ve been writing regular essays since then about the various projects that my colleagues and I work on and about our lives in Haiti.

Calmise Espeigle

When Calmise first saw CLM staff circulating around her neighborhood asking questions, she didn’t think anything of it. Even when they came to speak to her about her disability, she assumed nothing would come of it. “I’m used to it. People would come by, take my picture, and then they’d tell us that they’ll come back with help. We’d never see them again.”

She’s a lively young woman, but she was born with badly deformed feet. Her insteps are straight. She has no ability to bend her ankles. So the soles of her feet are nearly parallel to her calves. She can’t stand on them. She gets around nimbly by walking on her knees. It means that she can’t get far very easily.

Calmise was living with her mother and stepfather when CLM’s selection team passed through Pouli, but the older couple was breaking up. As the mother prepared to moved back to Belladère, where she was from, she pondered what Calmise should do. “She told me to stay in Pouli because she didn’t want me to miss out on the program.” So Calmise moved in with her older sister and their mother moved away.

She began to think that the program was something serious when she started to receive her weekly visits. Her case manager would come on Wednesdays, and sometimes other members of the staff would come as well. She chose pigs and small commerce as her two activities, but she says she never had much luck with livestock. Her pig died, though she was able to sell it and add the money to her savings. She bought two goats while she was in the program, and her older brother keeps one of them for her, but she ended up selling the other and putting the money aside. The savings from those sales, together with other savings from her weekly stipend and her small commerce, enabled her to buy a young bull for 10,000 gourds, which she gave to a neighbor to keep for her. They’ve agreed to keep it while it grows until the can sell it for about 17,500, which will be enough for them to buy a female that will be ready to breed.

Her real income now comes from her commerce. She has a very small one that she manages on and off, selling cookies and crackers and other small packaged snacks to neighbors. It works when she is at her sister’s house, but when she travels, as she regularly does, to the house she built next to her mother’s, in Belladère, it doesn’t work. That house has too many little hands looking for a snack. Her family ends up eating into her profits.

Instead, she invests in kasav, traditional Haitian flat bread made of finely grated manioc. It is the same business that her mother is in, so she can give her mother money to buy manioc when she buys for herself. Calmise then prepares her own kasav for sale.

They key to her progress has been how she’s learned to save. She received four-weeks of training on why and how to saved that was adapted by a program developed by Texas Christian University professor Dawn Elliott. The program, called “More than Budgets,” emphasizes the importance of establishing the habit of savings through setting savings goals and creating social pressures that favor savings. Calmise received a small box, but for 18 months her case manager kept the key. She would make a deposit into her box during each weekly visit. Every six months, Calmise could earn a small cash prize if she saved consistently, and those prizes contributed a lot towards the purchase of her bull.

Calmise feels differently about herself now that she has been through the program, and others see her differently. “It used to be that my family wouldn’t even take me to the hospital if I was sick. Now they’ll take me even if I don’t have the money to pay for it at the time. Thy value me. I have value in everyone’s eyes.”

And she has advice for those who might join the program in the future. “Don’t think of it as a small thing. Look at it as a big deal. take care of every little thing you’re given, because they can grow into big things eventually.”

Yves Révot

When Yves first became aware that CLM staff members were circulating in his neighborhood, asking questions, he didn’t know what to make of it. “No one had ever come to me to ask me questions before.” No one had ever come by to ask him about his life.

“M te mal viv,” he now says. “I lived badly.” He adds, “I spent my time just thinking about life.” Yves often was hungry. “I am blind, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew that I was missing something. I knew there were lots of things others could have that I couldn’t afford.”

Yves has been blind for years. Untreated glaucoma took away his vision when he was a boy. For a farmer in Pouli, the rural neighborhood just outside of downtown Lascahobas where he lives, it seemed like a real limitation. He would support himself as best he could by harvesting crops on his family’s land, but without the resources to invest in his farming, he barely managed.

In the spring of 2015, he joined CLMD, Fonkoze’s graduation program for extremely poor persons with disabilities. Though he was poor enough to have qualified for the standard CLM program, Fonkoze offers that program only to women who have dependent children. As a single, childless man, he couldn’t have benefited. The CLMD program, however, focuses only on poverty and disabilities, so a blind young man with no reliable source of support fit right in.

He chose goats and a pig – he likes raising livestock – and he got to work. He was careful with his cash stipend, and invested savings from it into his farming. He had never been afraid to work hard.

His livestock and his farming prospered. His two goats were soon seven goats, and with every harvest his wealth increased. He started renting additional plots of land so that he could farm even more. It keeps him busy, but he doesn’t mind the extra work. He sold five of the goats to buy a cow, and though his pig never reproduced he took care of it until he was able to sell it to buy a horse. “I wanted a mare, because after its first colt, you can start crossing it with a donkey to get mules, and they sell for a lot of money.”

But Yves hasn’t just gotten wealthier. He’s changed, even in his own eyes. He explains that when you start having visitors, it changes everything. The CMD program provided weekly visits from a case manager and less regular visits from other members of the staff. Yves had never had visitors before. “Tèt mwen te pi ba. M pat gen lavni. M gen yon bèl tèt kounye a.” That’s like saying, “I was feeling down. I had no future. Now I walk with my head held high.”

And others see him differently, too. “When you have no hope, people don’t value you. But when they can ask you for something and you have money you can lend, that shows real value.”

Even a year ago, Yves thought he would spend his life alone. Because he is blind, he thought he could never have a family. But now he thinks of the young women in his neighborhood, and he knows they think of him. “I’m not ready to make a commitment, but I will be.”

Altagrace Brevil 2

Altagrace is having a rough time. Two of her children have been sick, and she’s caught a persistent cold too.

But her bigger problem is her small commerce. She started one with 2500 gourds. She would buy plantains locally and sell them in Mibalè. She would only go to Mibalè once a week, but she could make 500 gourds – about $7.50 – each trip. She’d buy her plantains for 2000 gourds, and then rent two pack animals to carry them to Kafou Flande, on the main highway to Mibalè. The rental and then the transportation to Mibalè would cost almost another 500 gourds.

But the last time she went, someone paid her with two 1000-gourd bills, and she gave change. When she got home from the market, she learned that the bills were counterfeit. It was almost a total loss. So she’s back to zero.

She’d like to return to the business again. “I like being in business,” she says. And she is starting to build up savings from her weekly cash stipend that she could invest. But she can’t access her savings because she’s afraid to ask her case manager about it. “M pa renmen lè yo fè m malonèt,” she explains. That means that she doesn’t like it when someone makes her feel embarrassed. “M renmen wont.”

That is a little harder to translate. It looks like it means that she likes to be ashamed, but of course it means just the opposite. It means that she’s prone to feeling ashamed. She’s afraid to ask her case manager because she thinks he might say something harsh.

It is a problem for both her and her case manager that she’s not yet comfortable enough with him to bring up so important a question. The two of them will have to face her fear in the coming weeks and months.

Monise Imosiane 2

For the past three weeks Monise has been hiking back and forth between her home in Kaprens and the health center in Kolonbyè. Her sister gave birth to a boy about three months ago, but she’s had a problem with her breasts. She was sick, and she was unable to provide milk for her infant. She was admitted first to the clinic and then referred to the hospital outside of Laskawobas. Monise wanted to be with her sister as much as she could. Patients at Haitian hospitals need to have someone with them because nurses don’t generally offer the personal care – help with bathing etc. – that they need.

The hike is difficult under the best of circumstances. The narrow, winding path up to Kaprens rises steeply up from the Savanèt road. And it’s rocky in places and muddy in others, so you have to be careful of your footing.

But for Monise, it was especially hard. She was eight months pregnant. Saturday afternoon, she hiked up from the road, and Saturday night she gave birth to her own child. She’s still in bed. Haitian mothers in the countryside generally stay inside with their infant for several days before leaving their hut.

Giving birth will probably set Monise back some. She was already inclined to let others take responsibility for her. She now has four children with three different men, and she nevertheless lets her aging mother do most of the work to keep her and her children fed. But she will need to start taking more responsibility for herself in the coming months. That is something for her and Martinière, her case manager, to work on.

Rosana Mitil 2

Rosana is going through a difficult moment. She lives with her husband and their eight children, and right now everyone is sick. None of it is very serious: colds, minor fevers, and headaches. But it’s hard on her. Nevertheless, she is able to joke about it. “When you have eight children and they’re all sick, they lie down everywhere: on the right, on the left, everywhere.”

She’s been in the CLM program for four months now, but progress is slow. She still has to worry about hungry children. The weekly stipend is worth less than $5.50, and it helps. But it doesn’t go far in a house with ten mouths to feed.

She chose goat-rearing and small commerce as her two enterprises. Her three goats are doing well. Two of them are certainly pregnant, and the other may be as well. And she’s established a small commerce buying and selling beans. She buys five mamit, or coffee cans, of beans on Thursdays, and she sells the beans at market on Saturdays. A standard mamit holds seven godè. She sells the beans by the godè, and she makes about five gourds profit, or about eight cents, on each one, so her week’s profits are only about $2.65.

She knows she could make more money by selling groceries, the basics that her neighbors need to make their daily meals. But one of her neighbors already has such a business, and she’s afraid of the conflict she could create by competing.

But she has a plan. She would like to by rice, sugar, and oil by the sack or gallon and sell it in the market. The problem is that she doesn’t yet have enough capital to do so. A sack of rice costs well over 1000 gourds, and she only has 1500 in her business. She is, however, in a savings club. Every ten weeks it will be her turn to collect the 1000-gourd pot. She figures that if she uses two of her turns – or 2000 gourds – to add to her investment, she’ll be able to move away from beans and into the merchandise that she thinks she can succeed with.

Marie Yolène Théus 2

Yolène is very happy about the way things are going for her. Her goats are healthy and both should have kids in January.

She’s been managing her stipend carefully, using little bits that she can save to buy more livestock. She bought a large chicken the first time she had built up enough, but the chicken was stolen almost as soon as she purchased it. She was frustrated, but not discouraged. As soon as she had saved another hundred gourds, she purchased another small hen. “Keeping chickens is useful. If you run into trouble, you can grab one and sell it to get the money you need.”

She’s right, but it also shows that she thinks of her poultry mainly as a way to keep savings, not as a moneymaking venture. She looks at her larger livestock differently, though. She doesn’t feel as though she’s made progress since she joined the program, but she has a clear idea of what will count as progress for her. “It’s when your animals start to have young that you can start to move forward. You can sell some to buy larger animals.”

Solène Louis 2

Solène has been working hard since we last spoke with her. She and her husband have been collecting the materials they will need to build a new home. They’ve been living in a house that belongs to her mother-in-law, and are anxious to move into one of their own.

She explains their activity with a Haitian proverb: “Se pa lè w gen domi nan jè w, ou ranje kabann.” That means that you don’t wait until you’re sleepy to make your bad. It’s one of the proverbs that the members from Kolonbyè discussed with their case managers and with one another at the three-day workshop they attended a few weeks ago, and Solène picked right up on the sentiment.

They are still struggling. Hurricane Matthew destroyed a field of beans that she and her husband had planted. They managed to plant 15 mamit, or coffee cans, and won’t see any harvest to speak of. What’s worse is that they bought eight of the cans on credit, promising to repay them in beans with 100% interest, and they still owe 16 cans of beans even though their farming failed.

She’s happy that she now has a latrine and some goats, but their lives haven’t improved very much. She has two children who should be in school, and she can’t send them yet. “I bought their uniforms and the books and other supplies they need, but a don’t have the school fee.” The fee this year is 1000 gourds per child, or about $30, for both for the year. The school’s principal won’t let anyone send a child unless they can pay at least half up front, and Solène doesn’t have 1000 gourds yet.

And it is still hard to feed her children every day. “Yo sou kont ou, fò w fè.” That means, “They depend on you, so you have to do something.” She says that the stipend helps, but that her husband continues to work in their neighbors’ fields for 50 gourds, or less than $1, a day.

Modeline Pierre 2

Modeline has moved. She and her partner were living in an abandoned house they borrowed from a kind neighbor who had moved to a larger town, but her partner left for the Dominican Republic, so she and their baby moved back in with her mother and stepfather, who live uphill from the house they were in.

But Modeline isn’t upset about his departure. It is part of a plan that they made together. “We made the decision together. We have a lot of stuff to do. He left to earn the money we’ll need. He’ll be back in December.”

Their most important project is their home. They have both spent their lives as stepchildren. And though their stepfathers have treated them well, they started life together with nothing to build on. They don’t have any land of their own. Modeline’s brother-in-law has given them a small plot of land to build their home on, but they have no trees they could harvest to provide the limber they’ll need. They’ll have to buy all of it, and the money Modeline will get from CLM won’t be enough.

Modeline was careful about her return, though. She’s welcome in her mother’s home, but it isn’t easy. She left her water filter in the abandoned house she’s been staying in. She goes down every day to treat water and carry it back to her mother’s in gallons. “If I bring the filter, the kids will play with it, and it will break.”

While her partner’s away, she’s getting by. She has a small business. It has just 225 gourds in it – that’s less than $3.50 – but by rolling it over constantly, she can sometimes may as much as 150 gourds, or $2.25, in a week. And she’s a student of her own work. “I sell sugar and bread. I can’t make money of the sugar, but I can make money selling the bread. And they won’t come to buy bread if they can’t get sugar, too.”

She’s already saved enough on her own to buy a chicken. It’s the second one she purchased since joining the program. She bought the first by selling a small can of cement that was left over when her latrine was built.

But what is more striking than the purchase of two chickens is her excitement about the purchases. I was done interviewing her when she called me back to say that she had one more thing to tell me. And she explained what she had done. It was an encouraging sign of her developing pride.

Louisimène Destivil 2

Louisimène is happy to be in the program. “Nou pa menm jan ankò paske yo ban nou bagay n ap jere,” she explains. “We’re not like the way we were because they’ve given us things to manage.” She’s especially pleased that her daughter is back in school.

Her latrine’s been built, and her husband plans to enclose it with walls so they can start using it within a couple of days. He’s also started collecting the posts they’ll need to build the structure of their new house. She’s concerned about the house’s walls, though. They’ll have to buy the palm wood planks that they need, and Louisimène doesn’t yet see where they’ll find the money.

She’s been taking care of her two goats, but she was discouraged when one of them died while it was giving birth. “I liked the look of the two of them so much that I would sit in their hut just to look at them.” She says that she was devastated because she is the one who really knows what she lost.

But she knew just what to do when it died. She reported the death the neighbor who serves on the CLM Village Assistance Committee. The committee had just been formed a couple of weeks earlier, but Louisimène remembered that they were the ones who had agreed to help when trouble comes when the case manager isn’t around. He told her that he would talk with her case manager with her.

She looks forward to having a new house, and her husband has started collecting the support posts they’ll need, but like many of her fellow members, she doesn’t yet know how she’ll acquire the materials to build its

Rosemitha Petit-Blanc 2

Rosemitha missed the first day of the workshop. She sent her husband in her place. She was off in Savanèt, at the weekly market. She didn’t want to miss a day selling her merchandise.

She started a small commerce when she joined CLM, and it’s a lot of work but it’s going well. She buys plantains on Wednesdays from women bringing them to the market in Kolonbyè. She lives right next to the main road, so she catches them as they pass by her house. On Saturdays, she brings the week’s purchase to the market in Mibalè for sale. While in Mibalè, she uses the money she’s earned from plantain sales to buy okra to sell in Savanèt. The CLM program started her with 1500 gourds of merchandise, and she’s already increased her investment to 2000 gourds, even though she also uses profits to help feed her family.

But the business is risky. She depends on the trucks that pass by her house on market days to get her plantains to market. If she can’t flag down a truck with space for her plantains, her merchandise could go bad before she can get it to market.

So she’s working to increase her capital until she can change her business model. She wants to sell rice and oil, basic groceries. “Oil doesn’t go bad,” she explains.

She’s happy about the way things are going. She and her husband are working together. He still works in fields, but now she contributes to the household income, too. She doesn’t like her husband’s bad temper. “He gets angry a lot.” He yells at both her and his mother, who lives with the couple. But she lives with it because he’s not violent and he’s a good stepfather to the child she had before they got together. “He treats all our children the same.”