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.

Moving Forward After Four Months in Laskawobas

Rosemène Elsaint lives in Gwayal, one of the small neighborhoods in Pouli, a broad area of southeastern Laskowobas. She has seven children, and about four years ago they returned to her mother’s house. Her husband had died, and she did not know what else to do.

Her family had been living in Delma, the populous residential town immediately north of Pòtoprens. Her husband worked construction, sometimes as a mason and sometimes as a supervisor. She managed a small grocery business, though she would also go to the countryside to purchase loads of produce at harvest and bring them to Pòtoprens for sale. The family was living reasonably well. Her commerce was reliable, but any time she needed extra cash, she could count on her husband to add to what she had.

After her husband passed away, her business had to bear the burden of all her household expenses, and it quickly evaporated. Back at her mother’s home, she joined a traditional Haitian savings club, called a “sòl.” Its members would make weekly contributions, and each week one member would receive the whole pot. Her friends saw her problems, and they helped her by letting her take the pot first each time through the cycle. Her sòl was thus an interest-free loan. She came to depend on the money to keep a small business afloat. She’s buy produce from farmers, and sell it in retail-sized lots. “I walk around the neighborhood selling, carrying my merchandise in a basket, and I’d sell in the market two days a week.” It helped her keep her seven children fed. By this time, her mother too was more of a dependent than a source of additional support.

She chose to invest the resources that CLM provided in goats and chickens, and her case manager bought her two goats. The chickens she purchased with the rest of the money died. The larger of the two goats is now pregnant.

The program also established a savings and loan association for her and other members, and she’s making good use of it. She no longer depends on the kindness of the fellow members of her sòl. She runs her business with money she borrows from the association. Her first loan was for 4500 gourds, a little less than $35 at the current exchange rate. She paid it back easily and took a second for 12,000. “When I have more money, I can buy more merchandise and make more money.”

She doesn’t feel as though she’s made real progress yet. Her business is more or less what it was when she used the sòl. “At least I have some goats now.”

But she has a plan. She wants to return to being a Madan Sara. That is what Haitians call the merchants who buy commodities wholesale in the countryside and ship them for sale to the cities. She thinks she’ll need about 30,000 gourds to start.

Jocelyne Michel lives in Montas. She lived in a house on her father’s land, but couldn’t get on with her sister-in-law. She chose to rent a plot for her home down the road. “I get along with my family, but it was much too hard when we lived right next to each other.” She’s been renting the same spot for six years for 5000 gourds a year. She and her children’s father separated long ago. “He wasn’t any help. He would waste any money I managed to save. He lives with another woman now.”

She would support her kids with a business that changed depending on the season. During harvest, she would buy produce from the farms along the mountainside just south of her neighborhood, and bring it to market for sale. When there was no produce to be found, she’d buy flour, oil, and seasonings, and make fried dough to sell by the side of the road.

But with all five children depending entirely on her, and school fees increasing over the years, her business was dwindling. By the time the CLM selection team came through her neighborhood, she had just enough capital left to buy a mamit or two of flour at a time — that’s a standard Haitian dry measure, about the size of a coffee-can — just enough to make a day or so or snacks. “I couldn’t save anything anymore, and it was hard to pay for school.” She was buying for 500 gourds at a time, so she only made about 200 gourds each time.

Like Rosemène, she’s made good use of her savings and loan association since she joined the program. She used a first loan of 5000 gourds to reestablish her snack business on better grounds. She was able to buy an entire sack of flour, which meant that she had less frequent need to travel downtown to buy. Travel costs are very high in Haiti right now, so saving multiple trips makes a big difference. She paid back that first loan and had enough left over to buy a small pig, even though the business was also funding household expenses.

She immediately took out a second loan, this one for 10,000 gourds. But she knew that she could not just keep growing her snack business, so she added a second business. She bought eight sacks of charcoal for cooking and sold them at considerable profit. “When I was with my husband, it was hard to lay my hands on just 100 gourds because he wasted it all. Now I’m getting ready to borrow 15,000.” She plans, for now, just to keep growing her charcoal business.

She likes her association. “It helps us save.” She’s not sure yet what she’ll do with her savings after the association’s year-long cycle is over, but she’ll have that money, and may have goats she can sell, so she’ll need a good investment plan.

Roseline Jean was born and raised in Gwayal. She and her husband had three children, but the man died in 2018, while she was pregnant with their third. After he died, she supported herself and her kids with small commerce. She counted on neighbors to lend her the couple of thousand gourds she’d need to buy produce, which she brought to market and sold in small piles. She made her purchases directly from farmers on Tuesdays and Fridays, and she brought her merchandise to market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

She was able to keep her children fed most of the time. She could even send them to school thanks to a school director who allowed her to pay their tuition a little at a time. Before her husband passed away, he helped out by farming. When he died, she lost that source of income and had to sell the couple’s land to pay for his funeral. Even then, she still had debt, which she paid by taking work as a maid.

She had to move in with a second partner just to get herself and her children out of the street, but this second man works in the Dominican Republic, so she doesn’t see him much and he doesn’t help very much either. “He took me with my children, but I don’t have a child with him yet, so he isn’t very motivated.”

She chose to receive goats from her case manager, and though one of them died, the other is now pregnant. She is taking care of herself and her kids with a business she established with money she borrowed from her savings and loan association. She borrowed 5000 gourds, and now sells fried snacks. She made the first repayment, but has two more to go.

She is struggling. Her baby caught typhoid, and it both cost her some money but also kept her from working for a few days.

She is not sure yet how she will grow her business if this first one continues to succeed. But she hopes to use her business and her livestock to eventually buy a cow because a cow is the first step towards buying a pice of land. She would like to have her own land again.

Savanèt: Nine Months In

Jocelyne Alcimé lives in Gran Boulay, on a hillside high above the main road that crosses Savanèt from west to east. She has a lot of responsibility. She and her partner have two children, but they also have her two younger sisters with them, and each of the younger women has a child or children of her own. Her younger brother lives with the couple as well. All told, eleven people reside in her home.

Back in 2018, the couple had had a good bean harvest, and they used it to buy 18 sheets of new roofing tin. They wanted to build a new home. But they haven’t had a good harvest since, and with no other way to finance the construction they were planning, the roofing just sat there.

The couple got by with their farming. They would sell an odd bunch of plantain now and again or some corn. They also ate much of what they grew.

Jocelyne asked the CLM program to give her goats and a pig, and her case manager bought her a large, healthy nanny with a small buck trailing behind it. Shortly after her buck was weaned, she sold it and replaced it with another young female. That second goat has since given birth to another buck. And as the moment approached for her to get the pig, she became worried about pig disease. She decided to ask her case manager to give her the money he would have used to buy the pig to buy another small goat, instead. Her very small herd is healthy and growing.

Going to and from the market in Laskawobas to sell crops, as she always had, has become prohibitively expensive. The fuel shortage driven by the breakdown of fuel distribution in Haiti has raised the price of all forms of transportation.She doesn’t have enough merchandise to make the trip worthwhile. Instead, she goes to the nearby market in Kolonbye. She can go on foot. She saves the money she would pay a motorcycle, but the prices she can get for her produce are lower there.

Her younger brother, though, is turning into an important contributor. He makes charcoal from scrap lumber, which Jocelyne sells. It creates extra income for them both.

She is is making especially good use of her VSLA, her savings group. “I make the maximum deposit every week.” Her steady deposits make it possible for her to take out loans. She recently borrowed 15,000 gourds, about $125. She used some of the money to buy materials that she needs to continue work on her new home. She and her partner are planning four rooms. And they are making progress. She gave the rest of the money she borrowed to her brother so that he can buy more wood for their charcoal business.

The savings group will distribute what everyone has saved at the end of the year, and Jocelyne has a plan for hers. She wants to use the money along with proceeds from sale of some goats, if necessary, to buy a vant bèf . That means a cow’s stomach, and it is a way to buy a cow relatively cheaply. You pay for the calf in its mother’s womb. She wants a cow because she sees it as the first step towards buying land.

But her mind is not just on how she can begin to accumulate wealth. She really wants to change her life. As a child, she never went to school. So it means a lot to her that she can now sign her name.

Now she anxious to start work on learning her last name.

Mitha Gerome lives in Gwo Labou with her partner and their five kids. The main road through Savanèt passes just in front of her home. Her partner, Nenel is a farmer, planting his own crops, but also working as a day-laborer and neighbors’ fields.

Mitha has long managed a small business, selling basic groceries by the side of the road. But she has always struggled. She never had her own capital, but depended on a friend who was always willing to loan her money to buy merchandise. Between her business and Nenel’s day-labor, they always managed to send the children to school at the beginning of the school year, but the kids would often be sent home before the end of the year. They couldn’t always pay the full fees.

Like Jocelyne, Mitha asked the program to buy her goats and a pig, but once her two goats had been purchased she judged that the amount remaining to her would not be enough to buy a good pig, so she asked her case manager to give her the cash. She would invest it in her business. And that’s what she did.

She hasn’t had much luck with her goats so far. One of the two goats she received from CLM died. She bought one to replace it with money from her business, but the replacement was stolen.

Her business, on the other hand, has flourished. She goes to the large, busy market in Laskawobas on Wednesdays and Saturdays. She arrives early and buys a load of corn. She sits in her spot in the market to sell out the corn, then she takes the capital, along with any profit, and buys groceries that she can bring home and sell from a small stand on the road in front of her home. Sometimes she supplements her earnings by buying a load of produce — avocados, corn, beans — and takes it to market with her, selling it before she buys the day’s corn.

Her business model is working well for her. Every week she makes deposits in a sòl, a traditional form of saving in Haiti. It means that some of her money is out of her hands. Each time it is her turn to collect the pot, she has a lump sum she can add to her investment. She says proudly that she doesn’t depend on anyone else to manage her business anymore. She travels to market with 25,000 – 30,000 gourds. Up to $250. And all that money is hers.

She invests some of her profits in livestock, mostly poultry. She sees it as insurance. If her business suffers a setback, she can replace her loss by selling animals off. Her husband continues to contribute, both by farming and by charcoal production.

Lumber piled for charcoal production.

She and Nenel also continue to improve their home. They have built a latrine with the program’s help, and are getting ready to begin major repairs on their home.

Mitha’s new latrine

Germaine Desroslin lives in Kaledan, just west of Mitha’s home, along Savanèt’s one road. She, her partner, and their little girl live with her parents and her younger siblings. Her mother is also a CLM member.

She and her husband both lived on primarily on her parents’ income. Her father made most of the home’s income through charcoal production. Germaine added what she could through day-labor in neighbors’ fields. Her partner drives a motorcycle taxi. But because he does not own the motorcycle, or even have a steady leasing agreement with an owner, the couple can count on very little. He occasionally gets use of a motorcycle for a day, and after her partner pays the owner, there might be enough money left to pay for a meal or two.

Like Mitha and Jocelyne, Germaine asked the CLM team to buy her goats, and she received two. She’s had good luck with hers. One of them had a kid. She then bought a third goat with income from her small commerce, and that third goat had a kid as well. So, she’s got five now.

She has also started a small commerce. She saved about $40 from her weekly cash stipend, and bought flour and cooking oil. She started making fried snacks and selling them along the side of the road. She had never been in business before, but she was encouraged by her case manager, Islande, and Islande’s supervisor. Germaine and Islande thought about the different sorts of business Germaine might try, and she settled on fried snacks. “I heard that if you make them well you can increase your money fast.” She’s increased her investment by about 60% so far.

But she ran into a problem. “Flour started getting really expensive. So, I left that business, and entered another.” She buys produce at the market in downtown Savanèt, and transports it for sale in Mibalè or even Pòtoprens. She buys plantains or avocados or whatever she finds. It can be very profitable.

But it is also risky. Especially during a period when transportation Haiti is generally unreliable. A few weeks ago, Germaine lost three sacks of avocados. They grew overripe and rotted before she could get them to market for sale. So, she hopes to be able to return to her previous business soon. It involves less risk, and it keeps her close to home.

Germaine likes participating in her VSLA, and she plays an important role. Unlike almost all her fellow CLM members, Germaine had considerable schooling. She made it to the 11th grade. So she is her VSLA’s secretary, responsible for ensuring its books are clear and accurate. The group has just one problem. One of the members took out a large loan right before her mother became very ill. She hasn’t been able to repay the loan on schedule. “It’s not her fault. We will just have to go talk with her and her case manager. We’ll help her figure out whether there’s something she can sell to pay us back.”

Meanwhile, Germaine is making progress. She hopes that if she continues to take good care of her livestock, she will eventually be able to buy a cow. A cow, she feels, will bring her closer to her real goal, which is to buy land. “I am building my new home on family land, but I would rather live on land of my own.”

Germaine and her new, nearly-completed home.

Ready for Graduation in Gwomòn

Jeannette Belfort hasn’t always lived in Savann Long. She’s from a more remote area of Northern Gwomòn, but she’s been in Savann Long a long time, ever since she moved in with her first partner over 25 years ago. She had six children with that first man, but she eventually decided she had to leave him. She found a second partner she’s happier with, and together they have one young child.

That new partner, Rosemond, is a farmer, and he has always been willing to help her with her older children as well as with the one they have together. Between his harvests, and her small commerce, she struggled to send them all to school. But it was always difficult. Her children would sometimes lose a year because the couple could not afford the entire school fee for each child. It is not surprising. Upon entering the program, Jeannette reported that she and Rosemond could not even feed them every day.

She asked the CLM team to give her goats and small commerce. The goats have not been profitable so far. She received two, and each miscarried its first litter, though both are now pregnant once again. Even so, she now has four goats because she was able to buy the two additional ones with profits from her small commerce.

Her real progress has been due to that commerce. She sells basic groceries, such as oil, dried beans, bouillon cubes, and the like. She managed a smaller version of this business on and off even before she was part of CLM. But she had a lot of trouble keeping it going. Between having to feed her kids and trying to pay their school fees, her capital was always at risk. The business would disappear, then she find away to re-establish it, then it would disappear again.

Fonkoze helped her by providing capital she could invest to make the business larger. With more capital, she could buy more product, so she sold more product. The increased income helped her protect the business from the cycles of growth and shrinkage she was used to.

But when she’s asked how her business has changed, she doesn’t speak of that increased investment. She speaks instead about what she has learned. “I didn’t know how to save. I’ve learned to save in CLM.” And she has been saving well. In addition to her contributions to her savings association, she’s purchased the additional goats and some poultry as well. She has two big turkeys and some guinea fowl.

She also has a plan. “As the kids go farther in school, the costs will rise. I want to take care of my animals so I can sell some and use the money to invest in my commerce. That way, I will always be able to pay for school.”

Kettie Fernand lives close to Jeannette, also in Savann Long. She lives with her husband, Michelin, and the couple’s two children. Two of her children from a previous relationship live with her as well. She has really struggled over the years, and is excited that her ten-year-old will finally get to go to school this year. She and Michelin had never been able to send the child before.

When she was younger, she had tried to earn an income through small commerce, but that was when she lived with her older children’s father in another community. She couldn’t keep it going because people would always pressure her to sell on credit. She had grown up in the neighborhood, the people around her had known her all her life, and it was hard to say “no.”

When she joined CLM, she asked the team for goats and a sheep. She’s taken good care of her goats, and now she has five. Her ewe lost its first lamb, but it is growing and healthy.

She also decided to try managing a small commerce again. She used savings from her cash stipend to get herself started. She buys coffee beans, which she roasts and grinds. She sells serving-sized bags folks can use to make their morning coffee. She also sells the sugar and the bread that Haitians want with their coffee. The business is doing well. She purchased a large tom turkey with some of her profits, even as she’s used most of the income to manage her household’s needs.

She’s happy with the progress she’s made, and hopes to keep growing her business. Now that she’s no longer around the people who knew her as a girl, she finds it easy to avoid selling on credit, and she’s determined to do so.

Roselène Genéus — Seven Years After Graduation

Roselène isn’t from Mibalè. She from Kenskof, an agricultural region in the mountains above Pòtoprens. She met her husband in Pòtoprens, and they came back to Mibalè to move in with his parents.

It was a difficult time for Roselène. She didn’t get along with her mother-in-law. The couple wanted to move, but they had no place to go. They had no land. Eventually a kind neighbor, seeing the problem, gave Roselène and her husband permission to build a small shack in a corner of her yard.

That is where they were living when the CLM team found her. By then they had a young girl, and Roselène was pregnant with their second child. “CLM never would have found me if they hadn’t gone to every house. Programs had been to the area before, but they just ask local leaders for names. And leaders lead them to their own friends and family.”

The couple really needed help. They were getting by on what Roselène’s husband could earn as a sharecropper, planting his crops in fields that didn’t belong to them and turning over half of the harvest to landowners. There was no way to get ahead.

Soon after they entered the program they once again were at risk of homelessness. The woman who offered them a place for their shack didn’t mind having them around, but her family didn’t agree. They threatened legal action to have them removed. Roselène was nursing their second daughter, so the couple needed to find a solution quickly. Their case manager helped them talk with a neighbor, who was sensitive to their situation. She was willing to offer them an inexpensive five-year lease — just 5,000 gourds — on a small plot of land. It was hidden in the maze of footpaths that run through Bwa Fonten, but they would not have to worry about being chased away. What’s more, the owner was willing to consider the rent as a downpayment towards eventual purchase.

Roselène spoke with the other members of her savings club. Each week, every CLM member in her group would contribute money from their weekly stipend, and one of them would take the entire pot. It wasn’t Roselène’s turn to collect the pot, but her fellow members were willing to let her jump ahead in line. So, she paid the lease and started dreaming of her future purchase. “The land was steep and covered with thorns and cactus. My husband got together a group of friends, and they tore out the thorns and cut out a spot on the top for us to build on.”

She chose goats and small commerce as her two assets. She initially struggled with the goats. One died, and she was worried about the other two. So, she talked with her case manager, and she sold them both, purchasing a mature female with the proceeds from the sale. That female gave her three consecutive litters of twins, and between that nanny, her kids, and her kids’ kids, Roselène soon had ten goats. She and her husband added a small pig, which they cared for until it was large enough to sell for the price of a small cow. “It was a sow, but we just fattened it up. We didn’t have the space for piglets. I scoured the neighborhood to find stuff to feed it. The day we sold it, my husband and I got up at three in the morning. We left the girls in bed. And we pushed and pulled it to the market in Labasti.” It sold for 14,000 gourds, and they bought the cow for 12,500.

She used the money CLM gave her for small commerce to start a business out of her home, selling onions, dried herring, leeks, herbs, tomatoes — the ingredients for sauce. She walked around to all her neighbors to make sure they knew what she was selling. She used some of the income from that business to manage household expenses, but also managed to save money in her Fonkoze account. Between this small business, and her success with livestock, the family easily qualified for graduation.

When she graduated, she wanted to grow her business, so she began to take out loans from SFF, Fonkoze’s sister organization. Those loans made two changes possible. First, she changed her business. She began to buy up produce in the markets near her home — sacks of fruit or vegetables — and sell them in the large market in Kwadeboukè, Pòtoprens’s sprawling northern suburb. Second, she and her husband were able to use income from her business to rent plots of farmland for cash. They would no longer need to give up half of their harvest.

In 2019, the CLM team returned to Roselène’s neighborhood. In the years after Roselène’s graduation, the team had added an important new element to the program. It starting helping all program participants organize their own small savings and loan associations. Members of these associationsmake contributions at weekly meetings, and can take out loans from the funds accumulated. They repay the loans with interest, so the association’s funds grow. At the end of a one-year cycle, each member receives everything she has contributed along with her share of the interest. They then start a new cycle.

Roselène used her business to make her maximum weekly contribution, and her funds started to grow. By now, the couple had four children, so their expenses were increasing. Just the taxis to take all four to school and back cost almost $20 a week. And there’s tuition, uniforms, and books. And the family had to eat. So it wasn’t always easy to save, but Roselène was committed.

The couple used a 40,000-gourd loan from their association to buy a second piece of land. It was offered to Roselène by an older neighbor whose husband passed away. “It is close to the main road, so when we decide to build a new house, it will be easier to deliver the construction materials.” By now, Roselène’s business was flourishing, and she was quickly able to repay the loan from sales of produce, some from their harvest and some from her purchases. In 2021, the couple sold their cow and their goats, and used the proceeds to pay off the balance of the land they had leased back when they were in CLM, about 90,000 gourds.

Roselène’s vision for the future is optimistic, but also focused. “For myself, I don’t need any more progress, but I need to keep moving forward for my children. I want to leave them something.” She herself never went to school. She can sign her name because her case manager taught her how. But she wants her children to be able to go much farther.

Clermicile — Eight Years After Graduating

The years Clermicile spent growing up were complicated. When her father passed away, she moved from the area around Labasti, in southern Mibalè, where she had been living, to Doko, on the top of the hill that separates the Central Plateau from the area around Pòtoprens.

Her mother really struggled. Clermicile was her only daughter, and she was able to pay for Clermicile to attend only one year of school. Not once, but twice, she sent Clermicile to live as domestic help in wealthier families because she couldn’t take care of her. But Clermicile felt she was being mistreated, so she ran away, returning to her mother’s home.

But the mother still had difficulty taking care of her daughter, and was alarmed as she notice boys beginning to flirt with her. A neighbor suggested she encourage Clermicile to return to Pòtoprens and find paying work as a housemaid to get her away from the boys, and the mother agreed. Clerimicile moved in with the neighbor’s daughter in Kwadeboukè and spent her days working at a job they found for her. She went through several such jobs this way. Women liked employing her. “They called me ‘Seliwòz‘ because they said I was always cheerful.”

“Se li woz” is hard to translate. “Woz” means pink, but the phrase means something like “she’s the pretty one.”

Clermicile continued to work in Pòtoprens until she became pregnant. Then she returned to Mibalè and her mother, but she met her current partner, Jolicoeur, almost immediately. They moved in together when she was still pregnant with that first child, a boy named Lovensky.

Clermicile was never able to earn a steady living. Lovensky was a very unhealthy child, requiring lots of care in his early years. He was born with a fused rectum and required emergency surgery as a new born before he could defecate. She had trouble sustaining all the medical follow-up he needed, and he spent the first seven years of his life with a colostomy bag. Lovensky was admitted to the hospital frequently, and Clermicile would stay with him. But it not only prevented her from earning a living, but led to lots of expense. The medical care itself was nearly free of charge thanks to Partners in Health, but Clermicile had to eat while she stayed at the hospital with her boy, and the costs of purchasing meals every day from vendors in the street in front of the hospital added up.

Lovensky was six when Clermicile joined CLM in 2013. One of the first things the team did with her is assist her through the steps of follow-up that Lovensky needed. It took some maneuvering, but she was able to arrange surgery for Lovensky at Partners in Health’s University Hospital in Mibalè, which had just opened. Jolicoeur had to earn most of what the small family needed in their day-to-day lives. He would work for the drivers of the pick-up trucks used for public transportation between Mibalè and Kwadeboukè, the northernmost suburb of Pòtoprens. He’d earn tips for collecting passengers’ fees when he could find a driver willing to take him on.

By then the couple had another boy, an infant. Clermicile chose goats and a pig as the enterprises she would receive from Fonkoze. With an infant in her arms, it was too difficult to start a small commerce.

She was able to keep her pig healthy. That was before the epidemic of Teschen disease that has made pig-rearing in Haiti even riskier than it already was. But her real success came with her goats. “I had a lot of luck with them.” The program gave her two, and by the time she graduated, she had eight.

When asked how she uses her goats, she explains that she has always used them mainly as savings. She sells one or two or more when she needs to manage an expense, whether it is school fees or costs connected to sickness in the family or just to cover regular household expenses when the couple is struggling. Once she sold four of them to pay a lawyer to help get Jolicoeur out of legal trouble. The number of goats she keeps at any time varies, but each time it has gotten down to zero, she’s been able to get started again by purchasing new ones out of what they can save from Jolicoeur’s earnings by selling a bunch of plantains or two from her garden.

When she graduated from the program, Clermicile decided that she wanted to start a small business. She had always managed one on-and-off, whenever Lovensky’s health permitted it. Friends would lend her 500 gourds or so, and she’d buy something she could sell at Labasti, the large weekly market just a short walk from her home. In the last weeks of her time in CLM, the CLM team introduced her and her fellow members to staff from SFF, the Fonkoze Foundation’s sister organization in Haiti, which is the country’s largest microfinance institution. So, just after graduation she took out her first loan. She has taken a series of loans since 2014, and the value of the loans has increased. The first was for just 3,000 gourds. The most recent was for 45,000.

She has experimented with a range of businesses. Often she will buy livestock at various markets in Sodo or Mibalè and resell it, either at the same market, counting on strong negotiation skills, or by bringing it to Labasti, where butchers come from Pòtoprens and prices for livestock can be high. Sometimes she buys groceries and sells them either in Labasti or in Nan Gad, a large market near the entrance to Kwadeboukè. She buys beans in Laskawobas, where farmers bring them in for sale from the mountains, and sells them in Labasti and Nan Gad, where they cost a lot more.

Two yeas ago, the CLM team had the chance to offer families who had been part of the program before 2017 a new level of support. In 2016 and 2017, the team began helping members organize their own local savings and loan associations, and these associations had proven a success. Members make weekly contributions over the course of a year, and the association uses the money to make interest-bearing loans to members. At the end of a one-year cycle, members receive all their savings along with their share of whatever interest the association has earned. Clermicile and the women she graduated with had passed through the program before the team had learned to use the associations, so Fonkoze decided to organize associations for 800 CLM graduates in the region.

Clermicile was elected president of hers, though her presidency didn’t last. At the first meeting, it became clear that the elected secretary could not read well enough to do the job, so she and Clermicile switched places. Clermicile is, it turns out, perfectly able to read Creole well.

This is surprising, not just because Clermicile attended just one year of school. When she first joined CLM, her case manager taught her how to sign her name. We are always careful to say that the CLM program does not include literacy. We help women learn to write their names, but that’s about it. Neither we nor the women we work with have time for much more in the 18 months that the program lasts.

But when Clermicile could write her name, her case manager started giving her other words to write. A range of words. And before long, Clermicile was able to read and write at a basic level. Little bits of practice in the ensuing years only made her more capable. Now she manages all the reading and writing associated with her post in the association without difficulty. The association recently completed its second cycle, and its members are happy with it. Over 20 other neighbors have asked to join, enough so Clermicile is planning to open a second association for them, so that her original one will remain manageable.

Clermicile likes her association both for the way it encourages her to save money and for the credit it makes available. She prefers to take out loans for just a month, borrowing only what she can invest, roll over, and pay back in one lump sum. Interest in her association is 2% per month, so paying back the entire sum quickly minimizes the interest she pays. She has gotten so comfortable with the rhythm of these loans and their repayment, that she plans to leave her more expensive SFF credit program when she finishes repaying her current loan.

Meanwhile, she and Jolicoeur have been building up assets. Clermicile has eight goats and Lovensky and his younger brother each have one too, gifts from Jolicoeur. The couple has purchased some land, as well.

Clermicile has made a lot of progress since she first joined the program. Some of it has been financial. She and Jolicoeur are not wealthy by any means, but they are managing. And she’s become a leader in her community, too. She is the secretary and undisputed leader of her savings association, but she’s done more. She now serves on a regional committee committed to fighting gender-based violence. There, too, she is the committee’s secretary.

Just After Graduation

Manise lives in Laflòt, not far from the main road through Dezam, just a short walk from the border with Lachapèl, farther to the east. She hasn’t always lived there. She moved a couple of times while she was growing up.

She spent her earliest years in Palma, a market town on the upper end of the island of Lagonav. Her mother was from Dezam, but her father was from the island. The two met at the market in the small port city of Arkaye. When her father passed away, Manise’s mother struggled to care for her. She gave the girl to the father’s cousin, who lived in the nearby city of Ansagale, because she could not keep Manise fed. Manise grew up in the cousin’s home.

Manise’s mother then returned to Dezam, but when she became sick and required someone’s care, Manise moved to Dezam to be with her. She already had a child by then, and had to leave the child with the father, on Lagonav. But she didn’t feel that she had a choice. Back in Dezam, she soon had another child. But she also met her eventual partner. “He saw me and he liked me. And I like the way he treats my boy as his own child.”

The couple got by, but things were hard. Manise worked as a second-grade teacher, making 3,000 gourds per month, which is now less than $30. When, that is, the school was able to pay her at all. Her partner did odd jobs. Anything he could find. Despite the couple’s efforts, the small family frequently went hungry. Manise could not afford to send her young boy to school.

Manise chose goats and small commerce as the activities the CLM program would transfer to her, but after she received her two goats she and her case manager Odiel realized there was a problem. Manise was nursing a baby, so she and Odiel decided it was no time for her to be managing a business that would force her out of her home. They took money that they had set aside to purchase merchandise to buy a third goat instead.

The third goat didn’t end up getting Manise anywhere. Neighbors jealous of her participation in CLM killed it. But her other goats prospered. She would have had eight by graduation if she hadn’t already sold two to manage expenses. Four of her six remaining animals are pregnant. Before graduation, she had added two turkeys, which she bought out of savings in her VSLA, and a large pig. She had also started a very small commerce, selling snacks like crackers and candy out of her home, something she could do while managing the couple’s infant. At graduation, our evaluators assessed her productive assets at over $700, more than three times what she needed to graduate. Shortly after graduation, her pig succumbed to fever, but she purchased a small replacement almost immediately.

Manise has progressed in another way as well. She followed advice she received at agroforestry trainings that the CLM held in Dezam. She has been planting trees in the same fields in which she grows her usual crops: coconuts, mango, papaya, lime, and cherry. But also trees that bear no fruit of any value, but which leave her leafy, compostable that she can use to build up her garden’s ground soil. Though her neighborhood has been dry recently, her trees are starting to grow.

Despite her progress, Manise still struggles. Her baby has been developing slowly. It is early still, but he seems to be falling behind. He’s 18 months old, and he cannot yet support the weight of his head with his neck. We plan to help her access the services the boy might need in the next weeks. If we don’t, she is likely to burn through the wealth she has accumulated doing what she can for the boy.

Suzette lives in Lanbè, a neighborhood in eastern Dezam. Before she joined the program, she and her children were living with her mother. The arrangement led to conflict. Rather than live with constant arguments, Suzette chose to move out. She and her partner, Davilmar, could afford very little. Just a rented room that was soaked through with every rain, but it gave her some distance from her family.

She had no source of income herself when she joined the program. Davilmar was responsible for everything. He talked to a cousin of his who sold lottery numbers. Such people earn a small percentage on every ticket they sell. People are not inclined to do it if they can find something else. It is very little money. But Davimar needed money, and his cousin could see that. So they agreed that Davilmar would take over. “He works hard, and will do whatever he can,” Suzette says. Davilmar’s income meant that they had at least something to eat most of the time. They could not afford, however, to send the kids to school.

When she was invited to join CLM, Suzette figured that she and Davilmar had to talk. “When you are with someone, you shouldn’t make big decisions by yourself.” The couple was afraid to join the program. “People in the neighborhood were making up all kinds of lies about it. They said it was the devil’s work. We talked and talked, but we finally decided that we didn’t really have a choice. We needed the help.”

Suzette asked the CLM team to give her goats to get her started, and she received three. She cared for them, and the three turned into seven, but she sold a small male to buy school uniforms for her kids. She’s added other livestock. She owns turkeys and chickens, and a large and growing pig.

She started saving money in her VSLA. She and Davilmar really pressure themselves to save 250 gourds every week. Suzette used a 7,500-gourd loan from the VSLA to start a business. She would buy beans in the local market, and bring them for sale to other markets just down the road. When bean prices rose too high, she switched from beans to eggs. She now buys six cases of eggs each week at one market and sells them at two others. She can make enough to keep her family fed and continue saving. “I want to make my business bigger. I didn’t want to sell a goat to pay for school, but I had no choice. You can’t not send your kids. Next year, I want my business to be able to pay.”

Two Months in in Savanèt

Emanie lives just outside of downtown Savanèt with her husband and their three kids. The family has lived mostly from farming. They plant a small slope behind their house and rent another plot nearby.

Emanie’s husband also sometimes earns money as a mason’s assistant. He doesn’t have the skills to get a job as a mason himself, but he can carry mix cement with a shovel, or carry the mortar, rocks, or blocks that need to be lugged around. But it’s hard to get work. “Each mason has his own crew, so you can ask around all the time and still go five or six months without work.”

They managed what little they had well enough to send all three children to school this year, but they were only able to pay tuition for two of them. That means they haven’t been able to ask for their youngest child’s report card yet, and they won’t be able to register her for school in the fall without the report card in hand.

She is excited about the opportunity that CLM is offering her. She’s asked the program to provide her goats and a pig as income-generating assets. She says that raising livestock can help her. “When your animals have young, you can sell them to send your children to school..”

She and her husband have been working towards one major change in their lives already. One of the first transfers that the families who joined CLM with them received was the materials to install a pit latrine. Normally, they receive three sacks of cement and a few additional things that construction requires. The cement is used to make a square that covers the pit and a seat. But Emanie and her husband decided to do much more. They borrowed some additional cement so that they could line the pit with stone walls. It makes the work much more expensive, though it may also be more lasting, though the fact that pits eventually fill — whether or not they have cement walls — makes the value of their investment questionable.

Woodia is a single mother of three who lives just down the main road from Emanie. The father of one of her children pays for his child’s school, but he contributes in no other way. The father of the other two does not do even that. “I am their mother and their father.”

She lives with her parents, and until she joined CLM she depended on them for everything. Three of their children live independently in Pòtoprens, but the parents still support Woodia, her younger brother, a young orphaned nephew, and Woodia’s three kids. Woodia’s father is a farmer, and her mother sells housewares at the market in downtown Savanèt using microcredit loans that she takes from Fonkoze Financial Services.

Woodia used to borrow from Fonkoze too, but the money always passed through her hands. She’d spend everything she had on her children, and her business would disappear. Her parents repaid the balance of her last loan.

When Woodia’s mother saw that Woodia had nothing to do, she took some of her loan money and set up a small grocery shop in front of their home. She had Woodia run the shop while she devoted her time to her larger business. It gave Woodia something to do, and increased the household’s income, but didn’t give Woodia anything of her own.

But when Woodia joined CLM she became a member of a sòl. It is a type of savings club common throughout Haiti. Fonkoze’s case managers organize them for CLM members. Members contribute a small agreed-upon sum every week, and one of the contributors gets the whole pot. It is a great way for members to access the lump sums that even small investments require.

Woodia took the money from her sòl and established a second business right next to her mother’s. She arranges snack foods — crackers, candy, and the like — on a table next to her mother’s shop. She can continue to manage her mother’s store while growing her own business in parallel. She started with 1500 gourds worth of merchandise, and she invested her profits back into the business. It is now worth 3000 gourds. A local wholesaler saw her effort and came to believe enough in her to sell her an additional 4500 gourds worth of merchandise on credit.

So, Woodia’s off to a good start. She’s asked the team to provide her with goats and more merchandise to grow her commerce. Her mother has told her that, once she has paid off her latest loan, Woodia can simply buy the grocery business that she’s already been running.

Starting Again in Laskawobas

Rosemène Elcin is a mother of seven. She lives in Twa Wòch, a neighborhood in Pouli, a broad area of southeastern Laskawobas. The father of her first four children passed away, and she now lives with the younger two from that first group of kids — 15-year-old twins — and her second partner, along with their three children. Her two oldest children were taken by her uncle, who is raising them in the Dominican Republic. “I couldn’t pay for their school. Even buying food was hard. So he took them for me.”

Her partner brings in what he can. He “vann maten.” That means he “sells mornings.” He works half-days in their neighbors’ fields for a small wage. Pouli is a fertile agricultural area, and there is a great deal of farming. When the season is right, he can probably find work almost every day.

Rosemène figured a way to earn income as well. An aunt of hers was responsible for a sòl, a traditional Haitian savings club. Every market day its ten members would contribute 500 gourds — that is now less than $5 — and one of them would get the whole pot. Haitians use sòl as a way to fight off the pressure to spend whatever they earn so that they can accumulate larger lump-sums. Rosemène’s aunt arranged for Rosemène to get the first pay-out, tuning the sòl into and interest-free loan for her niece. Rosemène could invest the money in small commerce, and she would just have to pay her 500 gourds each week out of her earnings.

The system worked well until Rosemène ran into a problem. One of her kids had an accident with a knife and needed to go to the hospital. The first-aide expenses wiped out her business, leaving her with three 500-gourd payments and no income to make them from. She hasn’t been able to rejoin the sòl or to run any kind of business since then. She had hoped to use her business to pay her children’s school fees. The pastor who runs their school took them this year, saying she could pay when she had the money, but the year is now over, and she doesn’t have the money yet.

She is excited to join CLM. She’s heard that the program will give her livestock. “I can use the animals to pay for my children’s school.”

Oriza Molina is originally fro Savanèt, the narrow commune that lines the steep valley just south of Laskawobas, on either side of the Fè a Cheval River. She got together with a man from northern Haiti in Pòtoprens, and they lived there with their two children. He worked in construction, and she managed a small commerce, buying a sack of any produce she thought should could sell in the large market in Kwadeboukè, and breaking it down into smaller portions for sale near the couple’s home.

Her relationship with the man did not work out, and each of them took one of the children and went their separate way. At this point she is not even sure where he and her other child live.

Oriza continued to support the child she was left with with her business, but her trouble was only beginning. She developed diabetes, and her problems grew worse until her foot needed to be amputated in two separate operations over the course of a couple of years. By then her commerce had disappeared. It depended on lifting and moving around sacks of produce, which she could no longer do. She moved in with a cousin in Pouli. She looks after her cousin’s children while the cousin works as a maid at a home in downtown Laskawobas. Her cousin keeps the five of them fed with her very meager earnings.

She has been listening to what the CLM team says about the businesses it can help her start, but she is skeptical. She really likes the idea of keeping livestock. She enjoyed it when she was younger, but she has no place to keep them. And she is accustomed to thinking of how difficult managing small commerce on her one leg and crutches. Her case manager will have a lot to do to help her see the possibilities before her.

Ellutane with her son, Dudley

Ellutane Joseph says that her family tells her she became blind when she was about two years old. She doesn’t herself remember ever being able to see. Now a widow, she lives In Nan Rabi, a small neighborhood in Pouli, with her son and a nephew. “His mother was my sister, so I am his mother now.”

Her husband used to support them with day-labor in their neighbors’ fields. The couple had no land of their own. But she’s without him now. She doesn’t have her own home, nor can she rent one. A neighbor was letting her and her boys stay in a small house that no one else uses, but that neighbor has asked her to move out. Ellutane hasn’t yet found anywhere else to live.

She supports herself and her boys by asking for charity. Her son Dudley takes her to various markets in the region and leads her around while she asks people for help.

When asked what sort of business she would like to establish, she turns fretful, quickly bringing up her blindness as a barrier to anything she might try. She couldn’t keep goats because she wouldn’t be able to move them around during the day to make sure they can feed and are out of the sun. She can’t try small commerce because she can’t tell bills apart if they are the same size, as most Haitian bills are. She thinks she might be able to manage a pig, because she could just put in in one place and keep it fed, but she repeatedly says, “M ap pran sa yo ban m.” She’ll take, she says, whatever the CLM team gives her.

Approaching 15 Months

Mariane is a single mother of two boys who lives well off the main road that leads north from Gwomòn. Neither of the boys’ fathers help her with them. “I have to be everything,” she says.

When she joined the CLM program, she was supporting them with an interesting job. A wealthier neighbor had a severely handicapped teenager. The young man had been living in Pòtoprens, but his parents had trouble getting him the constant, comprehensive care he needed. He could not move on his own or even speak. So they moved him back to the countryside, and looked for a full-time caretaker. Mariane got the job. She would get to the young man’s home early every morning, get him up, bathe him, feed him, and care for him through the day. In the evening, she went back to her two little boys.

She had to give up her small commerce to take that job because it took up all her time. “I thought getting money every month would be better for me.” But the salary was small, just 4000 gourds per month. That’s less than $40. She struggled to pay her children’s school fees. And she had very little time to spend with them.

Things began to change when she joined the CLM program. She chose to receive capital for small commerce and goats, and has made progress with both. Her case manager bought two goats for her, and with the two kids they’ve had so far, that would have brought her to four. But she has come much farther than that. Profit from her business has enabled her to buy three more, some of which have also had young, so she now owns 11. She also purchased a small pig.

Her business is straightforward. The market in downtown Gwomòn is very active. There are three main market days each week. Mariane buys a large jug of cooking oil early in the morning on each of the days. She separates it into small soft-drink bottles, and walks around town, selling the small bottles of oil out of a tub that she carries on her head. The regular price for bottle of oil is 250 gourds, but she sells them for 225. She could sell for the higher price, but wouldn’t sell them as quickly. “I sell out at a single market, and make 500 gourds each day. At 250 gourds, it might take me two or even three markets to finish selling.”

She has clear plans. She expects to continue to manage her household with her commerce. Meanwhile, she’ll use her livestock to make other investments. She hopes to sell some goats soon to buy a cow. She hopes to raise the cow so that she’ll eventually be able to buy land. She is okay where she is right now. With the program’s help, she built a small new house for herself and her boys on her mother’s land. But she would like to buy land herself. “It is better when you have your own.”

Louirana lives in Zarat, close to the main road out of Gwomòn. She has two girls, and the girl’s father lives nearby, but they cannot count on him. “He found another woman.”

When the man was still with her, the family was making progress. Louirana had begun work on a house, buying materials with profit from her own business and her partner’s contributions. But by the time she joined CLM, work on her house hadn’t been progressing for a long time. She was struggling to support herself and her girls with a small commerce, selling used clothing, but had very little capital to work with, just a few hundred gourd she made now and again by selling one of the chickens she kept in her yard, all descendants of a hen a friend had given her.

The program gave her two goats, and she now has three. One of the two had a healthy kid. The other had twins, but they did not survive. She is also keeping a goat for a neighbor. When it has kids, she’ll be entitled to one as payment. She does not, however, have big plans for her animals. She seems to think of them as savings. She can sell one if she has a sudden need for money or to send her girls to school.

Her main focus, however, is her commerce. If you ask many CLM members what their commerce is, they won’t be able to tell you. They’ll say that they go to the market with their capital looking for something that they think they can sell, and then they buy it. They don’t have a fixed business.

But like Mariane, Louirana is different. She has found a very specific niche. She buys used sheets and blankets from used clothing merchants and sells them individually. She says that if she’s careful she can buy them for 500 gourds each and sell them for as much as 1000. It depends on her eye for the product and her knowledge of the market. She says that her business would have grown already if not for the money she’s had to take out of it to complete work on her home.

She credits her older sister for teaching her how to run a business. “Our mother died when I was young. I moved in with my sister, and she would take me to the market with her when I wasn’t in school.” She did not get very far in school, but learned a lot about buying and selling. And she is passing on her sister’s gift to her. Whenever her older daughter Loudjina, who’s ten, is out of school, she gives her some money to buy cookies and crackers, which Loudjina sells to children in the neighborhood. Louirana smiles as she explains that Loudjina doesn’t like sitting around. When asked to explain why she likes commerce, the girl’s answer is simple. “I like to make money.”

After Four Months in Kaledan

Rose Martha is from Mache Kana, the area around what is, perhaps, Mibalè’s most important rural market. She and her mother were living with her grandmother. But the older woman died, and Rose Martha’s mother eventually hooked up with a man from the hills above Kaledan, in Savanèt commune. She moved there with Rose Martha, who lived on the side of the hill with her mother and stepfather until she found her partner, Examé, who was living in along the main road that traverses Savanèt east to west.

The couple’s life together started well. Examé was willing to work hard. Savanèt is on the Dominican border, and he’d cross over frequently, staying for weeks at a time, to earn what he could to support their family. Rose Marthe would buy produce in the hills above their home — plantains, sour oranges, or passion fruit — and sell it in Mibalè. She had 6,000 gourds or more in her business, back when that was more than enough for an activity like hers. They eventually had five children, and though they had to choose the least-expensive of the nearby schools, they were able to send them as they grew old enough to go. They had begun work on a four-room home.

Things changed when Examé grew sick. The couple spent what they had, seeking help from traditional practitioners, to save his life. He stopped going to the DR to earn, and Rose Martha burned through the money in her small commerce. By the time the CLM team passed through her neighborhood, it had been more than three years since she had had a business of her own. She, Examé, and the children were sharing a flimsy shack, getting by by raising their own crops and working their neighbors’ land. The foundation they had traced for a new home sat empty, with weeds growing in its wall-less, roof-less rooms.

Rose Martha chose goats and small commerce as the assets she’d receive from the CLM program. She hasn’t yet receive the goats, but her small commerce is off to a good start. She decided to go straight back into the business she knows well, buying produce for sale in Mibalè. She has already increased her capital from 5,000 gourds to 6,000, even though she has to spend some of her profits to manage her household and even though she’s been saving 250 gourds every week in her savings and loan association.

She is excited about membership in her association. It will help her save the money she needs to add to the livestock that the CLM program gives her even as it gives her access to small loans that will help her send her children to school in September and finish work on the home that she and Examé hope to build.

The support that the program provides to help her build a new home is especially important to her. “The five kids are stuck now in one small room.” But they are growing, and she wants them to have some space.

Rose Martha chats with her case manager, Islande

Lanise lives with her three children in one room of her parents’ house, just a few feet from Rose Martha’s home. Her younger sister lives in another room with her children, and a cousin lives in a third room. The parents themselves live in the fourth.

Her children’s father, Molière, is from the hill above Kaledan, but when the couple’s first child was born, he decided to move down the hill to be closer to Lanise. Since they do not yet have their own home, Molière lives with his sister, whose home is close by.

Like Rose Martha’s partner, Molière would travel now and again to the DR for farm work, and like Rose Martha Lanise would manage household expenses with a small commerce. But she had much less to work with than Rose Martha. She depended on a nice neighbor, who’d lend her 1,000 gourds at a time so she could buy bread and peanuts to make peanut butter, which she would sell as a snack in front of the local school.

Both she and Molière have been willing to work hard. “The kids didn’t ask to be born. You have to feed them and send them to school.” But with very limited resources, it has been hard to get anywhere. She still owes 3,000 gourds of the 7,000 she’s being charged to send her two older kids to school.

Her biggest hope for the CLM program is to get herself and Molière into a new house, and the couple has been working hard. They have been using savings from their weekly stipend and anything they can take from the income they earn to begin assembling the construction materials they’ll need. The program’s contribution is limited. But Lanise is willing to set a conservative goal for the time being in order to make it easier to achieve. The couple plans just a single room, which Lanise thinks will require 15 support posts and planks cut from four palm trees for the walls. They’ve already purchased eleven of the posts and two of the palm trees. They are anxious to move into their own place. “When you’re in your own home, you can get up when you want.”

Lanise chose goats and a pig as her two types of assets, but she changed her mind when she saw that there weren’t a lot of good pigs on the market. It was getting near planting season, so she took the money and bought beans, which she and Molière planted on his family’s land. The rains have been enough to give her hope, and she expects a harvest in July. Income from the harvest should be more than enough to help the couple finish their new home and pay the balance of her children’s school fees.