Idalia hasn’t been feeling well. She says she’s had a cold and a fever. She’s been coughing a lot, too. She went to the Hospital in Mirebalais to see a doctor, but did not plan her visit through our CLM nurse, and she was not able to get herself seen. The hospital sees many more people every day than it was designed to serve, and getting to see a doctor can be complicated.

It might be simpler for her if she went to the clinic in Lakolin. It too is part of the Partners in Health network, and though it lacks the range of specialists that the Mirebalais facility’s role as a teaching hospital gives it, the lines can be much shorter and the procedures simpler. But Idalia prefers Mirebalais. Her oldest son lives there, and one of her younger ones spends most of his time at his brother’s house. Going to Mirebalais gives her a chance to see them.

And now she has an exciting new reason to do so. Her daughter-in-law just gave birth to Idalia’s first grandchild. Idalia used the occasion to spend some time with the younger couple, helping out.

She and her husband are nearly finished with their small home. They need one more palm tree, though, for a last section of one of the walls and a few finished touches. And Idalia’s not sure how they’re going to buy it. She doesn’t see where the money is going to come from, so she’s planning to talk with her case manager, Titon. She hopes he’ll have some ideas.

Building her house has been a struggle. She and her husband haven’t had a lot they can invest in the project. And it’s been hard to make progress even though hers is smaller than those being built by other members. Its only full-time inhabitants are Idalia, her husband, and their youngest son, and they decided to construct only one small room. The couple doesn’t want to remain in Gwo Labou, and they see no reason to invest too much in a house there.

They moved there a couple of years ago from Jinpaye, an area of Cornillon farther into the hills above Gwo Labou. They fled Jinpaye, where they have some land and some roots, to escape accusations of theft made against her husband. He was brought up before local leaders there, accused of stealing plantains from someone’s field, and her intervention at the improvised trail only made things worse. “A wife doesn’t speak for her husband,” she was told.

But she’s not at home in Gwo Labou. The couple found a member of the CLM Village Assistance Committee willing to let her build her CLM home on a corner of his land, but she’s embarrassed by her dependence on a stranger’s goodwill. And she feels as though her situation gives her an especially low status in the community, which affects her ability to progress.

“Yon moun vini mwen ye. Mwen rèt sou tè moun,” she explains. That means, “I’m a stranger. I live on someone else’s land,” and it’s her explanation for a range of complaints, including her sense that her neighbors don’t worry about paying her money they owe her. She’s sold both goat meat and pork, but the only money she’s received out of what she is owed is what Titon has collected for her.

She has three goats, but they haven’t been productive. One is pregnant, and a second may be. It was just recently together with a buck. But the third has been with her the longest, and it’s not gotten pregnant yet. It is probably past time for her to sell it and buy a replacement.

Idalia says that she’s not going to graduate from the program. She says that others have told her that she can’t graduate without poultry, and all the chickens that she has purchased die soon after so brings them home. She just spent 600 gourds, or almost $10, to buy six young ones, but they didn’t last.

She doesn’t really have to own poultry to graduate. That is her misperception. Many CLM families have graduated without owning poultry. But we do insist that members develop at least two income-generating activities, and Idalia has only one, the goats, so far.

I came across Juslène in a corner of Gwo Labou different from the one I have previously found her in, a couple of hundred yards uphill from the house I’m used to. She and her toddler were sitting under a tree in a neighbor’s yard as she helped the older woman shell a small harvest of peanuts. She no longer lives in her sister-in-law’s house. Juslène and her husband have managed to complete enough work on her own home that they felt ready to move into it. All it still lacks is an internal door separating its two rooms.

Juslène is delighted. She says that her sister-in-law’s house was too cold. And it’s true that it sits in a small yard surrounded by large trees. Very little sun gets in. But the more important difference is that the new house is her own. “Ou dòmi lakay ou. Lè w vle leve, ou leve.” That means that you sleep in your own home. You get up when you want to get up. Moving to her own house has given Juslène a new measure of control over her life.

She’s also pleased because her little boy was released from the malnutrition program that the CLM team referred him to. Its medical staff judges that he no longer needs the fortified peanut butter that is the standard treatment in Haiti. And as I speak with Juslène, the boy is noticeably more playful than he has been during my previously visits.

He must be two or three, and he is getting chatty. Not yet pronouncing words clearly, but putting out one short, choppy phrase after another. Juslène repeats most of the phrases, correcting pronunciation and adding missing words. She says that talking with her boy is new for her, but she really enjoys it. She learned it from Titon, her case manager. The importance of talking to newborns and young children is one of the CLM program’s key lessons, and Juslène appears to have learned it well.

Juslène still needs to work hard to further develop her wealth. She still has just two goats, but they are both pregnant. And she has no reliable source of income. She says that she and her husband still depend on working in her neighbors’ fields, but that means income that is both small and irregular. That’s something that she and Titon will have to work on.

But Juslène has changed a lot. Her neighbors wouldn’t talk seriously to her. They looked at her as an “egare.” That means someone who’s empty-headed or lost, out to lunch. Juslène used to spend most of her time looking down when someone tried to speak with her, as though she was afraid to engage in conversation. Now she engages with people comfortably. Titon notices that difference, and so do Juslène’s neighbors.

“Things aren’t moving the way I’d like them to, but they’re moving,” Laumène explains. She’s been struggling with headaches that she still prefers to address with folk remedies, but she continues to work through it all.

Two of the children who still depend on her are in school this year. A third would be in school, but he got sick right at the beginning of the year, and he went to stay with an older sister in Port au Prince, who is helping him get treatment. Laumène plans to send him in school starting in January. Another lives in Port au Prince as well, even though his mother thinks of him as her dependent. Her real difficulty is with Elijean.

Elijean is 15, and lives with his mother in Gwo Labou. She and the boy’s father sent Elijean to preschool, and Laumène still shows off his diploma with pride. But then the father decided not to pay for the boy to go to primary school. After a couple of lost years, Laumène herself managed to send Elijean. But it was always a struggle. Sometimes she couldn’t pay fees on time, sometimes she couldn’t buy all the books he’d need, and sometimes she couldn’t afford a decent pair of shoes. He would miss time. And the more time he missed, the less interested he became.

Now that Laumène could send him he’s no longer willing to go. He prefers to hang around and make little bits of money doing odd jobs. The day I sat with Laumène, for example, I crossed paths with Elijean as I was hiking up the hill to her home. He was lugging a sack full of avocados down the mountain for a neighbor. Laumène worries that Elijean will regret his decision someday. “He’ll see the other young people and the progress they’re able to make.” But she hasn’t been able to get him to change his mind so far.

She’s unhappy that her small commerce disappeared. She thinks she was forcing it to do too much for her and her children. “Their father gives them nothing. I’m not his wife.” She started the commerce with money she borrowed from her Savings and Loan Association. She used earnings from it to buy shares at the Association’s weekly meetings. She took some of the money to register three of her kids for school, used 400 gourds to send her boy to his sister in Port au Prince, and a little over 1000 to repay the loan. She has about 500 gourds left, but that’s not enough to stay in the business she had.

“I want to set up a rum business, but it’s better if I do it with my own money.” Locally produced rum sells reliably, with a healthy profit margin, because it’s cheap. But she’s worried that if she tries to do it with another loan, she could have problems because drinkers often buy on credit, and you can lack cash when you need it to buy a new supply or make a loan payment. So, she’s waiting for her bean harvest. It should provide her plenty of money to get started.

In the meantime, she’s happy about the way that her poultry are multiplying. She has chickens, ducks, and turkeys of various sizes running around her yard. Several are sitting on eggs. She had none when she joined the program. In the absence of her commerce, they give her a reliable way to manage smaller expenses, the sort for which she wouldn’t want to sell off a goat. And the turkeys in particular can help her increase her wealth. Large ones can sell for over 1000 gourds. Selling a couple of large turkeys can bring in enough to buy good young goat.

She’s made some progress with her goats. She started with just two, and now she has four, three mature females and a kid. But the kid has been sick. The other kid from the same litter died already. Their mother hasn’t wanted to let them nurse.

Laumène is doing everything she knows how to do to save the kid. She holds its mother at times to help it nurse, and she bathes it and encourages it to start eating regular food, but she’s pessimistic about its chances. Her hopes focus instead on the other two females, both of which are pregnant.

Her larger concern related to the goats is theft. Theft of livestock in the area around Gwo Labou has become an epidemic. A gang of thieves appears to be making the rounds at night. Laumène calls me to a secluded spot in her yard, right in front of the door to her house, and she whispers that she’s started bringing the goats into her home at night. “They smell, but I’ll put up with it to protect them.” She explains that she bought some extra cleaner so she can to go over the room they spend the night in every morning, and she proudly shows me the room, asking me whether I see or smell any sign of them. She also decided to leave her goat shed in place, even though it needs repairs, so that thieves won’t come look in her home.

Modeline is waiting. She’ll give birth to her second child any day. So, her husband is doing most of the work and most of the running around for the couple these days.

For example, he has been attending Village Savings and Loan Association meetings for her, purchasing shares for the couple every week. They also took out a 3000-goud loan – a little less than $50 – for them to invest in his business plan. He purchased several trees of avocados before harvest. It was a good opportunity for someone willing to work hard. He would have to climb into the trees and pick the fruit just before they were ripe. He’d put them in sacks, and then carry the sacks, one-by-one down the mountain to the roadside to get them to trucks that would haul them for sale in Mirebalais, Lascahobas, or Port au Prince.

But Hurricane Irma’s winds took most of the avocados off the trees before they were ready. He only harvested six sacks full that could be sold. And the bad luck didn’t end there. The truck he loaded the sacks onto broke down on its way to market, leaving his avocados to rot. It was a total loss. He’ll have to work hard, farming for neighbors, to earn the cash to repay the loan.

He has also been doing most of the care for their livestock. Their pig continues to grow, and three of their four goats are pregnant.

Modeline is worried about one of the goats, however. “It’s been really sick. It couldn’t even stand up to eat.” As its condition worsened, it was also attacked by external parasites. These often flourish as a goat sickens, making its condition even worse. But Modeline fed the goat by hand and began giving it regular baths to fight the parasites. She says that she started finding them dead in its fur. The goat has started to stand up and move around a little. It’s too early to say whether she’s been able to save it, but it’s better off than it was.

Her house is almost finished. It still needs doors and windows, but all the lumber is ready. Modeline is just waiting for the builder to get around to the job.

She chose have the house built right next to her mother’s house, and initially that made a lot of sense. Her stepfather had always been kind to her. He helped is mother raise her after the two left Kwafè, where she was born. And he continued to help support her even as he and her mother had a number of young children. Modeline eventually met her husband, but he lived mainly in the Dominican Republic, where he could find work to support her and their little girl. Staying close to her mother meant Modeline had adults nearby to help her and it also enabled her to babysit for her young siblings, which freed her mother and stepfather to work in their fields. It worked for everyone.

The resources that CLM made available to the family eventually convinced Modeline and her husband that he could do well staying at home, farming his mother’s land and taking care of Modeline’s livestock, and initially this led to conflict. Modeline and her husband suddenly found her stepfather troublesome. The older man seemed to resent the younger man’s desire to work independently for his wife and child. He too was trying to make money by buying and selling avocados, and he expected the younger man to work for him.

But Modeline says that the conflict has passed. The two men are now friends “de men nan kou.” That means that they have their hands around each other’s neck. It might sound like choking, but it really means that they are embracing. Modeline couldn’t be happier about it.

Now Modeline has a very simple ambition. She wants to be able to use her livestock to buy a cow, and then use the cow to buy land. The land that she and her husband work right now belongs to her mother-in-law. “Buying our own land is our dream.”

Rosana wasn’t feeling well as we talked. She’s been plagued by a cold that she can’t seem to shake, and has had a toothache for the last few days as well. The toothache makes it hard to sleep, which only makes it more difficult to get over the cold. But the primary dental option in Fon Desanm and elsewhere in Kolonbye are tooth-pullers, rural practitioners who will extract a troublesome tooth cheaply. But cheaply is not free-of-charge, and Rosana has been resisting the expense for the time being.

One of her kids is sick with a feverish cold, too. It doesn’t seem serious enough to go to a clinic, so for now she’s trying to wait it out, hoping it will pass. But with her eight kids and her grandchild all crowded into the small, two-room house with Rosana and her husband, it is rare for only one child to be sick. The children pass their colds and fevers around. For Rosana, that’s just part of having her big family.

She’s unhappy these days that her small commerce disappeared again. This version was created with money she borrowed from her Village Savings and Loan Association. She took out a loan for 7500 gourds – about $120 – and invested 4000 in her business. The other 3500 went into her farming. But the 4000 gourds in her business were not able to generate enough profit for her to repay a 7500-gourd loan, especially while she was using some of her sales to help with household expenses as well. So, with each reimbursement, the business got smaller. The final repayment cleaned it out entirely.

She had turned her three goats into six, but she’s back to five, and soon expects to have just four. She sold a small buck, one of her original goats’ first offspring, to help with school fees. And her boys recently came across one of her adult nanny goats lying with a foot broken where they had left it tied to graze. To all appearances, it had been struck by a thrown rock. The nanny had been pregnant, and miscarried. Rosana thinks it will eventually die since it can’t get around to feed. Her two other adult females are pregnant, and they should have their litters soon.

All this leaves her worried about graduating, but it doesn’t leave any question in her mind about her progress. She has livestock now, and a house with a solid roof. So, when it rains, “I only know it because I hear it.”

In the meantime, she and her husband are focused on their farming. A good crop might be enough to make a big difference.

Altagrace is having a hard time. “Things aren’t working. Pa gen aktivite.” That means, literally, that there’s no activity, but it’s often used by someone to say that she has no business, no economic activity. Altagrace borrowed 7000 gourds – about $112 – from her Village Savings and Loan Association, ostensibly to create a small commerce. But she hasn’t been able to pay it back. She felt so embarrassed that she stopped going to the weekly meetings. She has had to send her children to school without uniforms because she needs to focus on repayment.

She used 3000 of the 7000 gourds to repay a previous debt, having borrowed that money from her mother-in-law to rent a small plot of land to farm. She used another 2000 gourds to buy a bed, the first one that she and her husband have ever had. That left her too little left to start anything substantial enough to enable her to repay the loan.

She thought of investing the rest of it in produce that she could send for sale in Port au Prince, but she’s watched recently as neighbors have lost their investment because the old trucks used to take produce from the countryside into the city break down frequently, leaving produce to spoil. It seemed too risky.

But she finally decided that she needs to return to her Association, facing whatever criticism the other members throw her way. So, she borrowed 2500 gourds from her brother-in-law, who is a coffin maker. That will be enough to pay the late payment fees and take a big first step towards reimbursing the loan itself, but it will still leave a large balance. She’ll be able to chip away at it by selling plantains from her garden, but won’t be able to fully pay the debt until she and her husband bring in the harvest from the rented land. And it is poor land, so they couldn’t plant a high-revenue crop like black beans. They planted pigeon peas and manioc instead. And catching up with her payments is important to her because Altagrace likes the Association. “It’s useful. I’ve already taken out two loans,” she explains.

Her husband returned recently after spending a few weeks in the Dominican Republic, looking for work. “He couldn’t get far because he didn’t have much money.” He stayed near the border, but wasn’t able to find anything. There’s plenty for them to do in their fields right now. It’s time for weeding, which is a lot of work. And he can find day jobs in others’ fields, too. The latter is important because the cash it brings in is still a large part of what keeps the family fed.

Meanwhile, her livestock is increasing in value slowly. What were two goats are now four, and one is pregnant. And her hog is growing and getting fat. Even so, she thinks of her fields as her most important activity. “My hope is my garden.”

Solène feels as though she’s made a lot of progress since she first joined the CLM program. She talks about her house and her livestock. She talks about her new-found ability to save. And she summarizes her list of changes with encouraging words, “Now I have hope.”

Her children started school the year before she joined CLM. Their education is important to her. But she didn’t have the money to finish paying the fees, so they weren’t able to complete the year. The school principal eventually sent them home.

Her first year in CLM, then, was the first schoolyear her kids were able to complete. But Solène made an interesting decision. Both of the children passed their exams to enter second grade, but she decided she wanted them to repeat first grade nonetheless. “I just didn’t feel as though they’d learned enough.” She made the decision knowing that it means one more year of school she’ll have to pay for each child. Unlike many of the other CLM members, she had several years of schooling herself, so she feels competent to judge. In fact, she sometimes earns a little money on the side by tutoring some of her neighbors’ children.

Life is cheerful now in her lakou, the small yard on the top of a little hill where she built her house. The land belongs to her father-in-law, and he lives with her, her husband, and the kids. Solène says that he is as happy as she is about the house they have been able to build. They made the extra investment necessary to build four rooms, three more than the CLM program demands and two more than most families build. “My father-in-law’s in the house with us, and the kids will start to get big and I’ll want them out of my bedroom,” Solène explains. So, it took more time and more money than it had to take, but the family no longer worries about rain. The house still lacks some finishing touches: the shutters and the galatan, which is the ceiling that closes off the part of the roof that hangs over the front porch. And Solène still owes the builder 500 gourds – a little more than $8 – but she plans to hold on to the money until he does the rest of the work.

Solène and her husband continue to focus on their farming. She borrowed 8000 gourds from her Village Savings and Loan Association to plant beans, and the couple should see their harvest in a couple of months. She has fallen behind in her repayments, though. The Association’s rules require monthly payment of part of the capital along with some interest. But she has resigned herself to the penalty she’ll have to pay because she’ll wait until she sells her beans to repay the whole sum.

She could have started paying already, but she came across another opportunity. She found someone willing to sell her a calf in its mother’s womb. Because it’s still unborn, it will cost her only 6000 gourds, which is several thousand less than she would probably have to pay otherwise. The calf should be born in April, and she’ll have until then to come up with the 2000 gourds she still owes. She made a down payment of 4000 already.

Her other assets are increasing in value slowly. She had three goats, but one died. The other two, however, are getting big. Both are healthy and pregnant, and they should produce litters in December. She was able to sell meat from the one that died for 3000 gourds, but rural Haitians who buy meat from a deceased animal do so on credit. Her buyers won’t pay her until November, when she expects to use the money to replace the lost goat. She did better with her pig. She took care of the one we gave her, fattened it up and sold it. She used most of the money to rent farmland, but she also replaced the larger pig with a smaller one.

She continues to manages her small commerce, which she sees as an important investment. She had 2500 gourds in it, but school-related expenses at the beginning of the year ate into the total, and it’s down to only 1000 gourds. “I won’t let it getting any smaller, though. I need to buy shares in the Savings and Loan Association every week,” she explains.

The Association meets weekly, and each week its members can buy from one to five shares at a price the group determined together when it was established. The share price for her group is fifty gourds, and she counts on her commerce to provide at least that much each week, in addition to the contribution it makes towards managing her household. Solène values membership in the Association because it has enabled her to save about 5000 gourds already, though, as she says, “The poor don’t save.”

Yolène is starting to worry about graduation, although it is still about four months away. At the last three-day training workshop, which she attended with the other CLM members of her cohort, CLM field staff discussed the results of the twelve-month evaluation for each of the women. That evaluation is done with the same survey we use to evaluate them for graduation. And the team also held their first detailed discussion of evaluation criteria.

She knows she has to complete her home repair to graduate, and she’s not concerned about that. Her new house is finished except for its windows, and she already has the wood that she’ll need for that job. She still needs to pay for the wood, though. She bought it on credit. But she should be able to find the money she needs.

She’s more concerned about the value of her assets. Our criterion for asset value is designed to show whether a member has been able to increase what we have given her through her own efforts. Yolène has focused almost entirely on livestock, and her animals haven’t yet increased as much as she would have liked. So, she’s afraid that it won’t be enough.

She certainly hasn’t had much luck. Each of her two goats had two kids, but none of the four survived, so she still has only two goats. They are pregnant again, and they’ve grown significantly since she first received them, but they haven’t gained enough value to make a big difference in her total. Her pig had five piglets, but only two survived.

But although the piglets are still small, they are starting to grow, and the sow is pregnant again. With a couple of months ahead of her during which they should continue to gain value, and her continued savings through her Village Savings and Loan Association, Yolène should have enough to graduate, but she doesn’t have much confidence about it. And graduation is very much on her mind.

She has an objective for her livestock, one that many CLM members share. She’d like to buy a cow. Ownership of a cow confers status on a Haitian in the countryside, status that is importance both psychologically and practically. The poorest families can’t afford such a large or such a long-term investment. They have to focus their meager resources on immediate needs. Owning a cow puts someone in a different category in their own and their neighbors’ eyes. A cow could take a couple of years to provide a significant return, but owning one also puts you on an unwritten list in your community. If someone in the neighborhood has a piece of land they want to sell, they’ll consider you as a possible buyer. And for people like Yolène and her husband, who have been forced to work as sharecroppers and day laborers all their adult lives because they’ve never had their own land to farm, taking a step towards buying farmland is a top priority.

She has been talking about her plan with her case manager, Martinière, and has discovered that they don’t agree about the next step to take. Martinière, she says, doesn’t really believe in her sow. The two small piglets that survive are too little production. He’s advised her to fatten and sell the sow and then focus her attention on raising one or both of the piglets, which are also females.

But for Yolène, the fact that the sow had a litter already makes it a proven thing, even if its production thus far has been meager. She wants to hold on to the sow and sell the piglets instead. Since she won’t sell either until December, she has some time to talk further with Martinière and to make her decision. What is encouraging is that she is clearly listening closely to his advice while also confident in her sense that the decision is hers.

While we were chatting, Yolène was hard at work. She had just finished talking with Martinière, and he had given her homework. He had written her name in block letters across the top of a page in a student’s notebook, and she was copying it, letter-by-letter. She says that learning to write her name is important. And she explained: “When I went to get an ID card, they asked me to sign my name, and I couldn’t. I had to make a little cross instead. That really hurt.”

Monise says that she’s begun to make progress.

She hasn’t been able to put the finishing touches on her house. It still needs a door and a galatan. The latter is a ceiling that covers the portion of a house’s roof that extends beyond its front room to cover the porch. Without one, the house is never really closed because someone could always climb in between the top of the wall and the roof. Monise couldn’t finish the work because she didn’t have the lumber. In fact, she had already borrowed lumber from two other members just to get as far as she has gotten, so she needed enough to both pay back the other members and finish repair of her own home.

She went to St. Juste, a member of the CLM Village Assistance Committee in her area, Fon Desanm, and a leader of the community, and she asked him what she should do. This was a new experience for Monise. “I never thought there was anyone in the community I could go to.” St. Juste was able to find her a tree that someone was willing to sell. She’d have to pay to have it cut down and then made into boards, but she found the money she needed to do so, and was excited to finally have the completion of her home within sight.

A last-minute change in plans made things easier. Talking with St. Juste and her case manager, Martinière, made it clear that she could buy enough planks already prepared. She wouldn’t have to cut down the tree after all, nor find skilled workers she would to prepare the lumber.

Her goats are healthy. Both of her older ones are pregnant. They should have their second litters of kids in December. Her female kid will be also ready to start reproducing soon. She hopes to sell the male in December so she can buy a small pig. Rearing pigs has become the centerpiece of her economic activities. Her first hog will be ready for sale to a butcher in December, and she plans to use the money to buy a cow. She’s already purchased a piglet from her mother even before the piglet is born. Between it and the one she’ll buy by selling her goat, she expects to have a boar to fatten and a sow to raise for the piglets it should provide.

On one hand, it’s nice to see her wealth grow, especially because it seems to follow a clear plan to continue her progress. On the other, it is a little concerning to see her depend so fully on livestock alone. She has no daily income. All of hers comes in lumps.

But she herself is not concerned. She explains that she and her mother are on really good terms. “Sometimes I have something and she doesn’t, and then I cook for both of us. Sometimes it’s the other way around. But we get by together.” Martinière paints a less rosy picture, though. “I’ve been speaking to the mother, because she’s too inclined to do everything for Monise. Monise has to learn to do things herself.” That’s something for her and Martinière to work on.

But that is just where Monise thinks she’s made the most progress. “I’ve learned to struggle on my own,” she explains. When she first joined the program, she depended on the fathers of her four children for almost everything. That’s where her hopes rested. She was waiting at the time for the youngest child’s father to return from the Dominican Republic with money for her and his child.

She’s learned, however, that she cannot depend on him or on any of the others. She has a new boyfriend, a cousin’s friend, and he’s the one who gave her the money for the wood to complete her home, but she’s taking a cautious attitude. She doesn’t think she should depend on him too much. She’s started to buy chickens as a way to cover the small expenses she occasionally needs to incur. So even here, she has a plan of her own.