Rosemitha thought that the certificate she received was the most important thing about the graduation ceremony. It showed that “we did good work, so we finished the program well.”

But she pivoted almost immediately from talk about her certificate to talk about her frustrations. “I would have made more progress if my livestock had done better.” Her goats’ first two litters died. The two she now has just had another litter of two kids each, and though one of the four kids died, the others seem healthy, so she can be cautiously hopeful. She and her husband also have a pig that gave birth to six piglets. And if they survive they will provide a windfall.

As she talked about the livestock, and about other aspects of her experience in the program, she was frequently interrupted by her husband. He would jump in, then I would ask her to continue. But his interruptions would change her focus, adding to the confusion that my questions sometimes initially provoke. He’d insist that she didn’t know anything about their livestock, that he was the one who took care of the animals.

People call him Patekwe, which means “did not believe.” Things were a lot easier for the couple before Patekwe’s mother died. Her illness and then funeral were a major expense, setting them back on the path forward they had started to trace. It cost them their entire first littler of piglets, money that could have enabled them to achieve their first objective already. They might have been able to afford a small cow. And the older woman played an important role in the household. She was a reliable babysitter for the children and a good friend to both her daughter-in-law and her son. Patekwe complains, “Now one of us always has to be here with the baby. If Rosemitha leaves, I have to stay home.”

The couple’s plans moving forward are a little unclear. Two of their three children no longer live with them. Both Rosemitha and Patekwe brought children into the relationship, one each, but his daughter now lives with a cousin in Lakolin, near the hospital where his mother died. The cousin encouraged him to leave the girl with her while the older woman was sick, arguing that she’d have better access to an education. Patekwe visits regularly, and he’s happy with his daughter’s new situation. Rosemitha’s boy has moved in with her father, who lives nearby. Rosemitha is glad to have someone living with the older man, but her decision was also affected by her sense that her boy had grown less welcome with Patekwa than he had been when he was a younger brother and a playmate for his girl.

Rosemitha says she wants to return to small commerce, and she knows she can sell a goat to get the money to do so, but neither she nor her husband think it’s time to do that yet. And she and Patekwe will have to decide who will look after the child if she starts going to the market regularly. His mother’s boyfriend would spend time with them at first after his mother died, but he’s moved on to another woman. They aren’t seeing him much anymore.

In addition, what Rosemitha has told me in the past, but will not say in front of Patekwe, is that it is hard for her to sustain a business around him. When he is focused on farming their land – he inherited the plot above their home from his mother, and has been renting another for a long time – he doesn’t have time to earn cash by working for other farmers. So, he turns to any cash she might have to manage his expenses. When he isn’t busy, he likes to hang out in the market in Kaledan, down the road from where they live, and that involves having money in his pocket for gambling and snacks.

Idalia liked everything about the graduation, and she thinks it is an important part of the program. She explains that “it is something everyone can enjoy. As long as you march straight, you’ll graduate.”

She graduated with six goats, including two young kids, but she already used one to make an investment. Her husband was preparing their land for planting, and they needed the money to buy seeds. The goat sold for 3000 gourds, or about $48, and she was able to buy seven large cans of beans.

Her boar is starting to grow. She bought a small one when she collected the money that was owed her for the meat from a goat that died. It wasn’t much, so she had to buy the smallest, least expensive pig she could find. Now she’s eyeing the right moment to sell it and replace it with a sow that can give her offspring.

Her family’s medical issues persist, however. Unfortunately, our team was not very successful at helping her learn how she should follow up. One of her sons was diagnosed with a hernia, but he missed the follow-upappointment at the Mibalè hospital. Idalia says that he was waiting for a phone call, but the boy lives in Mibalè, near the hospital, and he knew the date.

Her youngest son’s situation is more complicated, but also not good. He has a condition that leads him to produce too many red blood cells. His blood ends up getting too little oxygen, so he’s short of breath all the time. The only treatment is regular removal of some of his blood, and we helped Idalia get him started down that road. It appeared to help. But Idalia and her husband are convinced that “they took too much blood,” so she isn’t bringing him back for further procedures. And the boy is very short of breath again.

And things are only going to get more difficult. Idalia and her husband are committed to leaving Gwo Labou, where they’ve been living since just before our team met them. They want to return to Jinpaye, but Jinpaye is even farther into the mountains, with more difficult access to care, than even Gwo Labou. Even if Idalia was inclined to get her boy the treatment he needs for his blood condition, she wouldn’t be able to find it anywhere near where she plans to go.

The family had originally fled from Jinpaye when they got into a conflict with neighbors about the rightful owner of some plantains. When we met them, they were living in a small space within a cousin’s home. The cousin himself eventually gave them the very small plot of land they built their house on.

But they feel as though they have no future in Gwo Labou. The cousin who gave them land to build on clearly wants them gone now that the program is over. Last year, he let them plant a very small garden around their house. This year, he planted his own crops to within ten feet of their front door. And with no land to farm, life is simply too expensive. Idalia’s husband has taken to traveling back and forth to Jinpaye to farm their land there, but that means he has to spend days at a time away from his family.

They don’t yet have the money they’ll need for the move. Their old house needs extensive repairs. But between their livestock and the crops they are planting in Jinpaye, they expect to be ready by the beginning of next year.

Louisimène was happy about the way graduation went. “They gave us jerseys, they welcomed us warmly, and we sang very well.”

She came down with a fever right after graduation, and she was still feeling sick a week later, but she was cheerful as she spoke of the day and of the completion of her CLM experience. “Everything they gave us is really ours. They are leaving, but they didn’t take back anything that they gave us.” It was as though she had doubted whether what she received was really hers even until the last moments.

She looks back at her experience with a strong sense of how much her life has changed. “I never had any kind of business activity of my own. I lived in misery. I was drenched by rain. I lived badly. I don’t live badly anymore.”

Even growing up, her life had been hard. She never knew her father. He died before she was born. Her mother remarried, but she was in the couple’s way. Her uncle decided to take her, and he’s the one who raised her. “He didn’t have much. He couldn’t send me to school. But I was rarely hungry.”

She’s been struggling to take good care of the livestock she acquired since she joined CLM. One of her goats had a kid, but her pig died. “I need to save enough money to replace it.” She bought a pair of turkeys, but someone stole one of them. The one she still has is nesting, though, so she may have more soon.

But Louisimène’s most important activity is farming. She and her husband work together. They lost their last crop of beans when the rains came at the wrong moment for them, but they have a small field of plantains that is producing well. It gives them something to eat, but also something to sell.

Having something to sell is important because Louisimène doesn’t want to get into small commerce, and she and her husband need cash sometimes, especially since their girl is finally in school. Keeping her in school has been a struggle. She missed some time when her school fees were overdue. But Louisimène is up to date with the payments now, and she’ll be able to send her girl back to school as soon as the Easter vacation is over.

In the meantime, Louisimène is planning her next planting. She and her husband are getting their field ready for a new crop of black beans, which they will plant in the coming days for harvest in June. She’s pinning her hopes to the upcoming crop. “The bean money will be enough for me to buy the pig I want as long as I don’t waste it.”

Miramène’s journey through CLM was somewhat unusual. She left Gwo Labou, where she lives and where she was part of the program, for three months. We don’t often have members who have such large gaps in their experience.

She was sick with persistent diarrhea. Her family took her to the government health clinic in Savanèt, where she was told that she had cholera. She was sent to the cholera treatment center there. She never went, however, because she was convinced that cholera wasn’t her problem. Instead, she went to the home of a medsen fèy, a practitioner of traditional herbal medicines. She stayed with him for weeks until the diarrhea was gone, drinking herbal preparations, then she left for Port au Prince, where she stayed with a cousin while she regained her strength.

While she was away, her case manager Ricot worked with her mother. The older woman took care of Miramène’s livestock. Miramène lives in a lakou with three houses in addition to hers: her parents’ and those of two sisters. One of the two sisters also qualified for the CLM program, so it was easy for Ricot and the other case manager to stay on top of the situation.

When Miramène was finally strong enough to come home, her assets were all in place. Though her goats didn’t increase, her pig had three piglets. She was also able to buy ducks and turkeys. She even added a cow to what she owned.

The cow is especially interesting because it has nothing directly to do with the CLM program. The father of her little girl, who lives in the Dominican Republic, bought it for her during one of his visits.

And his support for Miramène is probably worth dwelling on. It turns out that he was willing and able to do a lot for Miramène and their girl. She was, for example, the first CLM member in her neighborhood to finish work on her house. The man heard about the opportunity, and he came to Haiti long enough to help her through the process. And then he gave her an expensive cow.

This makes you wonder why Miramène was a CLM member in the first place. With a strong family structure in place where she lives and substantial support from her girl’s father, she might have been okay without the program.

But we couldn’t have known that. At the time she joined CLM, she had been without the man’s support for some time. As she explains it, he was living with his wife in the Dominican Republic, and the wife was pregnant. He focused all of his support on his pregnant wife. So, we took Miramène into the program. At the time, the case managers who selected her probably felt that they had no choice.

Miramène’s plans now that she graduated are straightforward. She’ll take care of her livestock and farm the land that’s available to her. She’s already got everything she needs to plant black beans for a spring harvest. She’s not interested in small commerce. “People buy on credit, then they get mad at you when you ask for your money.”

Even after 18 months, it is still hard to talk with Juslène. She’s friendly, even cheerful, and she’s happy to chat. She seems excited to see me whenever I come by.

But she just doesn’t have much to say. I ask her about graduation, and she says it was “bèl,” which can mean pretty or good, but when I ask her what she liked about it she says she doesn’t know. That’s just one example. A cheerful “m pa konnen,” or “I don’t know” is her answer to most questions, at least her initial answer. She can’t say what about the graduation she enjoyed except to say, “because I graduated,” nor can she say what about it is important to her. As her boy fumbles around in my bag, I ask her how old he is now, but she doesn’t know that either. She can remember only which local children were born before him and after him, and with that information a neighbor concludes that he’s probably four.

She plans on going to the final meeting of her Village Savings and Loan Association later on the day of my visit. It is an important meeting because she’ll receive the savings she accumulated through the year along with the interest it earned when association members repaid their loans, but she doesn’t know how much she’ll receive. She won’t even hazard a guess.

She does, however, know what she plans to do with the money. It’s planting season in Kolonbyè. She’ll buy black beans, which is an important cash crop in the area. The farming she does with her partner is crucial to the family’s well-being since her livestock never really flourished within the program and she never started a small commerce. Though she lists the goats and the pig she was given as the program’s most important elements, she didn’t succeed with either. We gave her two goats, and she graduated with two goats. We gave her a pig, and she graduated with a pig. All she was able to accumulate was some poultry: a turkey and two ducks. Most of the couple’s wealth is in their farming.

And their lives have changed. When she joined the program, she was living in the corner of a room in her sister-in-law’s house. Now she has a little house all her own. A plank nailed across two short posts that were driven into the earth next to her home’s front door serves as a bench, and she loves to sit there and chat with passers-by. It leaves me wondering what she says to them.

More important, however, is the transformation of her boy. When she first joined the program, he was badly malnourished. He was thin and mostly lifeless in her arms. The CLM nurse referred him to the local government health center for evaluation, and provided a transportation stipend to ensure that Juslène could get him there for regular appointments. Her was treated with fortified peanut butter, the standard treatment in Haiti, and now seems like a different boy. He’s curious, getting into everything. He maintains a constant banter. His development seems a little bit behind. Very little of what he says is clear to anyone but his mother, who talks with him constantly as her case manager taught her to do.

Rosemitha and her husband have been unhappy ever since his mother passed away. They both feel her loss keenly. They loved having her around. To Rosemitha, she was a second mother, having accompanied her through her pregnancy while her husband was away working as a field hand in the Dominican Republic.

And their loss is more than emotional. The older woman was an important member of their household. A trusted babysitter, beloved by her grandchildren, she made it easy for Rosemitha and her husband to go off and engage in their various activities, and her willingness to share domestic chores lightened the couple’s burden of work around the house.

Her sickness and subsequent death was also expensive. The CLM program made a standard contribution of 5000 gourds to offset funeral expenses, but the couple still owes the coffin maker 7500 gourds – about $120. The coffin cost 10,000. They gave the coffin maker half of the CLM money, and used the other half to pay off the various expenses they incurred entertaining their neighbors during the wake.

Their goats have been slow to multiply. Two have had litters, but the kids did not survive. Once again, two are pregnant, but they’ve learned not to count too surely on the results. But normally, they would have their pig’s litter of piglets available to them to pay down their debt and invest in new opportunities. They’ve had good luck with their sow. But the expenses associated with the older woman’s illness cost them the opportunity to use the piglets to make progress. They had to sell the whole litter before it was even born just to manage the expenses that helped the older woman pass through her last weeks of life. So, they’re waiting for their sow to ween the piglets so that they can breed it again.

Rosemitha would like to get back into small commerce. She had felt good about her success at it, and the daily income really helped the family. It enabled her husband to focus on farming without having to worry about bringing in something every day. With the Fall bean harvest approaching, there will be opportunities for those with the cash to buy beans directly from farmers and the energy to get them to market.

Rosemitha still has savings from her cash stipend that she could use as her investment, but she’s not sure about the energy. “Ever since my mother-in-law passed away, I feel weak.” In the past, she has carried most of her merchandise on her head to the places where she can find trucks to get it to markets, but right now she doesn’t feel as though she has the strength to do so.

She doesn’t worry about her home’s immediate needs anymore. She and her husband have food enough right now from their own fields. But they will have a lot to do to get themselves back onto the path forward, and right now the steps they need to take seem to feel as though they are too great.

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.