Rosena Derima’s CLM Story in lower Northwest Haiti
We’re sharing stories from the field. Accounts from Fonkoze CLM members as told by the staff in the field. This story is adapted from by Steven Werlin, Fonkoze CLM staff member living in Haiti. This is Rosena’s story.
Rosena Derima lives in the hills of northern Bedeyenn, the smallest of the four communes in Haiti’s lower Northwest. She was living with three daughters and a grandchild in a small, leaking, straw-covered shack. Her oldest daughter left the granddaughter with her shortly after the girl was born, and then she disappeared. “I haven’t heard from my daughter since. I guess I’m the girl’s mother now.”
Before she joined Fonkoze’s CLM program, she fed the children by doing laundry for other families in the small nearby community of Dame or in one of the larger towns farther up the road to the north, Ma Wouj or Jan Rabel. She could make about 250 gourds, which is now just under $2, for a day’s work. If she was lucky, she would get two to four days of work in a week.
When her daughter-in-law was kicked out of the rented home she shared with her four kids. Rosena felt she had no choice but to invite them to join her, even if it was hard to imagine when everyone would possibly sleep. Now there are eleven in their tiny home.
She was anxious to start a business when she joined the Fonkoze CLM program, so she used 750 gourds of the money that she received as her cash stipend, and she bought a sack of cooking charcoal. Charcoal production is one of the main sources of cash income in the Northwest. She borrowed a neighbor’s donkey, and she brought the charcoal for sale to Jan Rabel. She made a profit of 250 gourds.
When she had first spoken to her Fonkoze CLM case manager about how she wanted to invest the business capital that the program would provide, she told him that she wanted to sell charcoal but also to buy and sell goats. As soon as she came back from her first experience selling charcoal, however, she changed her mind. “You can’t lose money with charcoal. Wherever you find profit, that’s where you have to stay.”
So she decided to throw all the 15,000 gourds she would get from her first Fonkoze CLM program transfer of cash entirely into charcoal. She bought 20 sacks, and she has been bringing them to market two days a week as quickly as the she can. They sell well, and she has been managing her money carefully, always making sure that she can feed her kids but also that she can buy shares at the weekly meetings of her savings and loan association.
She even saved enough to buy a piglet from a neighbor whose sow had a litter. She got the piglet relatively cheaply — it cost just 3,500 gourds — because she paid before it was weaned. Now she’s waiting to take it home. A lot of pigs in her area died of Teschen disease in the last few years, and she knows that raising pigs is risky, but she decided to try anyway. “A pig can take me out of the hole I am in so quickly. If mine has a litter, there could be six or eight or ten piglets. That’s a lot of money.”
The thing most limiting her charcoal business right now is not having her own pack animals. Bringing charcoal to the market any other way would be too expensive, but her neighbor’s donkey can take just two, so that means it could take five weeks to sell all her charcoal. She will need to think about buying less merchandise next time and investing some of her capital in something else. But, for now, she is excited about how things are going. “I am not going to tear up my hands doing people’s laundry anymore.”
The Fonkoze CLM program has transformed Rosena Derima’s life from one of constant struggle and uncertainty to one of hope and opportunity. With the support and resources provided by the program, she was able to start a successful charcoal business, which now allows her to feed her family, save money, and invest in the future. No longer reliant on low-paying, physically demanding laundry work, Rosena is building a more secure and prosperous life for herself and her loved ones.
