39, fish merchant
Marielene makes a living selling dried salted fish that she carries in a wooden crate. She cuts pieces off of the fish with a knife for customers, depending on how much they want and how much they can afford. For twenty years, she sold wood for cooking and construction until it became illegal.1 A busy mother of four, she originally came to Port-au-Prince to seek medical care for her son but remained in the city because of the lack of opportunity back home. Her husband remains on the farm andeyo (literally “outside,” meaning outside of Port-au-Prince), though occasionally he visits Marielene and the children in the city. Though she is small, she speaks forcefully in a deep voice.
We spoke with Marielene in downtown Port-au-Prince in a vacant lot across the street from where Haiti’s White House used to be before the earthquake on January 12, 2010.
I am under the sun every day. Yes, dried fish is my business. Aranso, it is called. You buy a case from a wholesaler and then sell it. If someone wants it for 20 Haitian dollars, you sell. If they want it for 10 Haitian dollars, you sell. For 5 Haitian dollars, even if it’s just 1 goud, you sell.2 You sell, you sell, you sell. It’s a business that goes up and down. You have to be in the street every day. If you stay in your house, you won’t be able to get ahead. I walk through the street singing, Aranso! Aran Sel! Normally if you do your business right, you can make 50 Haitian dollars a day. Sometimes as much as 60. But there are other times it’s 30 Haitian dollars. And this is my only business right now. This is the only thing that’s helping me. I pay the children’s school. I have six children of my own. I have another child of my little brother who is in my hands, and I pay for his school. If I have even 100 Haitian dollars I try to stretch it to send my children to school. I buy a few things on credit. I have a few clients I can work with like this. I buy a bag, a pair of shoes on credit. My children need shoes for school. All on this little case of dried fish. Six kids …
I’m from the first section of Belle Fontaine, in the commune of Croix-des-Bouquets.3 I lived with my parents near Belle Fontaine’s springs. I have four brothers and one sister. We used to work the earth, cultivating. We planted corn and beans, and we traded animals. We had so little. Sometimes we worked and didn’t make any profit at all. For a long time my parents didn’t have the means to send me to school. I didn’t attend until I was ten years old. I made it to the second grade. That was when I started to care for myself.
My older sister’s name is Jezula Lene. She is the one who taught me the pinewood business. Our parents couldn’t do much for us, so we had to fend for ourselves. That’s life andeyo.4 We would walk a lot to buy wood from people near a forest called Mars Rouge. We would buy it, cut it in smaller pieces, and repack it. Then we would again walk long hours past a place called Ti-Source. The journey to Ti-Source is very long—we’d go up mountains, we’d cross rivers. Sometimes we camped in the woods, sometimes we walked through the night. At Ti-Source, there would be stationed trucks. We knew all of the drivers. We’d pay about 60 gouds to ride on top of the trucks and arrive in Lavil around 5 a.m. I’d make about 500 gouds per day. Back then, with that money, I could stock my pantry. Now, with 500 gouds, you can’t even feed your family for one day.5
We sold a little salt also. Sugar too. We stayed in the business for probably twenty years. But then we couldn’t work there anymore. People didn’t want us cutting down the trees. It was part of some project or another to protect the trees. One night we heard that the state wanted to arrest us for selling wood. So we decided to work all night. This was in the late 1980s when Henri Namphy was president.6 We worked the whole night and cut down as many trees as we could. When we got to the little spring, even in the night, there were trucks. Truck drivers would come meet us and take our wood to the city. All this so the state wouldn’t confiscate the wood we were trying to sell. One time, we were caught, and they took all the wood my sister had. My sister was crying because she didn’t know what she was going to do.
ME AND MY HUSBAND, WE COME FROM THE SAME COUNTRY
Me and my husband, we come from the same country. We’re from the same section even. We were married in Notre Dame Church in Belle Fontaine. I knew my husband from when we were both small children. He actually started talking to me when I was thirteen years old. But I always told him, “I’m still a child. I’ve got nothing in life yet.” I asked him to give it a break and he did. He waited. We got married at age twenty-one. My husband is one year older than me. My parents approved of the marriage. It was a big wedding, lots of people, a beautiful day. It was in the church on Sunday, September 28. You know Sundays are the days God has chosen for everyone. You aren’t at work. You don’t do anything. Everyone came together that day. My mother and father and all my family were there.
When I was married, I was already five months pregnant. After the marriage, we had very little. The little bit that we could find, we resigned ourselves to it. There were many days we passed without eating. You have no choice but to sit with this truth. After the marriage, people came to us and when they had a little to share they shared it. We did the same with our neighbors. That time was a time of hunger. When you could find a little something, you ate it, and when you couldn’t find anything you spent the day hungry. It was only here in the city that we could buy a little rice to take back to the provinces.
What made me come to Port-au-Prince was my third child. After he was born, he became sick. He would swell up, shrink, swell up, shrink. I had a sister-in-law who lived in Croix-des-Bouquets.7 She told me about a hospital there. Early in the morning, at 3 a.m., I left home and just me and this little baby walked to the hospital. The Sisters there took care of the child. They gave him medicine. They gave us both a little soap to wash up. They also gave me a little wheat flour and a little corn flour for us to cook. I saw my child begin to get a little better. They told me if I took him back to the provinces, he would not stay better. So I didn’t go back. My family gave us a little place to stay. When I finally did visit back in the provinces, life was not good at all. We still had so little money. The children couldn’t go to school. So I decided to stay in Croix-des-Bouquets. I started working every day in the street, running in front of trucks, selling this fish.
I used to rent the house with the little money I made. Now, I own the house I live in. A friend of mine saw my plight with all the children. She asked her daughter to let me build a room on a piece of leftover land she had. The daughter agreed, and I started building. I used money I had saved to build it. It took me a year to finish the room. In this life, people will help you once, but the next day you’ve got to figure out how to survive. My sister lives by me. We are in the same situation. She sells the salted fish with me too.
The children love their father. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have anything. My husband still works the earth in the provinces. Right now we’ve planted a few beans, a little corn. Sometimes too much rain makes us lose it all. And sometimes when the rain doesn’t fall, the beans are spoiled, and the corn lost too. But he still does this work. He’s also very good at taking care of animals. He comes to the city now and then and spends a little time with me and the children, but he always goes back andeyo, to the country. Sometimes three months go by and I don’t see him. When he’s here he messes around with other women in the street. He often has a woman on the side. I really don’t let this bother me. There are even times when he gives our little 50 gouds to another woman and I have nothing for the children. But I stay.8 Paske se marye nou marye—when you’re married, you’re married. You could go and leave one man, thinking another is better, and turn around and it’s worse.
I SAW THE HOUSE BEGIN TO SHAKE
That Tuesday, January 12, I had gone out to buy my fish. Just as I was arriving back at home in time to feed my children, I saw the house begin to shake. While the house was shaking, my children ran outside yelling “Jesu, Jesu, Jesu.” I held onto them. The house crashed down. I had a lot of things broken, but I didn’t lose anyone. I saw people who died, people who were crushed. And there were many people sitting on empty ground just like this. Nobody had homes anymore. We all held our children and we sat.