Macsiana Kernizan
Living in the town of Les Cayes in Haiti, Masciana Kernizan sells dry food and homemade peanut butter for a living. Since most of her clients purchase on credit from her, she had to come up with another activity to bring in some cash on a more regular basis. On Saturdays, her house turns into a butcher shop where she sells fresh goat meat.
As she needs to travel to rural areas like Chantal and Camp-Perrin to buy the goats, the quarantine really impacted her activities. No more cash coming in and a lot of her clients not being able to repay their dues for her the dry food she sold them. Observing that many people were stuck home and obviously consuming more bread, she decided to produce more peanut butter and to resell it, cash on hands this time.
This pandemic was very stressful for me. Even when people would ask me for meat, I couldn’t go to the markets in the remote areas as quarantine measures were very strict in the South and travels between cities banned. Hopefully I was able to invest more in making and reselling the peanut butter. It is a very lucrative activity, maybe I never invested enough energy on it in the past to feel it.
Masciana plans to continue investing in her peanut butter business with her next loan while continuing to sell goat meat during weekends.
Goat meat is very appreciated in the South and there is no reason for me to neglect this activity. I am still young, and I feel strong enough to handle all my activities at once.
FINCA loans are made possible through partnerships and donations by generous donors.
