Haiti is a country of cash markets run by millions of women known as madam sara and ti machan. These women hold the country‘s informal economy — its only economy — together, with little support from government or NGOs. They are celebrated in Haitian market paintings, but the real women behind the canvases are unknown. In 2013 I traveled with a camera and anthropologist Talitha Stam into the mountains above Kenscoff to observe their work. Our guide was Madame Gerard, a madam sara in her 50s, who had been buying and reselling since she was ten.
