From a member of the village in his words:

We are people that work the earth for a income. We have gardens and we sell the produce to live on for several months. In our area, we grow beans, grains, corn, roots, lima beans, bananas, plantains, and sweet potatoes. All Haitians like rice, but many people in our areas prefer corn meal. We also raise animals in our area. We have goats, cows, chickens, and pigs. We do not have a lot of leaders in our area, but we do have a person that takes care of the animal post. The animal post is a post where you tie up animals that are lost or those that are giving trouble. So if you find a horse on your land, you take it to the post and they tie it up until the owner comes and he pays a fee. Or if your goat goes into a garden and eats someone’s crop, you take the goat to the post to see who the owner is and then what you will have to give to the owner for payment.

We do not have a clinic or hospital in our area. If people are sick, we put them on a bed and carry them down to the clinic in Cazale or Cabaret. Most of the women have the babies at their homes. Some of them go to hospitals. The homes are mostly made of rocks with clay mortar and covered with a tin or brush roof. Some homes are made of cement and cinder blocks.

There is only one school in the area and it just goes to the 4th grade. The children play soccer, jump rope, and play a game with rubber bands for fun. There are 2 churches in our area and 1 voodoo temple.

What makes us happy? I think we all like to listen to music. We also are all very excited when it rains because it is helping the crops and will help our families. What would we like for our area? We would like to have water in our area. It would also be great if there was a school with all the grades for the children. I would be happy if the generations to come would live a better life than we are living.

For our area, it is called “Makafe” because there was a pond that held a lot of water. Near this pond, there were many coffee plants. So the village name is Ma (pond) Kafe (coffee).