Poverty Doesn't Get Much Worse Than This

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.
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The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.

Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.

Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town.

Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.

The finished cookies are carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets.

A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.

Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks malnutrition.

"Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it," said Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, executive director of Haiti's health ministry.

Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a market to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them.

"I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080130/ap_ ... ating_dirt

That's not good.

Oh my god.

Don't haitians sacrifice chickens in their rituals?

hey, Haitians!

EAT the chickens... use the mud cakes for the rituals...

That is all...

It would be nice to send money to help them but so much of our money goes to pay taxes so people on welfare can get money to by weed, 40s, spinning rims, and stuff like that while living in new 6 bedroom houses with all their kids.

I think that is a big part of the problem. A tiny group of people shouldn't have all the money for themselves while everyone else starves. In the news they said some guy in India is building a $1 billion house that's 27 stories high while much of the rest of the country remains in poverty. They really needed a better system over in Haiti.

After reading this, we all need to be thankful for what we've got. It's hard to believe how much worse it can get.

thats a tad...racist.

I read this. it made me cry.

I had a haitian friend I went to collage with. We even climbed a mountain together, I was his 'guide' and he was afriad when we got to the base of the mountain and their was a danger sign stating that you go up at your own risk and that the little park we parked our car at to go to the trail would not be responible for injury or death, heh.

Sorry to go off topic, he told me that little nation has only 1 ambulance. Very poor and totally raped of natural resources.

Reading stuff like this makes me feel pretty sad. The problems being experienced by the people of Haiti are quite common in many parts of South America. A tiny elite controls most of the resources and reaps the benefits of them, while the poor/impoverished suffer with very little or no support. When people like Hugo Chavez and his supporters try to do something about it, the American government doesn't seem to take to kindly to it - they don't want to lose their supplies of cheap oil or whatever else their buying from a country. The blame for quite a few of the problems in South America can be put squarely on the United States.