Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt

[*JG* 2]

If Hati went back to farming the price of food or grain would be cheaper as it wouldn't have to pass on the import taxes to its people. That should be one of the first steps. As a country it has to learn to be self-sufficent again, giving out food is great, but what happens when that food is gone. Growing one's food and passing that knowlege down is priceless.

They have cut down so many of the forests and destroyed the fertile lands that even growing one's own food is a real problem now. It's desert landscape for the most part. Wonder how you correct that? How do you make the soil fertile again?

Edited January 31, 2008 by Jomo's girl

[phatmadame81 0]

I just read the article and I feel soooooo bbaadddddddddddd for this country.........wow I am speechless............

I don't remeber who said it , I think it was Trelawny but yes if the people in charge was to try and fix Haiti up get it out of the stage of despair it is in then it would flourish.

"The thing about Haiti, as in most places, is that if the people who pull the strings, namely Washington, Paris, and Montreal, who planned, orchestrated, and financed President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s kidnapping and coup d’etat in February 2004 , really wanted the violence and instability to be eradicated, it would be. However, that is not the case and the most money is made when the country is kept in a perpetual state of chaos and the poor are kept poorer and without a voice and a means to mobilize and organize Aristide".

Jengles you're right though growing one's food and passing that knowlege down is priceless. "Give a man a fish he eats fo a day, teach him how to fiish he eats fos a lifetime......"

Back in 05 they had an electionheld first on Oct. 9 for prime minister Gerard Latortue, but voters in Port-au-Prince had not taken part due to security concerns amid the heightened violence. That is another issue there, how are people to live when while thugs, thieves and hooligans wrestle control from officials, who are probably just as corrupt.

If this island could somehow realize its vast potential as a Caribbean paradise, tourisim is not welcome in that country due to teh violence .................this just sadden me..we all take things for granted ( I try not to, I try to remeber where I am from, carrying the buckets of water on my head top or in jugs for miles so I could get some clean water to drink or even to bath--yes there were rivers ( which I love) but some time the water was so dirty or too dang cold for human )...amidst all that though i can say my family did use the land to their advantage, we always had food.......even if it was not food, there was always some sort of fruit......I am tahnkful everyday for my up bringing.

Mek mi go drink a cup a tea an relax before "massa' come and start crack de wipe :lol: .....I just had to do that it was getting kindda serious.

[Jengles 0]

If Hati went back to farming the price of food or grain would be cheaper as it wouldn't have to pass on the import taxes to its people. That should be one of the first steps. As a country it has to learn to be self-sufficent again, giving out food is great, but what happens when that food is gone. Growing one's food and passing that knowlege down is priceless.

They have cut down so many of the forests and destroyed the fertile lands that even growing one's own food is a real problem now. It's desert landscape for the most part. Wonder how you correct that? How do you make the soil fertile again?

use the aid to import topsoil and irrigate the land. Even Dubai is trying to do this so they are self-sufficient. At the end of the day Hati shares the island with DR. they don't have these problems. I'm sure DR or any other island would sell them soil.

America subsidizes the farming industry in the U.S. as not to be entirely sufficient on imports for food, the same should be done in the West Indies. The pushing of tourism as the main source of income needs to be stopped. As the industry is very seasonal and fickle..People aren't traveling as much anymore with the subprime mess that is going on.

Most of those big hotels in the West Indies are not owned by local people. They are owned by companies outside of the West Indies. So while the workers are getting paid, the profits are leaving the country. The majority of the food is imported so even the local economy isn't really being boosted.

Ok i'm getting off my soapbox now.

[*JG* 2]

People aren't travelling because of unrest to certain countries as well.

All the answers go back to the people in charge doing what is best for the people. And, the people holding them accountable.

That is a very good point, though......The DR shares the island with Haiti.....Why are they better off?

[Forever Young 1]

I read this story in the Gleaner today; it was so heartbreaking. I have always wanted to do a missionary trip with Church, but I am a very emotional person. I get overwhelmed because I want to help everyone; I know helping one is more than enough, but sometimes, it is so hard to see what happens in the world...Lawny, nuff respec' to yuh mi girl. Mi nuh knoa if mi coulda do it, but as you said see and don't see or feel, but how hard is it to do that?

It is unfortunate that those who go into public SERVICE, seem to only end up SERVING THEMSELVES!! Ole fart dem When is someone who is really there to help people going to be able to get a REAL break in this world.

Good Night my gurl,

Let me tell you it was not easy. When I told you I passed out from being overwhelmed with emotion it was not an easy thing and was so young. My mind said to run, you can still turn back the plane leaves in 8 hours back to the state, but because i'm a caring and loving and God fearing person, I could not walk away. It holds you there. I don't know how else to describe it and then the hurt you feel turns to anger. You try to understand how the government of a country could let things like this happen to their own people. Cho...uni pray fi mi...time mi start cuss again.

Mi BEX bad...caan believe dat RASS was a PRIEST...PREIST FI WAH

I just read the actual article and I feel like I want to throw up!!! #######!!!!! I don't get this ish!! I'm so sorry correct me if I am wrong...but what will it take for the 1st world countries to give a shyt about brown people dying all over the world!!!

It drives me CRAZY!!!! OMG is it January 20, 2009 yet!?!?!?!?! We are spending billions on a Bush's BS personal war and we can't find a way to permanently END HUNGER!?!?!?!?! This country is SOOOOOOOO scientifically advanced that we can clone embryos...but we CAN'T END HUNGER!?!?!?!?!?! Maybe the better question is who profits if we do? That thought is even sadder than the article...Cash really does rule everything!!

Bless,

Gill

Mawnin Gill,

My gurl, hold your breath. I've seen it all working in Washington DC. It is so FRIGGIN sick and that's putting it the nice way. When I first went to protest the mess that was going on the Dufar, Sudan, I could not eat for a few days. Let me tell you what I notice when I go to protest, here and in other states. I don't see a lot of BLACKS and that brothers me a lot. Many of the times I've done missionary work in Haiti and elswhere in the carribbean, I'malways the only black person in the group. I don't know, but I just feel that SOME of us don't support each other the way we need to.

I'll tell you this sistreh, if there was OIL in Haiti, I bet you dat ####### eye ediat dutty rasshole of a president would be over there rebuilding that country.

Damn and I said I wasn't going to cuss today.........to late

Bwoy Lawny,

Yuh hit deh nail pon deh head!! Yuh see Chavez inna Venzuela...mi nuh blame em a rass fuh carry on deh way he does wid his oil!! IF not, dem wouldda duh deh same ting dem duh to hevery other poor country dat finds oil...squeeze dem til deh last drop and left! I like Chavez...in my eyes he is a modern day Robin Hood!! He has given JA a great deal of their oil in the past 5-8 years also!

I really thought Aristide was going to make a change in Haiti...but it's like heveryboddi ah guh in git wah dem can git f-deh people dem han git out...Hmmmmm....what other island nation does that sound like????

Bless,

Gill

Edited January 31, 2008 by Deyoungting

[Forever Young 1]

If Hati went back to farming the price of food or grain would be cheaper as it wouldn't have to pass on the import taxes to its people. That should be one of the first steps. As a country it has to learn to be self-sufficent again, giving out food is great, but what happens when that food is gone. Growing one's food and passing that knowlege down is priceless.

They have cut down so many of the forests and destroyed the fertile lands that even growing one's own food is a real problem now. It's desert landscape for the most part. Wonder how you correct that? How do you make the soil fertile again?

use the aid to import topsoil and irrigate the land. Even Dubai is trying to do this so they are self-sufficient. At the end of the day Hati shares the island with DR. they don't have these problems. I'm sure DR or any other island would sell them soil.

America subsidizes the farming industry in the U.S. as not to be entirely sufficient on imports for food, the same should be done in the West Indies. The pushing of tourism as the main source of income needs to be stopped. As the industry is very seasonal and fickle..People aren't traveling as much anymore with the subprime mess that is going on.

Most of those big hotels in the West Indies are not owned by local people. They are owned by companies outside of the West Indies. So while the workers are getting paid, the profits are leaving the country. The majority of the food is imported so even the local economy isn't really being boosted.

Ok i'm getting off my soapbox now.

It's call Globalization!!! Thanks to the blasted IMF and WTO...these island countries are so indebted to 1st world countries that run the IMF & WTO that they basically have to sign whatever contracts they give them!

For example in JA. , majority of the milk is now imported!!!!! Can you imagine...the amount of cow dem bout, but because IMF wants to make dem $$ back JA can only produce 20-30% of their own milk!!

The is an awesome docmentary about the Globalization of JA...it's called "Life and Debt" by Stephanie Black

Here is the link...BEG ALL OF ONNUH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT...WATCH IT!!!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5277094596195828118

It is a real eye opener!!

Bless,

Gill

[Jengles 0]

I have to watch the video when I go home. Globalization - sounds like rape to me.

[Forever Young 1]

I have to watch the video when I go home. Globalization - sounds like rape to me.

Gurl,

After I watched it mi bawl, mi bawl mi bawl...huntil!!! To see my parents parents parents PARENTS homeland to be reduced to this!!! It hurt mi sumting BAD!!!

Let mi knoa wat yuh think after you watch it!

Bless,

Gill

[SupportOAFJF 0]

Was until he was kicked out in 1988 for inciting hatred and violence contrary to his role as priest.

Whether he was in, out, left or kicked out....that doesn't mean he shoule have lost the "values" of sainthood and what it stands for..GREED and POWER will be the death of them all...1925....a longgg time a go !

Edited January 31, 2008 by kimmykashi

[*JG* 2]

Was until he was kicked out in 1988 for inciting hatred and violence contrary to his role as priest.

Whether he was in, out, left or kicked out....that doesn't mean he shoule have lost the "values" of sainthood and what it stands for..GREED and POWER will be the death of them all...1925....a longgg time a go !

Death to all of them made me chuckle.......Damn girl. You kind of scared me there.

If Hati went back to farming the price of food or grain would be cheaper as it wouldn't have to pass on the import taxes to its people. That should be one of the first steps. As a country it has to learn to be self-sufficent again, giving out food is great, but what happens when that food is gone. Growing one's food and passing that knowlege down is priceless.

They have cut down so many of the forests and destroyed the fertile lands that even growing one's own food is a real problem now. It's desert landscape for the most part. Wonder how you correct that? How do you make the soil fertile again?

use the aid to import topsoil and irrigate the land. Even Dubai is trying to do this so they are self-sufficient. At the end of the day Hati shares the island with DR. they don't have these problems. I'm sure DR or any other island would sell them soil.

America subsidizes the farming industry in the U.S. as not to be entirely sufficient on imports for food, the same should be done in the West Indies. The pushing of tourism as the main source of income needs to be stopped. As the industry is very seasonal and fickle..People aren't traveling as much anymore with the subprime mess that is going on.

Most of those big hotels in the West Indies are not owned by local people. They are owned by companies outside of the West Indies. So while the workers are getting paid, the profits are leaving the country. The majority of the food is imported so even the local economy isn't really being boosted.

Ok i'm getting off my soapbox now.

It's call Globalization!!! Thanks to the blasted IMF and WTO...these island countries are so indebted to 1st world countries that run the IMF & WTO that they basically have to sign whatever contracts they give them!

For example in JA. , majority of the milk is now imported!!!!! Can you imagine...the amount of cow dem bout, but because IMF wants to make dem $$ back JA can only produce 20-30% of their own milk!!

The is an awesome docmentary about the Globalization of JA...it's called "Life and Debt" by Stephanie Black

Here is the link...BEG ALL OF ONNUH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT...WATCH IT!!!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5277094596195828118

It is a real eye opener!!

Bless,

Gill

I saw this a while back. It was an eye opener.

However, the problems stem from so many sources. It's like layer upon layer upon layer.................

[panamania79 2]

Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt

By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 40 minutes ago

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.

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."

link

counting my blessings now...

That is so sad.

[TRELAWNY PARISH 10]

The Haitian friends that I have told me that people in Haiti want change, but the government is not willing. Because her and her sisters were going to school and they were very outspoken about the conditions of the country, their families were easy targets. My friend received aslyum from the US, becuase she watched her mother, sisters, and both grandmothers get rapped repeatedly for several months (during Aristide's rein). The only reason they did not rape her was because her family hid her in the hiding space between the walls of the house. When they went to file charges or complaints not a damn thing was done. So, her family packed up what they could, ran to Dominican Republic and got on a homemade boat. She was the only one that survived in the boat. Two homeade boats left Dominican that day and the other boat only had 2 surviours. I can't begin to imagine. During a protest in DC she told the people in the crowd that she would rather die than return to Haiti. To this day, she says that Aristide still has power in Haiti.

[SupportOAFJF 0]

Was until he was kicked out in 1988 for inciting hatred and violence contrary to his role as priest.

Whether he was in, out, left or kicked out....that doesn't mean he shoule have lost the "values" of sainthood and what it stands for..GREED and POWER will be the death of them all...1925....a longgg time a go !

Death to all of them made me chuckle.......Damn girl. You kind of scared me there.

hahaaa....sooo true though

[phatmadame81 0]

The Haitian friends that I have told me that people in Haiti want change, but the government is not willing. Because her and her sisters were going to school and they were very outspoken about the conditions of the country, their families were easy targets. My friend received aslyum from the US, becuase she watched her mother, sisters, and both grandmothers get rapped repeatedly for several months (during Aristide's rein). The only reason they did not rape her was because her family hid her in the hiding space between the walls of the house. When they went to file charges or complaints not a damn thing was done. So, her family packed up what they could, ran to Dominican Republic and got on a homemade boat. She was the only one that survived in the boat. Two homeade boats left Dominican that day and the other boat only had 2 surviours. I can't begin to imagine. During a protest in DC she told the people in the crowd that she would rather die than return to Haiti. To this day, she says that Aristide still has power in Haiti.

sniffle........sniffle........snifflethis is something,

During a protest in DC she told the people in the crowd that she would rather die than return to Haiti

to live inna dis yah situation mi wodda tink di same whay toooooooo.

[JA Tam 7]

I have to watch the video when I go home. Globalization - sounds like rape to me.

Gurl,

After I watched it mi bawl, mi bawl mi bawl...huntil!!! To see my parents parents parents PARENTS homeland to be reduced to this!!! It hurt mi sumting BAD!!!

Let mi knoa wat yuh think after you watch it!

Bless,

Gill

Yu see it...I watched "Life and Debt" a few years ago and I had my entire family sit down and watch it with me, because it was devastating to see how Economic "falacies" destroyed the Jamaican economy. It broke my heart, especially when you consider the "dumping" of chicken parts in the country. It opened my eyes as to even some of the things that Mr. Clinton did to mi lan'. It bun mi man...

I used a part of the story in a presentation I did last year for my Masters as well...it is a good watch.