HAITI - Poor forced to use dirt as food published: Wednesday | January 30, 2008
The hand of a woman is covered in mud as she makes mud cookies. - AP
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP):
It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.
With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest cannot afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies.
Mud cookies
Charlene, 16, with a one-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 slightly thinner than the slim 6 pounds, 3 ounces (2.8 kilograms) 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.
Floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season forced the agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other countries.
High Food prices
At the market in the La Salines slum, two cups of rice now sell for US$0.60, up US$0.10 from December and 50 per cent 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 US$1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs US$5, the cookie makers say.
Still, at about five cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples.
Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Salines market, a maze of tables of sweet-smelling vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mudcookies 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 mudcookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.
dappa75wifie said
09:01 01/30 2008
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo way that is madddddddddddddness
ZJSnyper said
09:21 01/30 2008
dat bad star jah know
fabio said
09:30 01/30 2008
JAH KN UTE MI CAYN BELIEVE WAH GWANN A SUH D WORLD GONE
fabio said
09:31 01/30 2008
MI VEX UTE N DEN PPL AVE D FOOD ALL A DASH WEH
ZJSnyper said
09:41 01/30 2008
U.N fi send food a haiti fi feed di people dem.
biggaman121 said
09:47 01/30 2008
dem people need help
biggaman121 said
09:48 01/30 2008
dem big nation dem can find money to spend for war what about food
jamaican5star said
09:52 01/30 2008
This well well Sad ... Mud Co0okies? .. jahkno starrrr
ZJSnyper said
10:09 01/30 2008
had no idea that mud could make cookies, guess i learn something new everyday
linko said
11:49 01/30 2008
haffi giv gad thx fi evrything weh mi hav ja kno
Tweeta said
12:13 01/30 2008
DAMN!!!, u know how much good food we throw away daily?? i feel horrible
linko said
12:28 01/30 2008
LOL TWEETA
Gucci said
12:46 01/30 2008
this is just horrible... oo my.. the world nuh level at all..
Dj Moet said
12:50 01/30 2008
jah know star dem things ya pain me heart wish there was some donation wey dem have fi help dem cuse i would donate
Crazypickney said
12:50 01/30 2008
djmercenary said
13:06 01/30 2008
It is sad however ABC news did a story 2 years ago about some ppl in Africa who were in the middle of the treeless place, they ask this man what he ate he said dirt. They asked why he said cuz it fills his belly and he doesnt feel hungry anymore. That is SAD. So give thanks for what you have!!!!
HAITI - Poor forced to use dirt as food
published: Wednesday | January 30, 2008
The hand of a woman is covered in mud as she makes mud cookies. - AP
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP):
It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.
With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest cannot afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies.
Mud cookies
Charlene, 16, with a one-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 slightly thinner than the slim 6 pounds, 3 ounces (2.8 kilograms) 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.
Floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season forced the agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other countries.
High Food prices
At the market in the La Salines slum, two cups of rice now sell for US$0.60, up US$0.10 from December and 50 per cent 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 US$1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs US$5, the cookie makers say.
Still, at about five cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples.
Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Salines market, a maze of tables of sweet-smelling vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mudcookies 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 mudcookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.