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individual who is offering to help . Although we are so
grateful to all who are contacting us about contributing to our endeavor ;
we do not accept donations from other source. However we have a list
of organizations in Haiti, for those who wish to make a monetary
donations. Fee free to call us 617-298-0357 or 1-877-298-0357.
Welcome to the Haiti's
Children Relief Project, Inc.
Our
mission
is to promote a better quality of life for the deprived children of Haiti
by providing nutritional, health and educational assistance.
Poor Haitians Resort to Eating
Dirt
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 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 Soley, 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."
Haiti:
`The world doesn't have any idea how bad this situation is getting'
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