In impoverished Haiti, they’re eating mud



The situation is always, tragically, worse in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with a chronically unstable government, an unpredictable economy and seemingly unconquerable daily hardship for urban and rural dwellers alike.

November 2007: Mud cakes in production in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Ariana Cubillos/AP


In Haiti, these days, many people are eating mud.

This week, a reporter in Port-au-Prince sent a dispatch to Britain’s Guardian. It noted: “At first sight, the business resembles a thriving pottery. In a dusty courtyard, women mold clay and water into hundreds of little platters and lay them out to harden under the Caribbean sun. The craftsmanship is rough, and the finished products are uneven. But customers do not object. This is Cité Soleil, Haiti’s most notorious slum, and these platters are not to hold food. They are food.”

The British newspaper article continues: “Brittle and gritty – and as revolting as they sound – these are ‘mud cakes.’ For years, they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.” In these concoctions, “smidgins of salt and margarine do not disguise what is essentially dirt….” About eating one of the cakes, a 35-year-old woman who was making them said: “It stops the hunger….You eat them when you have to.” The Guardian noted: “These days many people have to. The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty towards starvation and revolt. Hunger burns are called ‘swallowing Clorox,’ [after an American] brand of bleach. The [United Nations] Food and Agriculture Organization predicts Haiti’s food import bill will leap 80% this year, the fastest in the world. Food riots toppled the prime minister and left five dead in April. Emergency subsidies curbed prices and bought calm, but the cash-strapped [Haitian] government is gradually lifting them. Fresh unrest is expected.” (See also Matinternet, Canada)

A maker of mud cakes arranges her concoctions for sale in Cité Soleil, a Port-au-Prince slum

Ariana Cubillos/AP


Food For The Poor, Inc., a Florida-based charity (it’s an “interdenominational ministry,” its Website says) that has been described as the second-largest international relief organization in the U.S., reports: “Hungry families in Haiti resort to eating mud cakes made from dirt, salt and bouillon when there’s no food. Or they pour salt into water and drink it to fill their empty stomachs. Hungry children will do anything to stop the pain.” One eight-year-old Haitian girl told Food For The Poor that, “[o]n days when the hunger pains overwhelm her, [she] ties a belt around her thin waist. Then she pulls it tight. The emptier her stomach is, the tighter she pulls the belt.” The child said: “When I am hungry, I keep a belt on my stomach because that makes me feel better. It hurts less when I keep it tight…. ”

Meanwhile, the unfathomable complexities of Haiti’s political situation continue to unfold, holding the tiny country hostage to instability of every kind. On Wednesday of this week, “Haiti’s government sent negotiators…to the northern city of Cap-Haitien to seek a peaceful end to a standoff with former soldiers who seized a government building to demand back-pay and reinstatement of the country’s armed forces. An adviser to President René Préval, Patrick Elie, said the protest was ‘political manipulation’ ahead of a scheduled [Haitian] Senate confirmation vote…on the president’s nominee for prime minister….” Haiti’s armed forces “were disbanded in 1995 by then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military coup four years earlier. Aristide was again toppled by a rebellion in 2004, which began in Cap-Haitien, and [a] 9000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force has provided the country’s only real security ever since [then].

Last year, Preval said…he saw no reason to restore the army.” (Associated Press)

April 2008: In the Cité Soleil slum, a woman received an allotment from an international organization's food-relief distribution

Eduardo Muñoz/Reuters

April 2008: In the Cité Soleil slum, a woman received an allotment from an international organization’s food-relief distribution

On the first night of the G8 summit meeting in Japan earlier this month, just hours after savoring a six-course lunch, George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other world leaders sat down and tucked into an eight-course dinner that included caviar, smoked salmon, Kyoto beef, five different, international wines and a specially concocted “fantasy dessert.”

In Haiti, right now, they’re eating mud.