These days, in the Haitian seaside slum known as Cite Soleil, chances are
children won't be playing with mud pies.
They'll be eating them.
I kid you not.
Just last week, in an Associated Press story that resonated both shocking
and sickening, the world learned that food prices have skyrocketed so much
that the poorest people in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere
have resorted to eating mud. They take dirt and mix it with salt and
vegetable shortening. Then they bake it in the sun.
Some of the Haitians interviewed said the mud, which pregnant women often
eat and which quickly sucks the moisture out of a person's mouth, is a
good
source of calcium and other nutrients. But it's one thing to supplement
one's
diet with an earthbound substance. It's quite another to make it a dietary
staple.
And as much as I would like to praise the Haitians for their resiliency
in
much the same way that black folks have been praised for their resiliency
in
surviving hard times - by doing things like cooking sugar into syrup and
making syrup sandwiches - it's a little hard to do that when they have to
scrounge up dirt, rather than whatever's left in their pantry, to stave
off
hunger.
* the only thing I can't figure out is why when they're living on a
tropical
island with a sea full of fish they would do this. Next door in the
Dominican Republic the other 1/2 of the island the people have a higher
standard of living. There is one obvious difference, the Dominicans have a
higher % of Caucasian blood.
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