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Haiti's Slum Dwellers Turn To Eating Dirt To Survive

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By JONATHAN M. KATZ, The Associated Press

Published: January 30, 2008

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - 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.

Dumas, 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 such as Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Dumas 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," Dumas said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking thinner than the slim 6 pounds, 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Dumas 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-priced oil, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets.

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 increases, 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 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 similar rates, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies costs $5, the cookie makers say.

Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared with food staples.

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