Bambi Eloriaga-Amago
Dirt cookies — palm-sized discs made by mixing vegetable oil, salt, and mud, then baked under the sun – are what the poorest of the poor in Haiti are forcing themselves to eat to fight off hunger pangs.
Four years after the devastating earthquake; despite wide-spread media coverage of the disaster, celebrity-driven telethons, and the overflowing donations; Haiti is still mired in crisis and poverty.
Years pass and tensions rise as long-delayed elections and political power struggles continue to fuel the growing frustration felt by the general population. Government promises of recovery and reform are slow to come, as 99 Chamber of Deputies seats, 20 Senate seats, and 140 municipal positions have yet to be filled. Elections are overdue, but when appointments are hand-picked by the governing body, outrage and protests erupt.
Meanwhile, in the slums, the living conditions are hellish. Sanitation is almost non-existent, people rummage and live side-by-side mountains of garbage and human excrement. Dilapidated huts make up housing, some never even left the tent cities erected immediately after the earthquake. Necessities like education and even food have become luxuries. This lack of basic services has forced residents to take matters into their own hands. Numerous street gangs have formed and are stockpiling on weapons, hoping to teach the government a “lesson.” A leader of one of the gangs from Cite Soleil, perhaps the most impoverished and crowded area of Haiti’s capital Port Au Prince, in an interview with the New Internationalist (newint.org) said that “…it’s only right that we’re armed and ready to do everything that has to be done. We’re fighting for a change… I want my kids to be able to go to school, become somebody and move on with their life, instead of having to hold on to a gun to get what they want.”
Hunger, however, waits for no revolutions. And as food prices continue to skyrocket, slum-dwellers are forced to turn to the most readily-available resource: mud.
