For decades, they have lived off the land, ravaged by years of neglect and greed and deforestation.
Now, the peasants of Haiti are struggling in a nearly barren countryside seven months after an economic embargo was declared against the military government.
To survive today, they are devouring tomorrow. They are chopping down the last of the trees to make charcoal. They are selling off the last of the livestock to buy wheat. And they are eating the seeds for this season`s harvest.
Yet they have not abandoned their dreams.
Aiguilet Joseph prays for rain to nourish his drought-stricken land.
Saint Elen Consius pictures a plate full of food to ease her hunger pangs and comfort her unborn baby.
Laudelle Joseph wants only to replace the goats and chickens she sold for a few dollars.
The hemispheric embargo leveled against Haiti after the military overthrow of populist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has failed in its goal. Aristide is no closer to power than he was eight months ago. While his people continue to take to the sea, his enemies-the rich and the military-are firmly entrenched and living comfortably despite the embargo.
The elite jet to Paris to pick up luxuries. Smugglers turn a healthy profit importing and exporting contraband. And there is no shortage of oil. European nations, exempt from the embargo, deliver a steady supply.
But in the rural northwest, where most of Haiti`s peasants live, there is no luxury, no contraband, no oil. There is nothing.
Laudelle Joseph, 55, lives in the village of Barbe Pagnole, high up in the northwest countryside, a throwback to turn-of-the-century Haiti. Mountains once covered with mahogany and pine are now barren, speckled with the occasional tree. The land is parched and rocky and split by moon-like craters. Charcoal pits smolder along dirt roads.
”It`s become worse here now,” Joseph said. ”I have sold my goats, chickens, even my glasses and blankets to make money to feed my child. I don`t want my daughter to go hungry.”
Few of the Haitians in this part of the country know how the embargo has affected their lives. They only know that they are poorer this harvest than the last.
”The embargo is ridiculous,” said Douglas Clark, who coordinates food distribution programs for CARE, the largest international development organization in Haiti. ”The rich have not been touched by this embargo. The extremely poor have only become poorer.”
In just a short time, the embargo has succeeded in closing a circle of poverty started decades ago.
In recent months, the price of food has doubled in Haiti, setting off a frantic scramble for survival among peasant families. Many villagers who typically make $100 to $200 a year, just barely enough to keep their families alive, say high prices have worsened their misery.
Families are eating boiled, pulverized roots and underripe mangoes. They are eating seeds that should be used for farming. They are walking miles for buckets of contaminated water.
More people are dying of malaria, diarrhea, tuberculosis and typhoid.
More children are walking around with swollen bellies and orange hair, signs of acute malnutrition.
Men have abandoned both countryside and family to work as laborers in other parts of the country, leaving behind untilled land.
Women have sold off their animals at discount prices to bring in cash. Unemployed relatives who live in the city are returning to rural areas, forcing families to feed more people. The U.S. Embassy estimates that 150,000 jobs have been lost after factories shut down or moved out of the country because of the embargo.
Peasants are cutting down more trees to make charcoal, an easy sell in the marketplace with other fuels so scarce. Fewer trees leads to more erosion, less rain and weaker soil. Weaker soil leads to fewer crops. Fewer crops leads to famine.
”There have always been people making charcoal,” said Gregory Brady, CARE`s farm project coordinator. ”But now I`ve seen more people making more charcoal than before. I`ve never seen people digging up roots to make it. That`s how desperate these people are.”
To make matters worse, the U.S. government has withdrawn most of its funding to relief and development agencies in Haiti. The only exception is humanitarian aid, narrowly defined as emergency food and medicine. CARE officials said they couldn`t get U.S. money for emergency seeds to help farmers ward off famine. They eventually got funding from European countries and bought enough for the next harvest.
Long-term programs to combat hunger and disease have been put on hold. Virginia Ubik, CARE`s director in Haiti, said the organization has had to shut down or suspend three vital projects: agro-forestry, which helped farmers work their barren land; sanitation, which helped peasants build latrines and wells, and health education.
”We`ve been working with these people for 10 years,” Brady said. ”We don`t want them to have to sell animals for less than they are worth. We don`t want them to cut down trees for charcoal. If development aid always hinged on people starving, then that`s wrong.”
In Guinodee, hundreds of Haitians show up to collect their free CARE seeds doled out by members of the community. There is no pushing and shoving, no flashes of anger and bitterness. The peasants simply show their special seed cards and fill their bags with corn, sorghum and bean.
”These people are the most fatalistic in the world,” said Pierre-Richard Sam, a Haitian CARE employee. ”There hasn`t been rain in seven years, but God will provide, they say. Life is rough, but God will provide. Don`t you have too many children? God sent them to me. Once in misery always in misery.”
At a school in Cabaret, the young and old, the pregnant and lactating line up to eat, for most their only meal of the day. During the past few months, CARE has been providing emergency food to the poor. Women from the community cook the food and add what they can to the pot. Usually, they eat soy mixed with bulgur, peas and oil. Occasionally, some sardines sent from Canada are added.
”These kids don`t eat anything in the morning,” said Wilmer Dutemp, the school`s director. ”A percentage of them when they get back home don`t have anything to eat.”
Ebrany Florestal, 5, sat on a school bench, his spoon clicking furiously against a tin bowl of food.
”Very often I sleep without food,” he said.
Denis Jespere, 18, is too old to benefit from the emergency food. But at noon, the daily feeding is the village`s main attraction. Jespere said he wants to fight his way out of Cabaret. But his dream is to return to the community to help others.
His way out, he said, is school. He loves Spanish and math. But high school is miles away in Port-de-Paix, and this year he can`t afford the $5 tuition. And he can`t afford to pay for the uniform. Schools in Haiti aren`t free, and all of them require a uniform, which costs too much money for most parents in rural areas.
”I`m here only to get money to buy shoes to go to school,” he said.
”Shoes cost $20. If I can`t find money, then I can`t go to school. It`s very difficult to find even food right now. But I want to go to school. I`d like to be someone. And I`d like to be helpful to my community.”
There are few distractions in the countryside: a game of cards or dominoes, a night of conversation, a cock fight or a voodoo ceremony. But voodoo also has been a victim of the embargo, said Wilner Alix, a CARE worker. Sacrificing animals is essential to a voodoo ceremony, and there are few animals left to slaughter.
Even in the city, animals always have been a prized commodity. Cats walk around with clipped ears as a sign of ownership. Cats with no holes in their ears could wind up on the dinner table.
In Port-au-Prince, Haiti`s capital, cargo ships keep streaming into the docks, many of them in defiance of the embargo. They leave behind appliances, clothing, radios and auto parts. In Petionville, where the wealthy elite keep house, stores are lined with French cheese. Cars with full gas tanks cruise the streets.
Aristide, the savior of the poor, is still in exile in Venezuela, waiting for the embargo to work, hoping it will restore his democratically elected government.
”There`s nothing, just nothing in the northwest,” said Clark, the CARE worker. ”It`s a desperate situation here. I wonder how this country will pull itself out of its oppression.
”What does this country have? The land has been destroyed. There are hardly any resources. Last year, they had something. Aristide was
democratically elected. But even that was snatched from them.”
