Their eating 'dirt' in Haiti....

427 S/O · #1 (**permalink**) 05-03-2008, 05:53 PM

As reported on the news, there is a food shortage in Haiti so the natives are eating dirt?. BS....Great climate..great rainfall, what else could you ask for?. At the very least, these people should be exporting food!...IMO.

AMF · #2 (**permalink**) 05-03-2008, 06:06 PM

I've traveled to SE Fl a few times...for work and I'm moving soon to West Palm Beach. Local yocals down there tell me that the worst immigrants are the Haitians. They come here with virtually no skills or work ethic. At least the Latino immigrants come here looking for work.

It's so poor in Haiti that most of them can't read/write and have ZERO professional skills.

In an age where you don't even use manual labor to dig ditches anymore, it difficult for anyone to hire someone like that.

sllib · #3 (**permalink**) 05-04-2008, 07:58 AM

I just spent six months working on the new US embassy in Haiti. The Haitian people are good people but they have been raped and pillaged by their own leaders and the French. The soil has been exhausted by centuries of farming with little concern for rebuilding. The president, himself a farmer, can't rebuild without a massive influx of money for fertilizer and I don't see that coming soon. The "dirt cookies" seen on the news were, at one time, a nutritional supplement for pregnant women but have now become a staple for people too poor to afford rice. The people who do have money there are either tied to the drug trade or old colonials who will probably leave when the going gets tough enough. Without a miracle, I don't see much future for Haiti.

427 S/O · #4 (**permalink**) 05-04-2008, 04:26 PM

A (US) friend grew up in Columbia where his dad owned a banana farm. He said they would have been in the money except a hurricane devastated the farm and they moved back. Seems to me, someone with bucks or backing could grow whatever in Haiti and export same?.

jams · #5 (**permalink**) 05-06-2008, 06:16 AM

It seems like we as a country/world pour so much money into impoverished lands and see little change, due to many factors- warlords, politics, etc.

Is it the give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime syndrome?

Handout or handup?