It takes something pretty shocking to make my head snap up and focus on the televised news these days. This evening, NBC aired a segment with just such an effect. Reporting on the food riots in Haiti, the story featured footage of “dirt cookies,” edible clay cakes created to fill empty stomachs. These cookies have been around for a while, and have been reported on before, but NBC’s segment was particularly disturbing because of interviews with people who discussed the pain of eating dirt.
Yolen Jeunky sold mud cookies in Cite Soleil last fall. Even the prices for the edible clay, collected in Haiti’s central plain, have risen as oil costs have driven up agricultural basics. (ariana cubillos /associated press)
For many in Haiti these cookies made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening constitute a regular meal. Although they are filling, they can cause illness and stomach pains. NBC interviewed a women who had dirt removed from her stomach at the hospital, after becoming ill from eating the cakes.
The present riots in Haiti are part of an ongoing food crisis. The Boston Globe observed in January,
Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher prices for oil, which is needed for fertilizer, irrigation, and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.
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 United Nations Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries.
A interesting perspective on the food shortage, from Haitian aid worker Prospery Raymond, can be found here.
Our prayers for Africa and Haiti.
I saw this picture in a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC issue, while eating in McDonalds in Belgium…
We are confronted with an accute disease of leukemia, hitting the boy of a the sister of a close friend of my wife.
The parents and the close friend shudder when we talk about God. Now and before.
I hear them thinking ” If there is a God, how can he be so unfair to do this to my child, respectively nephew?”
So unjust, so unrighteous!
When I saw the picture, I thought : How can we be so unfair, unjust, unrighteous to do this to these people?”
We are all children of the same Creator.
Could it be the wrath of the Living God of Israël?
He says it in a few places in the Holy Scriptures, that the ones who curse his people, will be cursed themselves.
Of course, we use an umbrellar saying : “We can’t help it, it’s the governement”
Yeah, but who choses the government?
Are we all guilty on the same crimes?
It’s time to repent. To take action. Not only by giving money, but by changing our lives.
That’s of course the most difficult part of fullfilling Torah, i.e. obeying to the instructions of our Lord.
It requires engagement from the bottom of your heart. You will need to put things aside, make changes in your lives. It’s not an easy task.
But, is it easy for them, there in Haiti?
Repent, now you can. Repent, now I can… Help me Father to walk in your ways, NOT the ways of this world.
Prayers cannot bring food on their dish, our change in lifestyle can…
Pity, the clay is edible anyway……