haiti mud

Update on Haiti's food crisis
News of the Weird reported in March [NOTW M051, 3-30-2008]:

In the worst slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti (where 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day), rice now sells for 30 cents a cup (double the price of a year ago), according to a January Associated Press dispatch, leaving the poorest of the poor to subsist mainly on “cookies” made with dirt. Choice clay from the central plateau is at least a source of calcium and can be baked with salt and vegetable shortening. However, recently in the La Saline slum, the reporter noted, the price of dirt, too, has risen about 40 percent.

It's worse than ever now, according to London's Guardian, which has a photo that looks like a field of ceramic pieces baking in the hot sun but, no, they're mud cakes, i.e., food. Guardian