Update from Haiti

(the view from our apartment window at 10 am, April 9, showing smoke from burning tires).

Hi everyone,

We are currently holed up in our apartment. We live on a side street but we hear a bunch of noise from the main street. We hear the occasional gun shot, which is likely the police trying to break up groups of people. Our friend Kurt who is not too far away has seen a bunch more and had big wafts of tear gas float into his apartment.

The situation here is complex. Here (below) is an article from CBC
which is pretty congruent with the reality here. We at KPL have been recording the increasing of food prices since January! and you they go up by week on staples like rice and oil.

It’s true that gas and the increasing demand for biodiesel is making things more expensive here! It’s also true that Haiti has learned to become dependent on imports, since Haiti conveniently became a good dumping ground for surplus food items - first grains, and now everything from sugar (totally producible here but produced in southern US by Haitian legal and illegal immigrants) to drugs (new and expired) used clothes and those big fat televisions.

I know Haitians who eat a 90% local diet and I know Haitians eating a 90% imported diet. Guess who’s in the city and who’s in the country!

Every day in the Nouvelliste (national paper) on the radio and on TV, the government is talking about local production! who knows if Haiti can produce the majority of its food itself because Haiti has never had the chance to try, but we can do better than 90% imports and if we did, there’d be much less pressure on the city and the ports and less opportunity for corruption which is so real. (We have even seen MCC aid meat -another story all together- sold in markets many many mountain kilometres from where it was given out.) Imports are a band-aid solution for a country that’s overpopulated and a nice little boost for the US economy. When I was working at the Nature Centre at the Royal Botanical Gardens, we had a program for kids called Move, Adapt, or Die referring to what animals do when times get tough. Move, Adapt, or Die or Import - not so catchy. (No I don't think humans or animals but you'll agree there are similarities.)

As for: "Currently if you're in Haiti, unless the government is subsidizing consumers, consumers have no choice but to cut consumption. It's a very brutal scenario, but that's what it is." from the article below, this is not a joke! Every day the average person here, both in the city and country, literally works to make money to eat their next meal– while prices from rice to the taptap fare it takes them to get to work, they make the same amount of money but they can afford half as much. Turkish cookies are cheaper than Haitian bananas. Spaghetti noodles cheaper than Artibonite rice or plantains.

(other things you might hear or read about Haiti are a joke or actually not true- like people eating dirt when they are hungry- it’s not happening nor the whole story- another story actually- please take news about Haiti especially when it makes people look really stupid with a big grain of sea salt. Guaranteed it’s not the whole story! )

This crisis of food prices has given an old word a new definition: Clorox or Klorox is kreyol for bleach (chlorine). In the past month, “klorox” has come to mean the burning in your stomach when there is no more food coming. I don’t know why we had to wait until this point to say enough is enough or we've had enough of not enough. God help us!

love from Haiti, where were there’s going to be more moving, a whole lot of adapting, and dying.

ps we’re all at home with Martha and Junior and the guards too and we’re fine!

Soaring food costs threaten world's political stability: UN official
Last Updated: Tuesday, April 8, 2008 | 12:14 PM ET Comments70Recommend68
CBC News

Rising food prices could cause political instability worldwide, the UN's top humanitarian official said Tuesday, as clashes over food costs in Haiti and Egypt continued for a second day.

Pointing to a 40 per cent average rise in food costs worldwide since mid-2007, John Holmes, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, said the trend is likely to exacerbate both the incidence and depth of food insecurity worldwide.

"The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe," he said.

Egypt has been rocked by two days of unrest as thousands protest the country's worsening economy and rising prices. The cost of cooking oil, rice and other staples have doubled since January, while the country of 76 million is suffering a shortage of government-subsidized bread.

UN peacekeepers in Haiti clashed with a crowd that gathered outside the presidential palace Tuesday, the second day of protests in the capital, Port-au-Prince, over food scarcity and costs.

The impact of climate change has worsened the food problem, Holmes said, as the number of recorded natural disasters has doubled from an average of 200 a year to 400 because of "extreme weather" over the last 20 years.

The rising price of fuel, particularly diesel fuel used to transport food, is also adding to the issue by prompting a simultaneous increase in the cost of food, Holmes said.

"Compounding the challenges of climate change in what some have labelled the perfect storm are the recent dramatic trends in soaring food and fuel prices," he said.

The UN's World Food Program has said it is short $500 million US needed to feed 89 million hungry people this year. Meanwhile, consumers should expect high food costs for at least another 10 years, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

"It's not likely that prices will go back to as low as we're used to," Abdolreza Abbassian, economist and secretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains for the FAO, said last month.

"Currently if you're in Haiti, unless the government is subsidizing consumers, consumers have no choice but to cut consumption. It's a very brutal scenario, but that's what it is."

With files from the Associated Press