Bill Clinton offers Haiti encouraging words

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Tuesday, 03.10.09
Bill Clinton offers Haiti encouraging words

By JACQUELINE CHARLES
[e-mail]

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- A smiling Bill Clinton on Monday walked up to the group of school children dressed in red and white checkered uniforms, lost in a game.

Unaware of the magnitude of the man cheering them on, they followed their teacher's instructions to jump and sing along while the former U.S. president quietly watched, smiling.

For Clinton, no words were needed to convey the importance of what he was seeing: children once so malnourished they could barely stand, now laughing and shaking their tiny hips because their hunger has been quelled by daily morning snacks and a hot meal -- courtesy of foreign donors.

~snip~
Clinton's many handlers carefully crafted the visit. He did not make any political statements and was largely isolated from the anticipation of his visit here by some who still regard him as a hero for returning former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in 1995 after he was ousted in a military coup and forced to spend three years in exile.

An estimated 6,000 marchers showed up at Port-au-Prince's international airport, wearing President Barack Obama T-shirts and waving signs welcoming Clinton and asking him to return Aristide once gain. But they arrived long after Clinton and his delegation had left.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/941341.html

---

Take the time to remember what we discussed here only last year:

Haitians trick empty bellies with dirt cookies
Rising food prices forcing many poor to desperate tactic


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)

By Jonathan M. Katz
Associated Press / January 31, 2008

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.
more stories like this

With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been used by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings, and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds, 3 ounces, he weighed at birth.

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2008/01/31/haitians_trick_empty_bellies_with_dirt_cookies/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Sorry, for forgetting the link on the second story. I have added it at the bottom. n/t

[McCamy Taylor]

2. France and the US need to stop punishing Haiti for daring to have its own

revolution at the same time that the first two countries were staging their revolutions. Both countries believed that only white men deserve equality and freedom. France owes Haiti a huge sum in reparations---including all the money plus interest they took from the new country to pay for the lost value of the slaves---and the US owes a huge karmic debt for deliberately keeping the Haitians in poverty as an object lesson to American Blacks not to rock the system.

[defendandprotect]

3. True words . . .

When will we finally be able to stop this imperialistic thinking --- !!!