I know the political season is upon us and it’s damned difficult to distract folks towards any other story, but this is something I know my fellow Kossaks would want to be informed of. And all I’m asking of anyone here is to help spread the word by "digg’ing" or otherwise promoting a post on a great blog to help give a committed advocate’s message wider distribution. It’s not something that will take a lot of time, but the effects can be great indeed.
I’m sure many of you read and were horrified by the story at the beginning of this year, telling us that Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.
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.
...
At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.
Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.
What could be worse than that? Well, the hurricane season has added to Haiti’s misery.
Kyle over at Citizen Orange reports on a terrible tragedy that needs to be given world-wide attention in his post The Forgotten in the Wake of Gustav: Haiti Suffers From Its Own Katrina
Kyle reports:
The lastest is that 77 are dead from Hurricane Gustav in Haiti. Worse, Haiti was hit by Tropical Storm Fay two weeks ago which left 40 people dead. Even worse, Haiti has just been hit by another tropical storm, Hanna, after Gustav, which has left another 19 dead. The situation is getting desperate in Haiti as the constant barrage of rain is leaving Haiti's third largest city, Gonaives, under water. The latest from the Agence France-Presse (AFP):
Gonaives residents reached by telephone Tuesday said floodwaters had reached the ceilings of some homes, forcing inhabitants to seek safety on the roof.
"I have seen about 10 bodies floating in the flooded streets of the city," Ernst Dorfeuille of the Gonaives police told AFP by phone.
Moise, the mayor, called the situation extremely critical. "The toll is only preliminary, because it is impossible to enter the city at the moment," he said.
"I don't know how long we will stay alive," a clearly panicked father, Germain Michelet, told AFP. "If we have to go another night in these conditions, there will not be a lot of survivors."
It’s difficult to know where to begin to help, but Kyle did give some preliminary suggestions:
At this moment my suggestion is to contact Unicef and ask how you can help, or donate right off the bat. I've just sent an email off to Louis-Etienne Vigneault of UNICEF Haiti (lvigneault@unicef.org) and I'm going to be contacting other people I know for suggestions. Feel free to offer your own suggestions in the comments as well.
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Please help kyle spread the word on this tragedy. We have the technological tools now to spread information worldwide. The people of Haiti have undergone so much suffering and some solidarity is required here. Please help.