By Laura Gottesdiener
NAN KONSEY, Haiti (Reuters)
– In a tent encampment
in the mountains of southern
Haiti, where hundreds of villagers
sought shelter after a
powerful earthquake flattened
their homes this month, a single
charred cob of corn was the
only food in sight.
“I’m hungry and my baby is
hungry,” said Sofonie Samedy,
gesturing to her pregnant
stomach.
Samedy had eaten only intermittently
since the 7.2-magnitude
earthquake on Aug. 14
destroyed much of Nan Konsey,
a remote farming village not
far from the epicenter. Across
Haiti, the quake killed more
than 2,000 people https://www.
reuters.com/world/americas/
im-distraught-grieving-haitians
bury-their-dead-week-after
quake-2021-08-22 and left
tens of thousands homeless.
In Nan Konsey, the earth’s
convulsions tore open the village’s
cement cisterns used to
store drinking water and triggered
landslides that interred
residents’ modest subsistence
farms.
Since then, Samedy and the
rest of the community have
camped alongside the main
highway, about a 40-minute
walk from their village, hoping
to flag down the rare passing
truck to ask for food and water.
“I’m praying I can still give
birth to a healthy baby, but of
course I’m a little afraid,” she
said.
Haiti, the poorest country
in the Americas, has long had
one of the world’s highest levels
of food insecurity https://
www.reuters.com/article/haiti
hunger/update-1-haiti-political
morass-fuels-growingcrisis
of-hunger-malnutritionidINL1N2AJ1YX.
Caribbean L 34 ife, SEPTEMBER 3-9, 2021
Last year,
Haiti ranked 104 out of the 107
countries on the Global Hunger
Index. By September, the
United Nations said 4 million
Haitians – 42% of the population
– faced acute food insecurity.
This month’s earthquake has
exacerbated the crisis: destroying
crops and livestock, leveling
markets, contaminating waterways
used as sources of drinking
water, and damaging bridges
and roads crucial to reaching
villages like Nan Konsey.
The number of people in
urgent need of food assistance
in the three departments
hardest-hit by the earthquake
– Sud, Grand’Anse and Nippes
– has increased by onethird
since the quake, from
138,000 to 215,000, according
to the World Food Programme
(WFP).
“The earthquake rattled people
who were already struggling
to feed their families,” Lola Castro,
WFP’s regional director for
Latin America and the Caribbean,
said in a statement.
“The compound effects of
multiple crises are devastating
communities in the south
faced with some of the highest
levels of food insecurity in the
country.”
‘IN THE HANDS OF GOD’
Just off the highway leading
to Nan Konsey, a few dozen
men gathered at a goat market,
where they sold off their
People affected by the Aug. 14 earthquake wait for food
provided by the World Food Program, at a school in Port
Salut, Haiti Aug. 24, 2021. REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo
remaining livestock to secure
cash to feed their children or to
pay for family members’ funerals.
Before the quake, farmer
Michel Pierre had tended 15
goats and cultivated yams,
potatoes, corn, and banana
trees. He arrived at the market
with the only two animals that
survived the earthquake.
With his crops also buried
beneath landslides, he hoped to
earn about $100 from the sale
to feed himself, his wife and his
children.
Haiti’s hunger crisis bites
deeper after devastating quake
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