Already Desperate, Haitian Farmers Are Left Hopeless After Storm

[Judi Lynn]

Already Desperate, Haitian Farmers Are Left Hopeless After Storm
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: November 17, 2012

FAUCHÉ, Haiti — A woman who lost just about everything now gives her children coffee for meals because it quiets their stomachs a bit. Another despondent mother relives the awful moment when her 18-month-old baby was swept from her arms by a flash food. The bodies of a family of five killed in a mudslide still sit in a morgue unclaimed.

Haitians, who know well the death and despair natural disasters can cause, suffered mightily from Hurricane Sandy, which bashed the country’s rural areas and killed at least 54 people.

Three weeks after the hurricane’s deluge, Haiti, still struggling to recover from the earthquake in January 2010, is facing its biggest blow to reconstruction and slipping deeper into crisis, United Nations and government officials say, with hundreds of thousands of others at risk of hunger or malnutrition.

All around this hamlet and others nearby, the men and women who farmed bananas, plantains, sugar cane, beans and breadfruit stare at fields swept of trees, still flooded or coated with river muck that will probably kill off whatever plants are left. They had little, have endured much, and now need more. Hardened by past disasters, they still fear the days and weeks ahead.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/world/americas/poor-haitian-farmers-are-left-hopeless-after-storm.html?_r=0

[polly7]

1. My heart broke thinking of these people during that storm.

What they've been through is just unimaginable.