The Dirt Cookies Of Haiti

The island nation of Haiti as everyone now knows is going through perhaps it greatest and most pressing crisis dealing with the effects of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake it suffered on January 12th, 2010. It is the latest problem that it has had to deal with but perhaps its longest lasting problem has been one of a lack of food for its people which has plagued the country in perpetuity. Half the people who live there are unemployed and with most now living below the poverty line many in Haiti have taken to making cookies out of dirt in order to fill their stomachs and just get through the day. The way the cookies are made is first with the use of dirt as its main ingredient. Vegetable shortening, salt, and on occasion when it is available sugar will be added to a mix of mostly dirt and water which is gathered from the nearby mountains and mixed into a large pot or vat. Once the "batter" is stirred to a thick enough consistency it is then literally spooned out and spread on the ground and formed into the shape of individual cookies that are about the same size as a music CD with a spoon and then left out in the sunlight to dry. Once dried they are then hard and solid and "ready" for consumption. The dirt cookies are especially popular with children in Haiti because they are cheap to buy but they offer almost no nutritional value. Many of the locals who consume them say that they do make them sick sometimes but that after a while they claim that their bodies get used to them and tolerate them better. Many of the Haitians who consume the cookies because they have no other food options consider them a necessary evil.