23324: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Jeanne (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By PAISLEY DODDS

   DUBEDOU, Haiti, Sept 29 (AP) -- The corn crop is flattened, rice paddies
are washed away. Even the bitter oranges exported to make liqueur have
become casualties of Tropical Storm Jeanne, which killed more than 1,500
people, delivered a hefty blow to Haiti's peasants and is raising fears of
famine.
   Jeanne's torrential rains burst river banks and irrigation canals and
spewed boulder-filled mudslides that ravaged an estimated 24,700 acres of
the most fertile land in Haiti, according to agronomist Jean-Andre Victor.
Productive land is a precious commodity in a country that is 98 percent
deforested.
   "We can't even begin to replant because corpses are still clogging our
canals," said Delva Delivra, a 54-year-old peasant who points to an
unclaimed corpse in a muddy canal next to a field of crushed corn stalks.
"It's the farmers who always suffer."
   Some 11 days after Jeanne pounded this area for 30 hours, no help has
come to Dubedou, a farming community cut off by a 4-feet deep trough that
used to be the road to town.
   Farmers who once lived off the land growing beans, bananas, corn and
onions now line up at U.N. food distribution points around Gonaives looking
for food to feed their families and wondering when help will come from the
cash-strapped government.
   "In the 1970s, Haiti used to be able to produce about 70 percent of the
food, now it's about 40 and this latest tragedy could affect that even
more," said Guy Gavreau, the World Food Program's Haiti director.
   Victor said prices of staples would rise on the market as a result of
the losses of crops and livestock, and recommended that credit should
quickly be given to farmers to rehabilitate irrigation systems and buy seed
before the dry season begins in November. Otherwise farmers will lose
another season.
   "If Haitian-international cooperation is slow to respond, there is risk
of famine in those regions," Victor warned.
   The calamity visited by Jeanne comes in a year that began with President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide being forced from power in a three-week rebellion
and was followed by floods in May that killed more than 3,000 along the
Haitian-Dominican border.
   Rescuers have recovered bodies of 1,554 victims of Jeanne. Another 904
people are missing and many must be presumed dead -- washed out to sea or
buried in debris. The toll will rise, officials say, as rescuers reach
inaccessible areas.
   In Dubedou, farmers said they had buried two bodies and that 18 people
were missing.
   From the turquoise door of her one-room concrete home, Cecile Pima
surveyed the fields of destroyed vegetation, piles of broken cacti and tree
branches, and children searching the banks of a stream and coming up with a
half-rotten, waterlogged banana.
   "Sometimes we eat once a day, sometimes we don't eat at all because
there's no food left," said Pima, a 39-year-old who looks 50.
   She said her community had gone to a distribution point in Gonaives last
week, spent the whole day waiting while people fought over what food was
given out, and had come home emptyhanded.
   There is less looting of food convoys since the United Nations sent 150
peacekeepers to reinforce 600 in Gonaives over the weekend. Aid workers
also give food only to women. Early on street gang members bullied their
way to front of food lines and ensured that only their buddies got fed.
   At a food distribution point on the outskirts of Gonaives on Wednesday,
200 women waited in an orderly line behind a concertina of barbed wire
guarded by Argentine troops.
   "I've been growing oranges all my life but the floods took everything,"
said Dieudonne Alize, 50. "Now, I'm depending on foreigners to feed me."
She used to bring sweet oranges to sell in Gonaives and sold bitter oranges
to speculators who then sold them to Grand Marnier.
   The family of Fidenise Milossa, 20, lost all their grain and eggplant
crops and had been eating what they could scavenge -- yesterday that was an
avocado and bananas -- until she was forced to come to a food distribution.
   "My father just lost everything. This is the only way that we can eat
now," she said.
   --------
   Associated Press reporter Michael Norton contributed to this report from
San Juan, Puerto Rico.