Nutrition and Medika Mamba

Thursday January 9, 2014

On Thursday the group made its longest journey from Gabie’s house yet—a three hour car ride, most of which was uphill.  Sonje Ayiti operates in Bailly, an isolated village nestled at the top of one of the mountains south of Cap-Haitien.  With eight people crammed into an SUV for such a long period, the journey was quite arduous, especially for those in the backseat.  We were joined by a British nutritionist, Lucy, who was on the fourth month of her year-long stay in Haiti. 

Sonje Ayiti works in Bailly on nutrition programs and distributing Medika Mamba, fortified peanut butter designed to combat malnutrition in young children.  Workers from Sonje Ayiti make a weekly trip up the mountain to distribute the Medika Mamba to mothers of young children, so we had some large boxes of it with us for the ride.  I was relieved when we arrived, in part because I was slightly carsick and ready to get out of the crowded SUV, but also because I was looking forward to presenting my little bit of research on the cashew tree and its uses.  Many people in the village had received both cashew trees and moringa trees from Sonje Ayiti, and the purpose of this distribution is to create a sustainable nutritional supplement to combat malnutrition and increase food security.

Everyone in our group got the opportunity to speak to an attentive group of mothers about nutrition and women’s health, a task that was somewhat intimidating given that nobody in our group had ever been pregnant.  We tried to keep the conversation going both ways by asking the women questions and trying to find out what they already know about these subjects, and then the presentations turned into more of a two-way discussion.  After, Sudeep, Anderson, and I counted out the number of peanut butter packets each mother needed, which was great practice for my French counting skills.  We later learned that some of the women had walked for miles to receive the peanut butter.  As Gabie put it, it was either they do that or risk their child dying from malnutrition.

Once we got down from the mountains, we had to drop the British aid worker off at the medical peanut butter factory/office building where she worked.  She offered to give us a tour, which we joyfully accepted.  Apparently, most of the peanuts used at the facility must be imported from the United States because it is cheaper, although they are trying to use a greater percentage of Haitian-grown peanut butter.  This got me thinking about the actual impact of U.S. agricultural surpluses around the world, which are sold in places such as Haiti at below market prices and effectively make Haitian farmers uncompetitive.

I really gained a lot from this day, and I thought it was interesting to see first-hand the distributional challenges of aid delivery.  (Working for AidData on campus, I think a lot about international development issues.)  A basic delivery truck, for example, would have no way of making it up the steep, washed-out road that we were on to Bailly.  This is a major problem for people who want to be able to sell their crops to a wider market or produce anything that people would like to buy outside of the isolated community.  Overall, it was a successful day!

-(James Willard)