Emaciated girl helped by Haiti food aid

Seed costs have tripled
A single sack, enough to cover half an acre for a three-month growing cycle, costs $62.50, he said — more than twice what most Haitians make in a month. And the price has tripled over the past three years.

Both of Saint-Juste's young daughters show signs of extreme protein deficiency — distended stomachs, protruding ribs and frail limbs. But it was Venecia who turned dangerously ill.

For a month, the mother watched as her daughter's frail body swelled and the circles under her eyes darkened. With no money and no hospital nearby, she could only pray as word spread of children dying.

Finally Saint-Juste heard that Doctors Without Borders had come to the region. Carrying Venecia, she walked for hours from their village of Mabrignol to the makeshift clinic, and the child was airlifted by helicopter Nov. 9 to the aid group's hospital in Port-au-Prince.

"I didn't think she was going to make it to the hospital," Saint-Juste said. The child stayed there for 15 days.

Now home, the girl nicknamed "Manushka" scrambles to keep up with her older siblings, wearing a smudged gray Eeyore sweat shirt. The circles have faded under her eyes, and a healthier color has returned to her cheeks.

Stomach remains swollen
But like her 6-year-old sister Minush, her stomach remains swollen. Their 14-month-old brother, Roselin, is pale and listless. Only the eldest, 9-year-old Silner, appears in reasonably good health.

Saint-Juste and her children huddle each night on a single cot in their shack of dried banana stalks; their former home was burned down by thieves while Saint-Juste was with Venecia at the hospital. Her two eldest children narrowly escaped.

The children's father, a shoeshine named Edner Louis, lives in Port-au-Prince and sometimes sends money. Saint-Juste also earns a ration of food and about 62 cents a day working in her neighbors' fields during the spring.

On Thursday, volunteers from the Greater Works Outreach church in Monroeville, Pa., and St. John's United Methodist Church in Turnersville, N.J., distributed food and other aid to some 600 people in nearby Baie d'Orange.

Emaciated children and desperate parents rushed a balcony to grab peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, rice, beans and canned fish.

As they handed out the food, Venecia — the little girl whose image had inspired their generosity — was just a few miles away. Her mother did not know a distribution was going on.

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