In rural Haiti humans and animals alike struggle to survive and compete with each other for food. At one time the "Kochon Kreyol" (Creole Pig) played the role of "piggy bank" for Haitian peasant families. This black, floppy-eared, curly-tailed species of pig thrived on the excess of avocadoes and mangoes that was available when rural Haiti still have much of its now vanished forest cover. When a family needed cash - whether to send a child to school or pay for a funeral - it could sell a pig, effectively "cashing in" its "piggybank" and have the needed funds. The Kochon Kreyol was the banking system of choice for Haitian peasants.
In the early 1980s our own US Department of Agriculture suspected that some Kreyol Pigs MIGHT be carrying a strain of "African Swine Fever" and (perhaps believing that pigs really CAN fly) requested "Papa Doc" Duvalier to allow the destruction of the ENTIRE population of Kochon Kreyol! For a price the dictatorship acceded to the request. The result was mass slaughter of the "piggybanks" of Haiti. For the peasants it was a catastrophe and amounted to a complete "decapitalization" from which the peasantry has never recovered.
The slaughter of the pigs lead to more intense deforestation, because - having lost their savings - the peasants turned to cutting trees and making "chabon" (charcoal). Even fruit trees fell to the axe since the excess fruit was no longer needed to feed the pigs.
You see some pigs in Haiti today, but there are almost NO Kochon Kreyol. Species from Jamaica are adaptable to the climate, but the excess of mangoes and avocadoes that once fed the Kochon Kreyol is gone. Raising pigs is difficult. There isn't enough land to grow food for them and imported food, sold in Port au Prince, is expensive.
Most peasant families have at least a few chickens and you often see chickens on board tap taps, riding to market on their way to becoming someone's dinner! Goat meat is popular and goats can survive by eating almost anything, but they can be destructive of crops and can make reforestation efforts more difficult because the hungry goats can devour newly planted seedlings. Sure-footed donkeys and occasionally horses carry heavy burdens, sparing the backs and necks of women and children who also carry heavy burdens (usually) on their heads.
Pets are seldom seen in Haiti. They are kept only if they perform "guard duty" or some other useful function. Here at the APF Center we have "Lucky" and "Madam Lucky", two dogs who "guard" the premises mainly by barking loudly at anyone passing by during the night. We also have a cat - "Cherie Soupe". I think that our Haitian hosts aren't sure that Cherie is worth her keep. She's a bit small to go "head to head" with some of the rats, but she does well in mortal combat with the (giant) cockroaches (palmetto bugs) that abound. I'm not sure if she's squared off with any of the tarantula-like, hairy spiders that seek shelter in the Center during the rainy season.
Today my friends Missy and Becky suspected Cherie Soupe of bringing fleas into their rooms (where she has been enduring a kind of "Martha Stewart" imprisonment for annoying the wrong people!) For her misdeeds Cherie suffered the indignity of a cold bath. I had my bucket bath this afternoon too. Cherie, I know how it feels!
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Tue, Jan 30, 07 @ 18:24 
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