Food for children, jobs for mothers

The sounds and smells of food being prepared drift out of a small kitchen and into a crowded room where about 20 benches overflow with mothers holding small children dressed in their Sunday best. Earlier on this Thursday, the kids ate a free breakfast of milk and boiled eggs. Lunch will soon be served: rice with fish sauce.

The scene repeats itself every weekday - same mothers, same overdressed children - as part of Sr. Rosemary Fry's crusade against hunger in Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. Her program helps about 125 youngsters - a small dent in this poor nation where malnutrition is widespread.

"They live with a tremendous amount of courage," Sister Rosemary says. "Just to get a meal every day is a battle here, just to wash your clothes."

Toddlers rush to hug Sister Rosemary whenever she is near; adults look up to her with grateful eyes.

In a country this poor, there are degrees of poverty. With her small budget, Sister Rosemary chose to target her nutrition program for the most malnourished - children under age 5. UNICEF estimates that nearly 42 percent of Haitian children in this age group suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Before they are admitted into the program, infants are weighed and measured. Most children fall far below the normal height and weight for their ages. Their progress is assessed each month and an in-house nurse sees the children regularly to address the causes of malnutrition: worms, infection, poor hygiene, and a lack of proper food.

Nathan Nickerson is executive director of Konbit Sante, a nonprofit based in Portland, Maine, that is dedicated to supporting sustainable healthcare in Cap Haitien. He met Sister Rosemary three years ago and was impressed with her "quite comprehensive" effort to address not only the immediate needs in the community but also the long-term solutions to the problems it faces. To him, Sister Rosemary's example "gives us hope in what a person with perseverance, vision, and good humor can do in a situation like that."

As lunch is served, the women line up in an orderly fashion, collect a plastic bowl brimming with food, sit down, and concentrate on feeding their little ones. The mothers and children wear their best clothes to show respect to those helping them. If their clothes aren't clean, they believe they shouldn't come, Sister Rosemary says.

Occasionally the mothers sneak a bite themselves. Although Sister Rosemary insists that the food is strictly for the children, realistically, there is too much food in each bowl to fit inside one small child. The mothers are hungry, too.

While at Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, a Roman Catholic order, Sister Rosemary responded to her order's call to work in the third world. She'd planned to work in Nigeria. But, after hearing of problems in her own hemisphere, she visited Haiti in 1986. She fell in love with the people and their country, changed her plans, and dedicated her life to improving theirs.

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