I Ask You: Do you know what this man is making?

Below is a photograph, as seen in yesterday’s London Free Press, taken by someone in the employ of Reuters news agency.

In it you see a Haitian man preparing meals for many of his desperate countrymen.


Do you know what he is making?

I read the caption and didn’t understand. At first I felt as if I wasn't getting the joke.

Next I thought that the name of the item made had a nickname, like many other foods, e.g., ‘dog’ is a common way of referring to a wiener in a bun.


The title at the top reads, in full (I cropped the photo), ‘‘Mud cakes’ make a meal for desperate Haitians.’

A caption under the original photo reads as follows (in part):

A resident prepares mud cakes... a clay-based staple for many desperately poor Haitians. Brittle and gritty, they are not intended for taste or nutrition - dabs of salt and margarine do not disguise what is essentially dirt... but even before the earthquake that devastated the impoverished nation, they had become the cheapest and increasingly only way to fill hungry bellies.

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