Published: May 06, 2008 09:10 pm            

Rose student witnesses hunger strike unrest in Haiti

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology senior biomedical engineering student Mark Ellis wanted to get a firsthand look at the ecological plight and economic hardships in Haiti, a Caribbean country whose once-productive farmland has been devastated by erosion, deforestation, flooding and tropical storms.

However, Ellis had no idea that he would become an eyewitness to civil unrest in the streets of Les Cayes, one of Haiti’s chief port cities, and need an escort out of the country by United Nations security forces.

“I woke up for work one morning to find the city in chaos, with fires throughout the city,” says Ellis, a native of Vincennes, who spent April 3-14 in Haiti during an educational mission to investigate possible ways to restore the country’s agricultural resources.

Growing tension finally exploded across Haiti shortly after Ellis’ arrival.

Demonstrators stormed and tried to burn local political offices, clashed with UN peacekeepers and tore down the walls of a UN military base.

In Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, protesters erected flaming barricades and threw rocks at the national palace, burned gas stations and looted businesses.

Across the countryside, farmers erected road blockades.

Ellis was scared for the group’s safety and helped the 10 other American volunteers locate hiding places.

Afterward he climbed to the roof of a housing complex to keep a close eye on the demonstrations.

“We feared that outraged Haitian residents would take us for hostages since we were Americans and could possibly be used to leverage a fairly high ransom,” Ellis said.

More than half of Haiti’s population of 9 million lives on less than a $1 a day.

The price of rice has doubled since December, upsetting residents.

Haiti has been called the World Hunger Poster Child in media reports.

“People are eating dried mud cakes just to fill their stomachs. It is a country in despair,” said Ellis, who spent nearly half of his childhood in Venezuela (his mother’s native country).

He noted that many poor Haitians complained of hunger so severe that it felt like their stomachs were being eaten away by bleach or battery acid.

In a matter of days, “Clorox hunger” was being talked about in slums and villages across the country.

Now, Ellis has a better understanding of world issues. He hopes to organize a Rose-Hulman student group to visit Haiti next spring to continue studying the country’s delicate bio-sphere.

Permission has been granted to plant six Jatropha Curcas bushes, a valuable subtropical plant, in an agricultural test plot.

Seeds from the bushes could be used for bio fuel production.

Before going to Haiti, Ellis also visited Indiana Rep. Brad Ellsworth’s Washington, D.C., office as a student lobbyist for World Water Day (March 22), an international day of action to address the lack of safe water around the world.

He joined college students from throughout the country in urging Congress to reinvest in America’s aging water systems through the Clean Water Trust Fund.

“Water is something that should be safe, clean and affordable for everyone,” said Ellis, adding that water is a basic public service that shouldn’t be a political battle.

Ellis’ travel experiences, from Australia to Japan to Germany to Haiti, have given him knowledge of the global water crisis, and have motivated him to seek local solutions.

“I believe in leaving the world a better place, and my engineering skills provide me with a unique opportunity to make a difference,” stated Ellis, who already is taking courses for a graduate degree in engineering management at Rose-Hulman. “I don’t want water to be the oil of the 21st century … I want the Great Lakes, our rivers and streams, and our tap water to be safe far into the future.”

        

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