PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- For nearly 10 years, my friend Leon Pamphile had asked me to join him on a mission trip to his homeland, Haiti. For 25 years, he's gone back to feed babies, teach literacy and, for the past five years, to run a health clinic.

Summers full of busy family plans and the notion that I had nothing to offer kept me away. Something else stopped me, too. Fear. After all, wasn't Haiti just a pit of squalid shantytowns and machete-wielding gangs?

Yes, Haiti, the Caribbean nation that for centuries has been crushed by Western debt, corruption and exploitative trade polices, does have its struggles. But there are surprises, too.

The first country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery and to be ruled by descendents of Africa, Haiti is a proud nation. In its traditional language, the word Haiti means "mountainous land." Its green peaks of coffee trees, banana groves and mango orchards undulate into the distance. Its white-water rivers and highland vistas are stunning. In recent years, even a cautious stability had settled in.

But a few weeks before I arrived, a storm seemed to rise up out of nowhere to devastate this already-troubled paradise.

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"My name is Nickelson," the young man tells me in halting, uncertain English. "I've 20 years old."

Nickelson Chery has long, thin limbs and doe eyes dimmed by a burden no one should have to bear. Still, his beauty is striking as he opens the door to his small home tucked behind a tin fence in a lush valley near Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.

While many men his age are out kicking soccer balls, lazing in nearby fields or riding crowded public taxis known as tap-taps into town, Nickelson is raising a family. The children are not his own. They are his siblings, and Nickelson calls them for me by name.

"Sebastien, he has 10 years old; Rubens, he has six years old; Jean-Wendi, he has 17; and my only one sister, Sabrina; she has eight years old."

Tonight, they'll go to bed with empty stomachs.

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Less than three short years ago, Nickelson worked as an apprentice in a wood shop. He sang traditional Haitian ballads to pass the time and dreamed of being a writer. Now, he mostly sings the blues.

In September, after being sick for seven months, his mother, Elia Belly, died at the age of 39. Four months later, his father, Cherubin, a tautly muscled carpenter, died, too, of a heart attack.

Slowly, the quiet stable life that Elia and Cherubin had built for their family began to fade away.

Nickelson no longer could work as an apprentice. He needed to spend more time at home to care for his brothers and sister.

He managed to find odd jobs; a little work in a market; a little work doing chores for neighbors. He made about $14 a month.

It was not much, but in the crumpled Haitian economy, if he squeezed aging school clothes onto his siblings and skimped on their school fees, he could put food on the table. He could find a way.

But then it came. The storm.

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The global food crisis has struck poor places everywhere like a hurricane, drenching countries such as Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Kyrgyzstan. Haiti is drowning.

Prices for corn, beans and rice -- the diet staples for the poor and marginal -- have nearly doubled over the past year.

In 2007, a 50-pound bag of rice cost about $13; today, it costs $23. In some parts of Haiti, it runs to $37. A bag of beans is even more expensive, at about $60.

Rising food prices have caused social unrest. In May, Haitians stormed the gates of the pearly white presidential mansion in Port-au-Prince and demanded relief. People were killed. Rising food prices were beginning to make the difference between eating and not eating.

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Nickelson and his family are going hungry.

Friends used to be able to pitch in. A few beans here; a little meat there. Not any more. Now, friends mostly hoard food for themselves.

Last year, Nickelson typically bought enough food for six days and stretched it to seven. Now, in a good week, he can buy enough for five days. Most days, he and siblings skip breakfast.

For lunch, he might ask Jean-Wendi, his next-oldest brother, to cook some rice. On a good day, each member of the family will get a fist full. For dinner, they might get the same portion, perhaps supplemented by bread or porridge that Jean-Wendi makes from corn meal.

Nickelson can't recall when he last ate beef or goat meat. And fresh fruit, in a tropical nation so lush that flowers grow out of rocks, is too expensive to afford. It takes roughly eight Haitian dollars to make one U.S. dollar and in the grocery stores, an apple can cost one U.S. dollar. That's about two days' wages for Nickelson.

"I didn't choose this" Nickelson said, showing me the half-full pan of rice that must last his family through the week. "But I know the suffering life."

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More than 2 million Haitians, in a nation of 9 million, know the suffering life. In Leon's dusty clinic, where I'm working, young Haitians confide their laments.

Mackerson is a bright 20-something student who serves as an interpreter for the hundreds who come and can speak only in Creole, a language formed from Haiti's indigenous people, Africans and the French. Mackerson speaks four languages and is in school studying to be a teacher. He wants to work for the United Nations, using his language skills to build peace. He cannot afford a passport or a visa and professional opportunities in Haiti are scarce.

For the moment, Mackerson's talents and ambitions get lost amid the scramble for food.

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No part of the country is untouched.

Elementary and junior schools now provide meals only four days a week; some only three.

The World Food Program is rapidly expanding operations in Haiti, thanks to $23 million raised through the organization's high-food-price appeal. The program currently is assisting more than 800,000 people in Haiti. Over the summer, it will give 200,000 school-age children hot meals and take-home rations to prevent them from joining street gangs or searching for jobs that might keep them out of school. Aside from saving lives, providing food for the most hungry will help stabilize Haitian society, which was rocked by fatal food riots earlier this year. The Haitian population is highly vulnerable to food-price increases: Haiti imports more than 50 percent of its food, including rice, its staple. Three-quarters of Haitians live on less than $2 per day.

"I ask, 'Which days are you not going to feed the babies?' " says Ann Farquharson, a feisty school teacher from Western Canada who settled 22 years ago in Thomassin, a hilly community not far from Port-au-Prince.

"It's awful. So many people skip meals that their already-poor nutrition is exacerbated. So many families have anemia and when kids are ill, they are very ill. They are so malnourished, a simple infection can take a child's life."

Mothers can't afford to go hungry, Ms. Farquharson tells me, because if they get sick all of their children are at risk. So it is not unusual for people to come to the gate of her home and say they have no money to feed some of their children. Many are left at orphanages.

Families survive on laboullie, a porridge made from flour, oatmeal or corn meal.

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Hunger stalks the city, too.

In some neighborhoods, people reside in tiny tin shacks with dirt floors, pigs foraging outside their doors. The residents themselves sometimes forage for scraps.

It is "un-human" says Nicolas Pierre, a journalist with Port-au-Prince's newspaper, Le Nouvelliste.

We are walking in Bel-Air, a trash-riddled neighborhood not far from the presidential palace, on a street filled with vendors, motorcycles and dust. When the wind blows, it reeks of raw sewage.

Larochel Dieuson lives here. He is a small-store merchant trying to make it. Thin and balding, he is 39.

He wants his old life back, that time in the 1980s when Haiti was more stable and food prices were low. Now, he says, it is worse than when the gangs would come and take his merchandise. For weeks, he's made no profit.

His four children can no longer go to school because he can't afford both food and school fees.

For more information about Dr. Leon Pamphile's Functional Literacy Ministry of Haiti, visit: www.flmhaiti.org. Ervin Dyer, a former Post-Gazette staff writer, is a senior editor for the University of Pittsburgh's Pitt Magazine. You can email Mr. Dyer at edyer@pitt.edu.

It is a hot afternoon and I meet Mr. Dieuson as he stands in the shade of his awning. His eyes are downcast, his hope fading.

Some items he will not stock at his store, such as beans. They are so costly, he complains, that his customers could not buy them.

For breakfast, he had coffee. He will have no lunch, and he has no plans for dinner.

His kids had coffee for breakfast, too. No lunch. For dinner, he'll feed them a small plate of rice.

"By the grace of God," he says, "they are not sick."

Today, Mr. Dieuson, who hold his palms together as if in prayer, has not had to go to the garbage dump to rummage for food.

Tomorrow.

Well, that's another day.

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