The women who made the cakes were not passive symbols. They were working.
They located or bought the clay, cleaned it, mixed it, formed it, dried it and sold it. The activity could produce a small amount of income in neighborhoods with few economic opportunities.
That labor deserves to be recognized, even though the product itself reflected deprivation.
A woman selling clay cakes might be simultaneously trying to feed her children, serve customers who could afford nothing else and earn enough money to purchase actual food. Her role cannot be reduced to victimhood.
This is one reason respectful language matters. People living through hunger continue to make choices, care for relatives, work, improvise and protect one another. Desperation constrains those choices, but it does not eliminate their agency.
Hunger is rarely just an absence of food
At the global level, enough food may exist while individual families remain unable to acquire it. Hunger can result from a lack of income, inaccessible markets, unsafe roads, displacement or the collapse of local livelihoods.
A bag of rice in a warehouse does not feed a household that cannot reach the warehouse or afford its price.
For this reason, humanitarian responses must do more than distribute calories during the worst moments of a crisis. Emergency food assistance can save lives, but long-term food security also depends on stable incomes, functioning transportation, accessible health care and support for local agriculture.
Children require particular attention. Chronic undernutrition can affect physical growth and cognitive development. Pregnant and breastfeeding women have increased nutritional needs. Older adults and people with medical conditions may be especially vulnerable when diets become restricted.
A clay cake cannot meet any of those needs.
What the story should teach us
The existence of bonbon tè during periods of hunger is not an invitation to stare at Haiti. It is an invitation to understand what families do when the price of survival exceeds their resources.
The important question is not, “Why would anyone eat that?”
A better question is, “What conditions could make that seem like the least bad option?”
Once the story is framed that way, the behavior becomes less mysterious. Around the world, people facing hunger dilute soup, skip meals, eat animal feed, gather unsafe plants or consume substances that suppress appetite. The specific coping strategy differs, but the underlying logic is similar.