For Hungry, Needy Haitians, a Single Goal--Staying Alive : Caribbean: Relief agencies feed one person in seven. Humanitarian aid will be a major task for U.S. forces.

The kids in line at Bon Berger School are not thinking about U.S. troops or a president in waiting or generals who won’t go. Clutching their enameled bowls, they want lunch.

In this falling-down port city in northwestern Haiti, and all across a destitute nation plumbing new depths of poverty after a three-year embargo, people focus on a single goal: staying alive.

Nixon Stetus, 3, is just about making it. Each noon, he toddles up to the black kettles under a banana tree for a dollop of thick gruel. He wolfs down most and saves a little for his family.

All around him, telltale carrot-colored hair and protruding bellies reveal deficiencies, parasites and diseases that cut short young lives. Sunken-cheeked adults look hardly better.

“For most, our feeding program provides the only meal they get,” said Chris Sykes of CARE, which is the largest employer in a city whose population has been listed as high as 70,000. Its payroll is only 400 people.

CARE reaches 300,000 children in Gonaives and elsewhere in Haiti’s northwest. Since last year, new centers hand out emergency rations of grain and cooking oil to another 320,000 people.

Altogether, voluntary agencies feed 1 million of Haiti’s 7 million inhabitants. U.S. officers list humanitarian aid as a main goal of Operation Uphold Democracy, but little has yet been planned.

“There is some confusion,” said Tom Friedeberg, CARE director in Haiti, who began his first meetings with U.S. generals Thursday. “I don’t think anyone is quite sure of what should be done.”

Gonaives, a crucible of political ferment since African slaves declared independence from France here in 1804, is where the insurrection against the Duvalier dynasty began a decade ago.

In April this year, soldiers surrounded the fetid slum of Raboteau and massacred at least 30 people believed loyal to exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Today, Gonaives is a living ghost town, its spirit broken. Unemployment may be 95%, but no municipal workers are left to make an assessment. Business is done on rickety tables in the street.

When word came that the Americans might actually invade, the deputy commander of the region slipped into jeans and a sport shirt and exchanged the army tags on his jeep for civilian license plates.

Outside the town, the 400 children at Bon Berger, age 3 to 16, are a microcosm of Haiti’s anguish and an indication of what U.S. officers face in trying to make a difference.

Anita Beausejour watches her son eat and hopes he will fill up before finishing his pile. She feeds seven children, including a son of 21 who closed his tailor shop because no one can afford clothes.

Her husband farms corn, but a drought in July withered up to 90% of the region’s crop. The next harvest is not until December, provided sporadic rains do not stop.

“At night, I give my family whatever we have,” she said. “Corn, beans, vegetables.”

Asked about the night before, she looked away.

“I gave them nothing,” she said. “If there was money, we could buy food. But there is no money.”

When asked what she would serve for the next meal, she looked away again, eyes moistening.

The U.S. government already pays food and transportation costs for the voluntary agencies’ programs--about $50 million a year--and it is not clear how much new funding might be available.

If U.S. aid is to make an impact, most aid workers say, a basic, urgent priority must be repairing Haiti’s physical and governmental infrastructure.

Halfway from Port-au-Prince to Gonaives, a total distance of 120 miles, the paved road deteriorates in axle-breaking ruts. Many main roads have washed out or crumbled away.

Miles of irrigation canals are blocked solid. Power and phone lines are down. Generators are dilapidated. Topsoil washes down denuded hillsides and into fishing areas of estuaries.

While economists wrestle with the larger problems of creating formal jobs and a functioning democracy, the aid workers say, thousands can be employed on humanitarian cash-for-work projects.

“It works,” CARE’s Sykes said, pointing to a gang of men digging out a canal along the highway for the minimum wage of about a dollar a day. “It puts cash in the economy, and the work gets done.”

But only a few thousand people receive day wages from voluntary agencies, which are limited by tight budgets.

At Bon Berger, no one is yet expecting any miracles from Operation Uphold Democracy.

Nixon Stetus’ mother, Yolande, was amazed to learn that Americans had landed in Haiti. Her friends own no radios and, in any case, battery money would have long ago gone into the food pot.

Siemene Augustin, in a fiery red dress and no shoes, led one son up to the food pots and balanced a younger daughter on her hip.

Like the others, she had not heard that Americans were coming, and she looked doubtful when told their intention was to make her life better. “Maybe,” she said.