Visiting anthropologists found cave-dwelling food-gatherers whose subsistence was based on the wild yam; other foods included tadpoles, frogs, small fish, crabs, grubs, palm fruit, and wild bananas.
This includes the bones of people whose subsistence was based on freshwater fish, and pottery in which fish was cooked.
Those whose normal subsistence is undermined, for example because their homestead is made insecure and those who are active conflict participants, appear to be at increased risk of being infected.
Those groups, for example, whose subsistence base was fishing or gathering, had the smallest houses and most dispersed settlement patterns in the area.
Subsistence was based upon corn farming and upon hunting.
Also options for subsistence are left open.
Our study showed that women whose occupation was subsistence farming or housewife were at a higher risk of having perinatal death as an adverse outcome compared to salaried women.
Caesarian operations cost up to $200, nearly six times the monthly income of the average government worker in a country whose population is largely rural, poor and dependent on subsistence agriculture.
"The government came and registered our names but we don't know what will happen next," says Upenji Seletino, 73, a subsistence farmer whose modest plot is rammed with cassava, maize and beans.
But the rebuilding cost will be immense.The earthquake's overall economic effects will probably be limited for the same reason it has proved so devastating for its victims: most of them are poor subsistence farmers, whose economic contribution is small, and who have no resources to fall back on.
