FAM not working?

[Remington L.]

I just installed FAM from the ports collection and started it properly, 
line by line like it told me. the reason I'm installing this is as a 
dependecy. I am attempting to get e17 up and running through cvs. When i 
do a ./configure with e17 i get the following:
checking for fam.h usability... no
checking for fam.h presence... no
checking for fam.h... no
checking for main in -lfam... no

fam.h exist in my /usr/local/include. Why am i getting these errors and 
how do i fix it? thank you in advance