Esther Kreider-Verhalle, a contributing editor at DC, recently went to Haiti to teach a course on media ethics as part of the curriculum at the film and journalism school, Haiti Reporters, in Port-au-Prince. Here she presents her first report. -Jeff

As Philippe Girard has lamented in his history of Haiti writing about the country can be depressing. “One must consult the thesaurus regularly to find synonyms for cruelty, poverty, and thug, while looking in vain for an opportunity to mention hope and success unaccompanied by lack of.”

It is a mess here in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. Walking the streets of Port-au-Prince, one cannot ignore the squalor. The local market in the neighborhood where I am staying consists of mostly older women – marchandes – selling their produce and merchandise next to little piles of filth and omnipresent burning heaps of trash. Hens are running around, dogs are lying around. Pick up trucks honk their horns when passing through the small, unpaved streets, causing the sand and dust to sweep through the air. Sometimes, the women can only barely move their baskets with produce in time to avoid being hit by aggressively fast moving cars. Somewhere in a building that only has a few remaining standing walls, a religious service of some kind is going on. There is music, singing, clapping. Next to collapsed houses, one can spot impressive houses behind high fences that are rebuilt or seem untouched by natural disaster. The differences between rich and poor are stark. But everywhere, the air is hot, grimy, and dry.

Haiti’s recent history is a somber tale of man-made disasters and natural catastrophes: political ineptitude, economic collapse, racial strife, hurricanes, tropical storms, and earthquakes. After the foreign interference of the past, in the form of colonialism and slavery, the modern day and well intended international aid-industry comes with its own list of drawbacks, encouraging a never ending dependency on foreign aid. Ills such as the plague of corruption and the enormous disparities between the large group of the poor and the small group of the rich, have been preventing Haitian society from . . .

Read more: Haiti: Resilience against Hopelessness