I’m sitting by a log fire in the foyer of my hotel on a freezing cold, Colorado autumn day. A hot, spiced-latte is slowly thawing out my frozen body after I foolishly decided to take a walk wearing only a T shirt and thin jacket. When will I learn this is not Australia!

It’s just over two weeks now since I was in Haiti and it’s taken me a bit of time to process some of what I experienced. Although just a short flight from the USA, Haiti could be on a different planet when compared to how people live here.

Having read Paul Farmer’s book on Haiti post earthquake, I arrived in Port-au-Prince expecting to see fallen buildings and rubble all over the city. Sure, I saw one or two pancaked buildings, still untouched since that fateful day in 2010, as well as a fair amount of rubble piled up here and there. What I didn’t expect was the amount of new buildings that have been constructed in the last 12 -18 months as well as the hundreds of buildings still under construction. The Royal Palace, the nation’s symbol, so badly damaged in the quake and left in ruins for so long, has finally been demolished. International chains are building 4 and 5 star hotels. There is a building frenzy going on and to the outsider it could appear that life has returned to normal, whatever that looked like before.

However, you don’t have to look too far as you drive through the streets of Delmas, Carrefour, and even the more affluent Petionville to see flimsy, weathered US AID- provided tents clustered tightly together forming large makeshift communities of people still homeless since the quake. The International Organization for Migration reports that the number of displaced people still living in these camps three and half years after the disaster is around 320,000, possibly more.

Poor sanitation and a lack of clean water make these makeshift camps a breeding ground for diseases, including cholera. With poor lighting and unsecured tents, as well as a lack of effective law enforcement, Haitian women and children are especially vulnerable to rape and other forms of violence. Living in these desperate conditions means higher rates of crime and substance abuse.

Yet Haiti is not hopeless, I found hope everywhere I looked — hope in the smiles of the kids, even those living in tent cities; hope in the staff of the child development centres as they nurture and educate the children in their care towards a future, less bound by the shackles of extreme poverty; hope in the passionate and determined men and women of Compassion Haiti who in spite of so much personal loss of family, friends and homes in 2010, were still as committed and faithful to working as tireless advocates for the children of Haiti.

More to come …