We’ve been here for a couple of weeks since first landing in Port-au-Prince and then, twenty-four hours later, settling into this eight-by-ten-foot room with a bed, chair, small table, gas lamp and a three-gallon water filter. The room is one of four in a square concrete house that we share with three generations of a Haitian family… I return home for breakfast prepared by Grandma and the two sisters: coffee ground by mortar and pestle, and spaghetti noodles with a thin, oily tomato sauce... All food is shared here, the plates passed around during a meal until family, friends, and even animals have eaten... Wearing only a blue-and-white-checked school shirt, a rambunctious four-year-old boy sprints past going to fetch a gallon of water at a pump a hundred yards down the dirt path. He’s the second-youngest member of the family we’re staying with. Their yard (called a lakou) is a quarter acre of dirt and pebbles with many tropical trees—coconut, mango, lime and others. Lush shades of green give the illusion of prosperity.

In addition to the concrete main house, the lakou has a second house of woven wood and an outhouse of palm leaves. Six turkeys, three chickens, two roosters and four guinea hens peck away incessantly in search of seeds. Tied to the trees are a goat and a calf, which I’m told serve as investments or insurance policies, to be sold when money is tight. Two dogs and a cat hover at mealtimes. The family includes a grandfather, grandmother, two adult daughters, a son-in-law, an adult niece, four grandchildren between four and twelve years old who belongs to daughters living elsewhere, and the niece’s baby.