Photography

A Tameable Beast in Haiti

I am the two-faced lover of the developing world, the smiling maiden offering a delicacy secretly laced with poison. With one breath, I nurture and I kill. I demand whole-hearted devotion. They come to me in droves as I freely flow, offering daily obeisance in the washing of clothes and communal bathing. From first waking…Read more A Tameable Beast in Haiti

The Woman at the Well in Haiti

I fall in step behind an old woman who pads along the rocky path in bare feet, carrying empty plastic jugs. We trek single-file along a ridge, with ochre corn fields sprawling beneath layers of purple hills and mountains, crowned by cerulean sky. To our left, various structures perch along the ridge - roughly hewn, boarded boxes…Read more The Woman at the Well in Haiti

Longing for Home

Blue shadows fall on barren fields where once we roamed heart-to-heart. Now clouds hinge on sinister skies. Grass, tattered earth, flaps like threadbare laundry. Cold and exposed, I drift alone. A weathered fence guides me, hand-over-hand. Nothing tied down, everything shifts in ochre waves. How can I feel trapped in a place so vast? Bare…Read more Longing for Home

Scars That Tell of the Good Life

With the kind of radiance that hints at secret knowledge of something very deep and very good, Noyo eagerly describes the privilege he feels in serving his native country, Haiti, as a Young Life staff-worker. “Just because something is easy,” he explains, “doesn’t mean it is the best. If you do something easy, it doesn’t…Read more Scars That Tell of the Good Life

A Beautiful Girl in Haiti

Deep in the trenches of poverty and strife, a beautiful girl wearing a white head-band picks her way through garbage and crumbling cement and passes through the gates of Good Shepherd School. In Cite Soleil, the poorest slum of the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere, she aspires to something more than she inherited at…Read more A Beautiful Girl in Haiti

Port au Prince Haiti at a Glance

Port au Prince is the hustling, bustling, overflowing city-that-never-stops capital of Haiti. It is said that the streets are the living room of Port au Prince. From the brightly colored, stacked structures on the hillsides of the upscale Petionville suburb to the densely-packed, narrow crumbling streets of the City Soleil slum, it is an endless…Read more Port au Prince Haiti at a Glance

A Rooftop Crack in Haiti

On Monday, dawn crept over me on a rooftop in Haiti. Just below, massive trucks lumbered over narrow rocky streets, lugging water to and from a water purification facility. Roosters crowed and dogs barked. People walked, sang, laughed, and chattered in every nook and cranny in the streets, balconies and rooftops all around. Palm fronds…Read more A Rooftop Crack in Haiti

Hope

A bird sings in deep December; its persistent serenade coaxes morning into dark. What memories of summer nectar fill its trilling head? What longing for lilting spring breeze floods its swelling chest? Here, where heavy, settling layers weight our hearts in sleep, a singular bird refuses to notice, to succumb. It rises before dawn and…Read more Hope