A young boy, no older than 5 years old, reaches up to clutch my hand and lead me through claustrophobic alleyways weaving between closely packed tents. Beads of sweat roll down my forehead as I follow. The dead air is suffocatingly hot and heavy with the stench of garbage.

I am touched by the boy’s intentions, naively assuming that he wants to show me his new home. As we near a large tent in the center of the camp, I see a woman applying make-up to another wearing nothing but a towel. The boy turns to me and states bluntly, in Creole, “here are the pretty bitches for you” before releasing my hand and disappearing back into the maze. He has brought me to the camp brothel.

In a nearby camp a young girl with an old face wears ribbons in her hair that match her spotlessly clean pink and white frock. She skips around her disabled father as he conducts a personal tour of what used to be the family home; it now consists of rubble, crumbling walls and a dozen empty wine bottles. Since January they have been confined to a dingy corrugated iron room with a dirt floor and broken bed. They are the lucky ones.

My ten days in Haiti flitted between the surreal and the absurd. Arriving into Port-au-Prince was like touring a movie set – the sight of crumbled buildings and piles of rubble all so familiar, but the sense of voyeurism makes me slightly uncomfortable – I am up close but far removed. Only after traveling the length of the country to revisit the environmental devastation that has ravaged Haiti (that’s a different story but very much the same), followed by several days in tented camps in Port au Prince, did I even scratch the surface of comprehension. As one woman stares me in the eye and recounts how she carried her dead son over piles of bodies to bury him, my scalp prickles as I try to feel the pain that consumes her waking hours and to conjure the images that will haunt her. She flicks through photos of her beautiful children “Dead. Dead. Dead.” She has lost seventeen family members and is on a mission to find and bury each and every one. Seven are still encased in rubble that she can’t afford to move.

The real tragedy is that the suffering is far from over for these people. With hurricane season knocking on their door, it is painfully predictable that horrific images of loss and despair will once again flood our screens and papers in the coming months. People accept their situation with a silent despondence – an indication of a life that has never been easy. When asked about hope, people are unable to describe a brighter future; “it is in the hands of God” is the ubiquitous response. They cannot afford to dream. But what surprised me most of all during my days in the camps was the tenacity of these people. Bubbling under a weary exterior is a desire to live in the present. With a simple smile and “bonjour” thrown in their direction, weary faces are transformed with winning smiles. Children play in the rain and sing for guests such as me. I did not find an angry, hostile people, but one very open and willing – even eager – to share their stories and their lives. It was the humanity that I witnessed in these camps that made the inhumanity of their situation even harder to swallow.

On my way to the airport I passed a corrugated iron fence with the words “We can change” sprawled in black paint. This simple message carried with it a recognition that is rarely heard in Haiti. It was not a cry for help from the outside, but from within. As emergency camps evolve into the new way of life for these people, with everything from cyber cafes to brothels serving as a distraction from the everyday realities, I only hope that whoever sprayed those three words on the corrugated iron fence is right.