News stories by Garry Pierre-Pierre*

Angela Solis de Pena remembered the story that her parents told her of a Haitian man who tried to rape a Dominican woman; after the woman escaped the man chased her and hacked her to death.

When the Jan. 12 earthquake struck this mountainous country, in less than a minute, it transformed it from one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere to the largest construction site this side of the Atlantic.

Marie Saintus sat regally on a wicker chair in the narrow alley by her makeshift home at the Anacaona Stadium, in the middle of this once bucolic city, as she teased her neighbours.

Seriously injured people continue to provide deep challenges to the city's barely functioning hospitals, weeks after a massive earthquake overwhelmed medical staff.

Astride Auguste was late for an exam at Quiskeya University on that fateful Tuesday, Jan. 12, when the earthquake - or 'the event', as Haitians have come to call it - struck this capital city.

Marjorie Louis and her two small children are sleeping in the street. Their home is in complete ruins. And Louis has no way to let her mother in Les Cayes know that she survived the deadliest natural disaster to hit this country.

Last week, the price of a small can of rice cost two dollars. On Tuesday, it cost Haitians 3.50 dollars. A gallon of cooking oil that cost 10 dollars only days ago now fetches 20 dollars.

On Tuesday, Jan. 12, a small story from the Associated Press came across the wires that an earthquake had hit Haiti. Almost instantly, phones began to ring as Haitian Americans started calling each other to find out if there was more to this story.

Marjorie Louis was sitting in her kitchen eating dinner when she felt the house shaking, but she didn't get up.

Rosemarie Tintin's black hat and veil barely concealed the sorrow on her face. She recently lost her entire family in Haiti's devastating earthquake and the only place she could find solace was at her church.