Haiti: What Remains

There are moments when a country's routines fracture. When gunfire sounds closer. Haiti lives in one of those moments now. Yet it continues. Because people continue.

We are Papyrus. We walk beside communities, bear witness, and harness collective wisdom through partnership. What we see is not spectacle. It is simple presence. Quiet decisions made in the silence often left by fear.

The Door That Opens

In a clinic in Turgeau, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, staff arrive before dawn. They check security updates on their phones. If it is safe, they open the door. No announcements. Only the faith that someone will come.

They always do.

Profamil has operated in Haiti for over 40 years, providing reproductive and sexual health care. Their mobile teams bring services to camps where hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in tents. They distribute essential supplies such as soap, sanitary pads, and other hygiene items, and they provide confidential counseling in safe spaces.

"The personnel decide each day whether to open or not, based on the security situation," explains Florence, who coordinates their operations. "The Turgeau clinic has stayed open almost every day, even at the peak of the crisis."

The Carrefour-Feuilles clinic had to close. Staff have been displaced, some multiple times. Yet the mobile units continue with daily visits to camps around Port-au-Prince, reaching several thousand people who might otherwise have nowhere to turn.

A father arrives with a wife in labor. A young woman has questions she dared not voice before. A teenager, displaced twice, uncertain of any place that feels like home.

They come because this door has opened before. And it opens again.

The Stage That Lights

In April 2025, the Festival International de Jazz de Port-au-Prince returned for its eighteenth edition, but with a difference. There were no international headliners. Security concerns had changed everything.

"We had to focus on our local artists," said Milena, executive director of the Haiti Jazz Foundation. "And it turned out to be exactly what the people needed."

What emerged was unexpected. The stage belonged entirely to Haitian performers, who turned the absence of global stars into a showcase of local brilliance. For two days, Port-au-Prince residents could dance and sing along to artists who gave them more than music.

Vodou rhythms met jazz improvisation as musicians blended traditional Haitian spiritual rhythms with contemporary sounds. The festival sold out both nights. In a city under siege, people made the choice to gather, to celebrate, to insist that culture survives.

What Holds

We have seen this pattern across Haiti. When formal systems withdraw, people step forward. When institutions fail, communities create what they need to survive.

Each organization does what it can with what it knows and where it is. At Profamil, this means mobile clinics navigating checkpoints to reach families who need care. At the jazz festival, it means musicians creating joy for their neighbors. Different work, same spirit: the understanding that showing up matters.

These are not stopgaps. They are the scaffolding of what holds Haiti together today and what could make it stronger tomorrow.

Civil society in Haiti is adapting to fill critical gaps. It is the heartbeat beneath headlines, the daily choice to hold spaces open when those spaces might otherwise close forever.

What This Means

We tell this story because it deserves to be told. Because Haiti's persistence is not just resilience, it is responsibility. It is melody. It is the daily choice made by thousands of people to hold their country together from the inside out.

Florence at Profamil emphasizes the value of international recognition for their local work, understanding that visibility can strengthen community efforts.

The jazz festival organizers created something for their community: for themselves, for their neighbors, for the simple human need to gather and make music together.

This is what remains when everything else falls away: people who choose to show up. People who open doors, light stages, and offer care when care is needed most. People who understand that a nation is held together by the countless daily decisions of its citizens to continue.

Let that be seen.

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