Photos From Haiti: Life Beyond the Headlines

Emily Troutman will be writing a series of dispatches from Haiti for AOL News. Click here and here for other photo essays she's produced. And follow her on Twitter.

PETIONVILLE, Haiti (Jan. 23) -- After a few days back in Haiti, I only know one thing for sure -- what happened here is not in the headlines. The hurrying we see on television, the celebrities and the politics, are noisy waves swimming above a sea of silent grief. Alongside all the lives that have been lost, the living endure. There are still families and jobs to be done. There are still songs on the radio and late night games of dominoes.

Haiti's is not a story about death. It is a story about life after death.

Emily Troutman

Many Haitians, even those whose homes did not collapse, are now living outside in yards and driveways.

I spent my first days here with my friend, Harry Luc, and his family in Petionville, near Port-au-Prince. Next, I will stay with people for whom my presence will be less of a burden. But this week, I needed to be with people who could understand my silence. I was in Haiti less than a month ago, and to lose friends, to see cities destroyed, almost beyond recognition, has been difficult.

In Petionville, Harry's house and his mother's house next door are still standing, though no one is willing to sleep inside. The aftershocks have been ongoing and there are rumors that within the next 48 hours, there will be another earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 or above.

Emily Troutman

Jehaane Christoph, 22, shown with her friends, was one of the few Hotel Montana employees to make it out alive.

At night, we lay out under the stars and share a few mattresses with a kerosene lamp nearby. Ordinarily, six people live in these two houses, but it has now become a campsite for 16. For people with homes still standing, this is what life looks like now: every house is a village.

All night long, the family's cell phones ring, with people from the States calling to check in. I met Harry through the Haitian musician, BelO, a rising star whose music cuts across economic and social boundaries. BelO's music plays on constant rotation on the radio this week. Because he was out of the country when the earthquake struck, rumors keep circulating that he might have died.

Emily Troutman

A resident of Harry Luc's house washes her face in the morning. Harry's house has water because it is close to the main reservoir in Petionville.

Harry has BelO's phone, and a dozen times a day, he answers it only to assure people that BelO is still alive. Even though it's good news, it is difficult to say, and a stark reminder of how close death came. Everyone in Haiti is living this experience. Since the Internet often works when phones don't, Facebook, Skype and Twitter have become lifelines. If people don't update their status messages, family and friends abroad begin to panic.

Thursday afternoon, I climbed up the hill to the Hotel Montana, where hundreds may have been trapped. Outside the heavily guarded gates, former employees hold constant vigil. Inside, I witnessed a terrible moment. Standing under the big tree at the top of the driveway, I heard a search-and-rescue team tell a woman they thought they found her husband's body. Next to it was a cell phone. "Call him," they said. She pushed the button on her phone and as her husband's phone rang, the woman cried out in agony, inconsolable.

Emily Troutman

Dashka checks her messages in the morning. Sixteen people are sleeping in a city of mattresses in the home's driveway.

All over Port-au-Prince, there are ruined streets and urgent needs. Campsites of people pop up around every corner. Some have received tarps from aid organizations, but most are just sheets hung over sticks. Water is available, but often untreated. It is also difficult to find and, understandably, no one has the energy to look. Fruit and vegetable sellers line the streets, though their produce is expensive.

As Harry took me across the city to see the places I photographed in December, I tried to put down my camera, so I could really see. Last time I was here, I came to photograph the humanitarian crisis. Looking through my lenses, I missed so many small joys and triumphs: children looking blissfully at books they couldn't read, families sharing what little they had, women selling hot food on every street corner.

Emily Troutman

The entrance to the Grand Rue, an urban community of artists, appears just weeks before the quake that killed the artist Louco.

Emily Troutman

The entrance to the Grand Rue is shown after the quake. The sign was painted to celebrate the Ghetto Biennale, an art festival held last month.

Now, those joys are triumphs that come when you learn that someone you know is safe.

All day, I heard old friends in the city call out to each other, "You OK?"

"I'm OK."

"Is everyone OK?"

"We're all OK."

Of course, they're not all OK. But disaster is just another word for loss. It is lived moment to moment and with family. It is not a story for CNN and it does not heal in a week, or two, or three. Haiti's grief wanders like a stray cat. It is nowhere and everywhere at once. Friends laugh and joke, only to stare off into the distance, suddenly caught up in a moment of darkness.

I found Andre Eugene, an artist of the Grand Rue, looking down at a pile of his sculptures, crumbled into each other. He smiled. "It almost looks like I did it on purpose, doesn't it?"

Emily Troutman

People gather around the National Palace, where the grass is growing long and U.S. soldiers stand guard.

What strikes me today is that this is a difficult life made more difficult. Small ambitions -- to go to school, to finish college, to sell art, to start a business -- are lost in the dust. There will be two parts to what happens next in Haiti. Right now, Haiti needs peace and aid. Tomorrow, the next day, and the next, my friends will start another struggle, to grieve, to reconcile their old dreams with what the future can offer.

Emily Troutman

A woman sleeps outside the Canadian Embassy.