The garbage is piled hip deep in spots along the streets, and the residents simply walk over it to get where they're going. For decades, the garbage trucks have not run. The internal structure of this country has fallen away at the hands of despotic leaders like Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier, who robbed the country so thoroughly that even mammoth effort has failed to restore it. During an epidemic, I was told (and it's not that hard to believe), so many people died that the government told them to put their dead on the curb to be removed.

When those faces smile — and they do — an indomitable spirit shines through. At night, back in our hotel, we talked about it. About the fact that people are somehow mysteriously imbued with the ability to rise above anything and laugh, to find joy and love, if they will let themselves. Pampered Americans — and we are — we vowed to be a bit more like those we met in this island of color and joy, dirt and despair.

They are the reason that Dr. Jeff Randle, a rehab doctor at LDS Hospital, founded the organization. He served a mission there and fell in love with the people, vowing to return and make a difference.

The volunteers, who pay their own way, return again and again. They can't seem to stay away. It's a love story.

That's what I see when I read the accounts of rampaging teens and 20-somethings heading out on murderous field trips, robbing and killing because they can. The stories of rebel forces killing wantonly and the (now-defunct) government retaliating in kind. I see the broken metal houses that line the street outside the lush campus of a Catholic school. I see the children playing on the street. And then my imagination takes over and my heart breaks.

I don't know if Jean-Bertrand Aristide made Haiti a better, safer place in either of his two reigns. When I was there, opinion was very much divided. There's a statue of him in the square in front of the government building. It shows hundreds of hands reaching up, bearing him aloft.

No doubt the interpretation he prefers comes from his admirers. It's said that they are hoisting him up, celebrating him.

Others say he is climbing up, tramping on his people.

He can ponder that, wherever he is going, now that his government is kaput.

But I do know that the Haitian people matter.

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Deseret Morning News staff writer Lois M. Collins may be reached by e-mail at lois@desnews.com