The day after independence day in Haiti brought a return to the grim realities of 2023, as the warmth of family celebration gave way to the anxiety of a country facing another year of compounding crises. For many Haitians, the traditional New Year period that began with soup joumou on January 1 and extended through the first weeks of the month carried a weight of silent prayer and anxious hope that the year ahead would somehow be different from the one that had just ended.
In Port-au-Prince neighborhoods that had experienced gang violence in 2022, families who had remained — whether by choice, necessity, or the absence of alternatives — faced the new year knowing that the criminal networks controlling their surroundings were not going anywhere. The modest hopes they expressed — that the police might find new capacity, that international help might arrive, that some political agreement might reduce the violence — were realistic enough to be meaningful but modest enough to reflect hard-won experience with disappointment.
Communities that had been displaced in 2022 and were entering the new year in transitional sites or with host families carried their own particular griefs and hopes. For them, a good 2023 meant the possibility of eventually returning home — if home still existed, if the neighborhood was safe enough to return to, if the family’s resources were sufficient to reestablish a household. The preconditions for return were numerous and uncertain.
For the diaspora watching from abroad, the new year brought renewed determination to do whatever was possible — send money, make calls, organize advocacy, maintain connections — to support a homeland whose need was evident and whose resilience remained, despite everything, genuinely inspiring.