KEY POINTS:
On the road that skirts the western edge of Cite Soleil an up-tempo drumbeat from a song by Haitian musical hero Wyclef Jean plays from a cheap transistor radio.
Nearby, nervous United Nations troops wait beside an armoured vehicle and a tank. Along the roadside, makeshift stalls sell "kenedi" - a Haitian Creole word for second-hand clothes first sent to the impoverished nation from the United States under a programme initiated by President John F. Kennedy.
Crumbling buildings scarred by heavy gunfire line the street beside ditches filled with rubbish.
Cite Soleil - or Sun City - is one of the largest slums in the northern hemisphere. There are no police, sewers or power for its 300,000 inhabitants. In 2004, the UN called Cite Soleil "the most dangerous place on earth".
Just 15 minutes downtown from the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, this Caribbean wasteland remains a fearful place.
Above the street, troops position themselves on rooftops, looking for early signs of trouble: the Chinese UN soldiers stationed in Port-au-Prince call the main road - National 1 - "the road of death" after the kidnappings and murders which plague the area.
Michel, my translator and guide, explains that the heavy UN presence is partly to deter gun-toting street gangs known as "chimeres" (a Creole term that roughly translates as "ghosts"). When trouble brews in this part of Rue Soleil, the main road that cuts through Cite Soleil shuts down. People retreat inside, the market disappears. The area becomes a ghost town.
From Rue Soleil, larger roads and narrow unpaved lanes lead off in all directions. Cite Carton, an area consisting entirely of cardboard "shacks", is perhaps the most impoverished of these inner neighbourhoods. Most of the houses consist of densely packed rooms made from basic recyclables: during the hottest months, tin roofs capture the relentless heat and transform the interiors into sweatboxes.
At the road's edge, a group of barely clothed children play soccer with a can, pushing each other as they skip around in the dirt. Beyond the road, black smoke rises from plastic waste burning in "ravines" or ditches.
Near Soleil 19, an area where a number of prominent chimeres once lived, a boy wearing a man's polo shirt and no pants asks, in French, to have his photo taken.
Standing in front of a wall with a graffiti tribute to Winson "2Pac" Jean, one of the most infamous chimere leaders, the boy poses and gives a wide smile. After a few moments, an older man who has been watching from nearby angrily calls the boy away.
Michel, who grew up in Cite Soleil, suggests that perhaps we should move on. "It does not take much for trouble to start," he tells me.
Created in the 1950s by the government of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Cite Soleil was conceived as a way to house the influx of workers looking for employment in the nation's capital.
While migrant workers rapidly filled Cite Soleil, neither employment opportunities nor sufficient infrastructures were in place to deal with the population growth.
Before long, the inevitable occurred: Cite Soleil ceased to exist in a successful, and entirely imagined future and descended into a failed, impoverished, and violent present.
Perhaps the worst of the violence in Cite Soleil has taken place since the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. During the last stages of his presidency, Aristide and his Lavalas party armed and funded street gangs from Cite Soleil and other slums around Haiti.
Donning balaclavas and brandishing high-powered rifles and semi-automatics, these gangs became known as chimeres. The role of the chimeres was simple: to provide muscle for the embattled government and terrorise Aristide's political adversaries.
Aristide's departure from office led to armed conflict that spread from the slums and to downtown Port-au-Prince The chimeres split between Lavalas supporters and those who felt disillusioned with Aristide's leadership. When UN military forces entered Cite Soleil in 2004, the gangs resisted the occupation and fought each other.
In Cite Lumiere, a neighbourhood in the centre of Cite Soleil, Jean-Luc, a tall 25-year- old with a ready smile, guarantees my safety.
"You will not be kidnapped when you are with us," he assures me.
We are sitting on the cobbled path outside a small shop and Jean-Luc is excited to practise his English - he would one day like to go to university.
"We know money comes into Haiti but when it gets to Cite Soleil ... There is nothing left for us," he says.
Talking about the UN's presence in the slum, Jean-Luc feels that little has changed.
"If I tell [the UN] who has guns," Jean-Luc says, "I will be dead before the UN finds them." The chimeres' tactics of intimidation are extreme: Jean-Luc witnessed a murder on his doorstep and knew someone who was killed for having the police's phone number on his cellphone.
The destruction of the police station near the port in Cite Soleil is a microcosm of how quickly this area became a zone occupied by a foreign military complex.
An operational centre for a large policing unit up until 2004, the Haitian police were forced to abandon the police station during fighting with the chimeres; this failure to combat the chimeres led to the intervention of hundreds of UN troops a few months later.
Today, the protective outer wall that once surrounded the building no longer exists, vanquished by gunfire and subsequent decay.
Down the road from the police station, a group of half-a-dozen or so young men approach and ask for money and food, forming a tight half-circle. A skinny 23-year-old, Philippe, pushes to the front. "You see my friend?" he asks, pointing to the equally emaciated teenager next to him.
"He has a baby but he has no food for him or his baby. He does not eat and his baby does not eat. I have a baby also, and we do not eat."
Phillippe's fury at all of this - Cite Soleil, his country, and his life - is the charge behind everything he says. "We have nothing, here. Do you understand?" He looks at me, willing me to comprehend, yet acutely aware that I probably cannot.
Philippe laughs and shakes his head when I ask if things were better when Aristide was President. "Of course! Under Aristide, everything was better for the people of Cite Soleil. Preval [Haiti's current president] is no good."
The stories the young men tell continually circulate around the two constants of life in Cite Soleil: poverty and violence. At least nine peacekeepers have died in clashes and UN forces have been blamed for a number of deaths.
Past the large UN military compound in the centre of Cite Soleil, there is a damaged concrete structure set back from the road. Michel explains the significance: this was once a popular Protestant church, attended by people from many parts of the slum. Above the entranceway, an inscription is peppered by bullet-holes: Jusqu'ici L'eternel Nous a Secourus: "Up to here, God has been with us."
Like many of the crumbling empty structures in Cite Soleil, there is a strange mixture of the sacred and profane; in this church where there is no roof, glass, doors, or seating, soft light fills the empty space.
VIOLENT HISTORY OF ONCE-RICH NATION
A two-hour flight from Miami, Haiti is home to nearly nine million people. Once a wealthy French colony, Haiti today is the poorest country in the region, and the most corrupt. It became the world's first black republic after a rebellion ended French rule. Since 1804, Haiti has had few periods of stability.
After decades under the violent dictatorship of "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a preacher from the slums , led his party to victory in 1990. Aristide enjoyed popular support but eventually lost control and was forced into exile in 2004. After two years of an interim government, Rene Garcia Preval was elected president in February 2006. The UN has 7000 troops stationed throughout the country.
* Christopher Garland is a New Zealander studying at the University of Florida. The names of people he encountered have been changed for their safety.
