What will become of a broken country’s most vulnerable citizens? What follows is a very long story about Haiti’s Restavec children-known to some as “child slaves”-surviving in post-quake Haiti.

In a series of pre/post-quake interviews with the family pictured here, several restavec children and people who work on the issue, I search for answers.

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The rocky road up to La Vallée is carved into the edge of a mountain. Trees are scarce, hacked down for the wooden coal Haitians use to heat cooking pots and for the makeshift lean-to houses that spring up against one another in the cities. Despite the severe deforestation, the way to La Vallée offers a breathtaking view of the region. But it’s a lumpy ride on a road best suited for nimble motorcycles and farmers leading their cows on tight ropes. In most ways, La Vallée is like many of Haiti’s sleepy towns in the forgotten countryside. This one happens to be home to the Dade family.

Their two-room house is made of cinderblocks poured of pale grey Haitian mud. The doorway overlooks the valley below. There is no electricity and they drain rainwater from the roof into a bucket because it is otherwise difficult to collect. A narrow pathway down the hill marches past a few cows tied behind a fence and stops at a mandarin tree in full bloom. On a good day, this time of year, the Dades can help themselves to the sweetest mandarins money could buy.

But man—and family—cannot live on seasonal fruit alone. The Dades have given birth to eight children. Only four remain in their custody. The others, they sent away to live with families in the cities—Port-au-Prince and Jacmel—mostly out of touch and clearly out of reach.

It’s January 9, three days before Haiti’s catastrophic 7.0 earthquake will wreak havoc on the island. We’re all oblivious to the forthcoming tragedy, I am pressing the family for more information and they are settling into their day. Daniel Dade is home with his son Harold, 12, and his 4 year-old daughter, Mica. A local community group based in Jacmel, Fanm Deside (or “Women Decide”) has recently reunited Harold with the family after four years. The novelty of his homecoming may account for the boy’s toothy smile. “I feel good to be back home,” he says.

Harold was living with his host family 2 hours away in Jacmel when he was approached by a community worker who noticed his precarious living arrangement. “The woman I was staying with asked me to bring water in the house. While I was on my way, this person came and found me,” he says. He stands next to his father, looking out into the lush valley. He then described the many chores that busied him while others were in school. “I did a lot of water-bringing,” he says. “I washed clothes and brought water to the house. And they beat me a lot.”

For his part, Mr. Dade says he was clueless about his son’s living condition. “When I learned what kind of life he was living in Jacmel I decided to go see what was happening,” he says. “I came at the right time because when I got there I heard his voice crying. I stayed undercover. I hid just to hear who was crying and what they were doing to him. They were beating him with whatever they had in their hands. I went in and said, ‘I didn’t know you were treating my kid like this. I want him back with me now.’”

As Mr. Dade tells his story, Harold hangs out in the doorway. Mica, his 4 year-old sister, with huge white eyes and three fuzzy plats dancing on her head, steals peeks from the shadows behind her brother.

At the moment, he watches over his children while Mrs. Dade went to church to receive prayer. Mr. Dade and the mother of his children Clemene Lauture Dade are both not well. Daniel Dade has a bad back and has had surgery on his eyes. A doctor tells him he cannot work, which led to his family’s financial decline. When a friend of a friend asked him if they’d be willing to send Harold away, he and Clemene thought it was the best choice for their boy.

“After my operation, I was sick. It was impossible for me to work,” he says. “That’s when people came to my house and said, ‘I can help you with this kid. I’m going to take care of this kid for you.’ I said, ‘If someone could help me with my kid, I’ll let them go.”

“It doesn’t make me feel good to send my kids to live with someone I don’t know,” he continues. “I miss them a lot. If I can find a mandarin here and I eat it I think, My kid could be here and we can eat this mandarin together. But I do not have a choice.”

While talking to Mr. Dade, his wife appears, a small boy hopping up the hill behind her. She clutches a plastic bag against her chest. Her skin sags from her frail frame and her hair is pulled back into an unruly ponytail. The little boy, Benson, steps close to his mother and sits on a nearby rock.

“The others are in Port-au-Prince,” she says, after introducing Benson. “They stay with someone there. I sent them away because I cannot help them.”

Marilyn Antoine, an outreach worker for Fanm Deside acts as the Dades’ on-the-ground contact. She checks in on the family from time to time to assess their needs. She has located another of the Dade’s children in Jacmel but, under the circumstances, there are no plans to reintegrate the child. “She doesn’t want him to come home,” Ms. Antoine says, nodding toward Mrs. Dade. “The situation he is living in is better than what she can provide. They don’t even have a bed for the children to sleep.”

When it comes to family planning, Haiti has its messages crossed with religious dogma. Roman Catholic is the dominant religion in Haiti. Though many Haitian Catholics also observe Voodoo practices, the Church’s firm stance against birth control is supported here, giving a spiritual tint to the idea of large families. On a very practical level, rural families see children as economic opportunities, more hands to help work the land or more chances for security in old age.

Ask Clemene Louture Dade why she has borne so many children she is forced to give away, and she echoes a common response. “I don’t choose to make them. God gives them to me,” she says, a smile playing on her lips. “Now with eight kids, there is no way to continue, so I’ll stop.”

It will take more than Clemene’s new sense of family planning to make a change in her family’s stead. In a few short days, the earthquake will further fracture Haiti’s fragmented system and create new twists that will affect the Dades and families like theirs in ways unknowable for many years to come.

But that is not today. Harold is back with his mother and father. The mandarin tree has enough fruit for Mr. Dade to share. After the mother and father finish their talk, the children explain what they do to pass the time. Harold reveals that he likes to ride bikes, though he does not own one. And Benson likes to fly kites. When Mica is asked what she likes to do for fun, she looks up and says with great energy: “Mwen renmen manje té [“I like to eat dirt.”] Harold lets out a cackle from the doorway that infects the other kids. But Daniel Dade finds no humor in his daughter’s remarks.

When the Dades handed their children over to other families, their children became “restavecs.” The term is derived from the French reste avec, meaning “to stay with.” The United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that there are 300,000 Haitian children trafficked in this way throughout the major cities, but actual numbers are difficult to nail down.

The restavec system doesn’t fit the traditional notion of trafficking whereby slippery figures wait in the shadows, armed with duct tape and blackout drugs. The typical case here involves an impoverished family, like the Dades, from the countryside who cannot manage to provide for its children. Someone in the city catches wind of the family’s plight—often through a third party—and offers to provide for the child. In return for some help in the house or in the field, the child is promised food, shelter and in many cases the opportunity to get an education. In this form, parents “traffic” their own kids for the promise of a better life for the children, of whom they will invariably lose track.

The problem has attracted many non-governmental organizations [NGOs], community groups and child rights advocates to Haiti in search of a solution. But the issue cuts to the core of Haiti’s most egregious problems. Limited education. Scant healthcare. Lack of jobs. Abundance of poverty and a political culture of corruption. It is a mistake to think of the parents, the children, and the host families as non-rational actors in this tragedy. There is a greater narrative to which they all belong.

Some workers, like Junior Battier, of the Jean Robert Cadet Restavec Foundation, argue that the problem doesn’t stop at poverty and lack of resources. At root, he points to a system of exploitation and abuse—sexual or otherwise. “There is a proverb in Haiti: Dan pouri gen fòs sou bannann mi or Rotten teeth take power over ripe bananas,” he says. “Basically, you take power over whoever you can. When you are at the lowest rung, the person you can have power over is the child.”

On a quiet day in the Carrefour-Feuilles section of Port-au-Prince, two young girls, Caroline and Clermis, sit in the stairway of a neighbor’s home in Port-au-Prince. They have come here at the neighbor’s urging—a secret meeting of sorts—to explain their living conditions. “My mother sent me to stay with this lady because she can’t feed me and she can’t send me to school,” says Clermis, 13. She has been living with the “lady” since she was 8 years old.

Clermis is an expressive teenager, feisty by Haitian standards. She doesn’t shrink from strange adults, nor does she swallow her words. She has done the lion’s share of all household work since she was eight and she says she receives the majority of the abuse. “I don’t like when they beat me,” says Clermis. She demonstrates by pounding her fist into her hand. “My back, everywhere. The lady blames me for things and I don’t like that.”

But between her harsh criticisms of the “lady” and the lady’s aunt—who taunts her—she will bury her face in her hands, rub her eyes, and then go back to talking about her circumstances. “I’m going to leave one day when I get the money,” she says. “I know the way back home. And I’m going to go.”

The idea of an escape is not just a daydream to Clermis. She’s rolled around the idea many times and tediously mapped out her return to her native Grand-Goâve neighborhood, located in the lower region of the Island. After so many years, she holds on to her route home.

“I need 100 Gourdes [about $2.50] to get there,” she says. “I would take a tap-tap [taxi] to go to Port Léogâne and take another tap-tap to go to Grand-Goâve. With the rest of the money I take another tap-tap for 5 Gourdes to my house.”

Caroline, 15, on the other hand, cuts her eyes away and offers one-word answers whenever possible. Other times, like when she is asked about her daily routine, she pushes through an answer with just enough information to shift the attention from her.

“My day starts at 6 in the morning,” she says. “I have to clean dishes. Go to a place to find water. Then I have to clean the entire house and make the beds and clean the beds. Then I wash the clothes.”

Her days don’t end there. She also takes care of the host’s 11 year-old son, and has been doing so since she herself was 11. “I help him to take a bath and feed him,” she says. “If his clothes are not clean, I clean them.”

Both girls say they are not being sexually abused, but it is not uncommon for female restavecs to be subject to sexual advances and to turn to sex work as young adult runaways. It is also not uncommon for children, like abused children across the globe, to keep the incidents to themselves for fear of punishment.

“The restavec children are the most vulnerable and they are one of the categories of children I work with,” says Costume Renel, Captain of the Minors Protection Unit or Brigade Protection des Mineurs (BPM), which is a law enforcement taskforce charged with child-related issues. “A lot of times these kids leave their homes and they become homeless or street kids.”

Today, there are more eyes and organizations dedicated to the rights of children. But there are huge gaps that allow children to be exploited. “The law doesn’t always punish,” Captain Renel says. “A lot of times the person who does the abuse will get arrested but they have connections. It’s very frustrating. But we are just policemen, we have to respect our limits.”

While Caroline and Clermis are intimately familiar with suffocating limits on their life choices, perhaps among the most egregious is the denial of access to any formal education. Neither child knows how to read or write—having difficulty even spelling their names—yet both have a yearning to learn.

“I want to be a teacher in high school,” says Caroline, who seems to light up at the thought. “It’s good to know how to read and write and help others.”

“I would like to know how to read in order to help my mom and my brothers and sisters,” says Clermis, whose 2 brothers and 3 sisters were also sent away to live as restavecs. “I would like to work in the office where I can make money and help my parents.”

Beyond the burden of carrying water from sunup to sundown, Clermis finds that being deprived of schooling certifies her second-class status. “Other kids can go to school,” she says. “They have nice clothes. Me? I am dirty and have lots of work to do. And I don’t get to go to school.”

She buries her face in her hands for a brief moment before continuing.

“Sometimes I cry when she [an aunt staying with the host family] calls me restavec and tries to blame me for things,” she says. “I used to tell her, ‘You have a chance. You stay with your family. That is why you call me that, because I don’t live with my family.’”

She balances a large bucket on her head and starts up another steep hill to her home, a process she will repeat more than six times each day.

On January 12, a few short hours before the earthquake, Senator Céméphise Gilles bellies up to a plate steak at a favorite restaurant for the diplomatic set. She’s a hefty woman, strong-willed and no-nonsense. Today, she has something to say about the restavec problem, the government’s obligation to alleviate it, and the role Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) play in the restavec cycle. As the nation’s only female senator, and one-time chairperson of the government’s Child Rights Commission, she says she has championed the causes of children and women, often to little effect. At the moment, she is pointing her finger at the government bureaucracy at the highest levels.

“In the congress, we receive some laws from the chief of the government that are our legislative priority,” she says. “It is for them to sit down together and fix the priority,” she continues. “For example, we have the paternity law for a father to take responsibility when a woman is pregnant. It was very difficult for us to vote on that law because it is not in the priority of the government. The government needs more sensitization to these issues.”

As a representative of the Nord section of Haiti, which includes Cap-Haïtien, she believes many of the problems surrounding the children and restavecs should be solved by the Haitian government. “The NGOs are not going to resolve the restavec system,” she says. “But we can ask them to make sensitization to the government and to Congress.”

While Senator Gilles believes NGOs can help through public awareness campaigns, she says the government should shoulder the weight of development. In particular, rural areas—like some she represents—should be where Haiti focuses its attention. “The people coming from the countryside into the big city are looking for a better life,” she says. “Haiti’s friends, the other countries, want to help build the government, they can do better to provide jobs in the countryside. Then the people in the countryside can take care of their kids feed them and they will stay in the countryside.”

The NGOs and the Haitian government have a symbiotic relationship, but not always one of appreciation. Haitians are generally skeptical of the NGOs—more than 10,000—operating in Haiti. Senator Gilles, who believes the government should have access to the type of resources that the NGOs command, is not convinced that the groups are working for the betterment of Haiti. “On the surface, we can say they do good work but in reality they do not,” she says, her husky voice adding gravity to her words.

Aside from the role of the NGOs and the lack of government attention, Senator Gilles ties the restavec problem to economic instability. The restavec system thrives in a country where nearly 80% of the population lives off $2 daily. In her mind, as long as there is extreme poverty, there will be equally extreme measures to adapt.

Before she hops into her SUV and takes off into the gruesome midday traffic, Senator Gilles addresses the basic solution of jobs and money that, for now, is beyond Haiti’s ability.

“The same way you cannot see any issue for economic development is the same way we cannot see any exit or resolution to the restavec system.”

At 4:53 pm, about an hour from the time Senator Gilles proclaimed the connection between economics and the restavec condition, the 7.0 earthquake caused a seismic shift in all aspects of Haitian life. It hit the country hard in all of its soft spots. The epicenter was in Léogâne, 15 miles outside of the capital city Port-au-Prince. The poorly constructed concrete homes amassed in the overcrowded capitol cracked and fell. The blocks tumbled over onto cars and suffocated bodies inside them. The buildings remained in their broken states as psychological tormentors long after the quake had passed.

When it was all done, the Haitian government announced that nearly 1 million were left homeless, more than 200,000 dead, and upwards of 300,000 injured. While the exact numbers are difficult to pin down, the significance of the suffering is not.

As people struggled to secure safe places to sleep and live in the coming days, many of the restavec children found themselves in precarious positions. Their host families, already tight on resources, suddenly had difficulties providing for their own children. Everyone takes a step or more down the social scale but for those already at the bottom, how much lower can they descend?

Mammi Laura looks on as an excited group of children run from the small one-story schoolhouse to the outdoor common area. The self-described “School Mother” for Haiti’s Foryer Maurice Sixto stays calm in the face of a small tremor, barely noticeable by Haiti’s standards these days. “Did you feel that?” she says. “That was an aftershock.”

More than two months have passed since the earthquake tore through Haiti. Yet the memory figures heavily in the mind of these students who have lived through collapsed buildings, broken bodies and the sudden deaths of loved ones. Though they are more amused than genuinely frightened by this minor vibration, they are no less sensitive to possibilities of unsettled ground, particularly given their own unstable life circumstances—the student body here is comprised exclusively of restavec children.

The school is named for Maurice Sixto, a Haitian humorist and journalist brought to light the injustice and hypocrisy surrounding the restavec condition in 1978 through one of his famous recordings, “Ti Sainte Anize.” He tells the story of a fictional restavec girl. She lived with a well-meaning professor who took up the cause of many human rights issues yet failed to see his own abuses at home. His wife kept the restavec girl under her thumb. “Take Mademoiselle her book bag,” the evil wife demands. “Do I have to tell you everyday? You’ll make her late for school. Oh, my. This book bag is filthy. Why don’t you clean it with your tongue, if you can’t find a rag?”

“Ti Sainte Anize” turned a mirror on the Haitian society and its open secret—the nation that fought to free itself from bondage holds its own children in servitude.

These kids trotting outside Foyer Maurice Sixto are considered fortunate among the restavecs. Though they are not immune to abuse, their host families, sometimes at the strong urging of Mammi Laura and her staff, allow the children time throughout the day to pick up a trade, play an instrument or learn how to read and write. The school can then monitor the child’s life and act as an advocate when abuse does take place. But the earthquake has complicated the matter for all restavecs, including this more privileged class.

“We have some children with broken legs and arms,” says Mammi Laura, “Some are hospitalized. We cannot give food like we used to. Everyday we gather children. They are coming to us and we have to give

them something to eat. Children in the neighborhood come here because their parents cannot feed them.”

Since the earthquake, a type of reverse migration has taken place. Many children, free of their obligation to their hosts, left without a home or caretaker, have returned to the same homes from which they were originally sent away. Mammi Laura has noted this phenomenon within the approximately 300 children at Sixto.

“Some of the children went to the countryside, but I don’t know how many,” she says. “Some left and came back without us knowing. And some we sent for them because we know that in the rural communities they won’t be able to take care of them like we can here. We call their families and explain that they should send the children back here to receive an education and cultural activities. And they send them back to the host families they where living with before.”

Foyer Maurice Sixto is a unique case available to only a fortunate few. The fact that Mammi Laura opened her doors less than a month after the quake, while most government schools remained closed, makes it more of an anomaly. “We could not leave them like that,” says Mammi Laura. “They were in need and they still are in need. So, we just started.”

It will not be so simple for others.

Idaho missionaries brought international attention to Haiti’s child trafficking vulnerabilities when, in the wake of the earthquake, they were arrested for attempting to cross the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic with 33 Haitian children. The missionaries rounded them up from different areas of Haiti and said they intended to house them in the Dominican Republic to keep them safe. However, the missionaries had no papers or authority to transport the children. It became an international incident.

“Trafficking of human beings, particularly of children is a problem across the world,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a press conference. “The Haitian nation acted to protect children who were being removed from their country without appropriate documentation.”

In the weeks after the operation was busted, the Haitian government rejected the missionaries’ claims of good intentions. The Haiti justice department would not export the case to the US. “It’s Haitian law that has been violated,” Justice Minister Paul Denis told AFP. “It is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the case.”

While the government bulked up its anti-child trafficking rhetoric in the wake of the international attention brought by the earthquake, it hasn’t always placed its children at the top of legislative agenda. And while world watches, the restavec condition remains difficult to pin down and may be pushed aside altogether.

Caroline and Clermis are no longer living in their homes and were unable to be found two months after the quake. The neighbor who arranged the original meeting now sleeps in a tent and believes at least one of them may have found her way home. Yet Clermis’ hometown of Grand-Goâve, which is where she planned to return, was 90% destroyed by the earthquake.

Senator Gilles flew to the U.S. for a trip she had planned before the quake. She met with senators, congressmen and community activists. She was trying desperately to make connections for aid, offering up the airport in Cap-Haïtien as a conduit for relief. In one meeting at the home of NJ State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, she was arranging for an exchange program that would allow some students to continue their education in the States.

As she was leaving the Senator’s home on her way to meet with New York’s U.S. senator Chuck Schumer, she had a few words about the post-quake restavec problem:

“All the kids are in the street,” she told me. “We have to rebuild the government so the government can take care of the kids but right now the earthquake has only exacerbated the situation of the restavecs.”

Back in La Vallée, the Dade family has taken back more of their children since the quake. This reunification was not spurred by any NGO. The natural disaster of the earthquake brought the children home. On this day, several weeks after the quake, Daniel Dade is being trailed by three boys as he marches up the hill to his house. The home is still standing and in good condition, save for a crack that travels around the walls.

“We used to sleep outside after the quake but because of the rain we now sleep inside. But I don’t feel safe inside,” says Clemene Lauture Dade. “I am an asthmatic and I am sick. When we go inside to sleep we have leaks too.”

This day, the house is teeming with youthful energy. Mica, in a bright white dress, lays her head upon her dad’s lap. Laundry air-dries on the rocks in front of their home. A rooster pecks at the water that was set out to wash the clothes. The mandarin tree that once bore sweet fruit has no more. A bitter reality for a growing family.

“We do have more children now than before the earthquake,” says Mr. Dade. The people who kept his two older daughters—Daniella, 16, and Burnadette, 19—sent them back. But there are still some children from the Dade home that remain unaccounted for. “There is Emmanuel who is 9 that I do not know anything about,” says Mr. Dade, “and another, Marielle, who is 11, I know is living in Cité Soleil.”

Daniella Dade stands outside with her father and squints against the sun. She was in Jacmel during the earthquake when parts of the house began to fall on her. “I was in the house when it started to shake,” she says. “The other people in the house ran out, and then it collapsed. There were some who lost legs and one had his arms injured. I was stuck under the house,” she continues. “Some neighbors came back to get me.”

Afterwards, Daniella received permission from her host family to go home and caught a ride from a bus driver who knew her father. Now she is back with her brothers and sister and her two cousins—the children of Mr. Dade’s sister he has been looking after since she and her husband died in a car accident almost a decade ago.

Ms. Antoine, the community worker, is now working as a volunteer. She says she no longer draws a salary and she maintains that no major organizations including the government is doing anything to care for the countryside.

“They stay in the capital in order to sensitize people by making t-shirts and fliers,” she says. “You should come out of the capital to learn how the situation is going with the families. I visited three houses in which I saw the number of people in the home have grown. That means the restavecs staying in their host homes will have more work to do.”

For his part, Mr. Dade is not sure how he will manage with his children. As Mica rolls around on his lap in her bright white dress, he is stuck with an impossible decision. “I know I won’t be able to take care of them right now,” he says. “But I cannot send them away. They are mine.”

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[This story is a shorter version of my Masters Thesis project submitted to Columbia University's School of Journalism. I was in Haiti reporting this story when the earthquake struck, a story you can read here]