For several days last November, protests over the government’s failure to provide consistent electricity shut down Fort-Liberté, a small coastal city in northeast Haiti. Video footage of the events shows an atmosphere alternately festive and frightening. At times, throngs of men, women, and children marched through the streets, dancing and chanting to music created by marching drummers and blaring loudspeakers. ...

I arrived on January 27, 2014, just a few days after the year’s first round of protests over electricity. By this time, the only traces of the turmoil that remained were the charred scraps of tires and trash that had been set on fire in the intersections.

People on the street went calmly about their business. “The authorities haven’t said what they’ve decided yet,” Farness Peter, a middle-aged motorbike taxi driver, said as he waited for customers near the town’s entrance. “We’ll be patient, waiting to hear what the authorities will say.”

Ask anyone who lives there to describe this city of 30,000 near the Dominican border, and you’re likely to hear that it’s tranquil and friendly. Despite the recent troubles, it has a reputation as an oasis compared to Haiti’s largest cities, Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien. “Fort-Liberté is the most peaceful place I’ve ever visited,” said Doudy (pronounced dutesy) Charles, who fled the earthquake-ravaged capital for Fort-Liberté in 2010. A lanky, affable thirty-one-year-old, he now works part-time for my friend’s group, Empower and Advance, while pursuing a college degree. “The people are really fantastic. Anywhere you go people greet you.”

Despite being shared by SUVs, donkey-drawn carts, motorbikes, horses, pedestrians, dogs, and chickens, the streets are relatively quiet. In the afternoons, chattering kids in brightly colored uniforms and neat braids spill out from schools; copper-colored hair, a sign of child malnutrition, is less common than it was only a few years ago.