One year after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Nature correspondent David Cyranoski is in Port-au-Prince to assess the recovery effort.

Haitian media speak of three disasters in 2010. The first was the 12 January earthquake, which took more than 230,000 lives. This was followed by a cholera outbreak, first recognized on 21 October. Then, on 28 November, the presidential election was claimed to be fraudulent, setting off demonstrations and leading the country into a lockdown that has hampered its recovery.

Since then, the United Nations agencies, NGOs, and other organizations trying to dish out aid in Haiti have been operating under the shadow of violence.

Yesterday, a leaked report from the intergovernmental Organization of American States argued that Jude Celestin, the ruling government party’s candidate, should be dropped from the electoral run-off due to voting fraud. The government has yet to respond.

Demonstrators protesting the election had most adamantly attacked him, overturning, torching, or tearing down the yellow green campaign posters featuring his broad smile. The threat of violence still looms, but most are saying nothing will happen at least until after the one year memorial for the earthquake on Wednesday.

Damaged or destroyed buildings occupy much of the land in the worst hit areas, and citizens walk over and around rubble that has become a fixture. But this week is touted by some as a rebirth.

Perhaps the most symbolic event is expected tomorrow, as the famed market, known as Marche Hyppolite (see picture), will reopen at a ceremony attended by former US President Bill Clinton. Run down over the last decades and then flattened by the earthquake, it will now be an island of modernity in the midst of devastation and squalor. A 108 kW solar cell fixture, said to be the largest in the Caribbean, will power it, and a new water purification system, pumping out 2500 gallons of water per day, will offer a rarity in Port-au-Prince — clean drinking water from a fountain

Meanwhile, the cholera epidemic continues to plague the country and fill treatment centers. A UN group is still investigating the source, following reports in December that the strain here matches a Southeast Asian strain, and rumors that it came from the camp of a UN Nepalese peace keeping force. Transmission routes are also yet to be pinned down, something sources at UN and Doctors Without Borders say makes the future of the epidemic unpredictable. Specialists from the US Center for Disease Control arrived yesterday to assess the outbreak.