As if the journalists I'm working with haven't had enough distractions, a new curve ball was thrown last week- the unexpected arrival of former dictator Jean Claude Duvalier, who descended from an Air France flight after a near 25-year absence.

"Baby Doc's" appearance accelerated a tailspin that started with last year's earthquake. The disaster, which killed as many as 300,000, was then exacerbated by a hurricane, a cholera epidemic that has killed close to 4,000 people and a November 28 electoral dispute that is so mired in politicking that even the U.S.

It’s been nearly a year since Léogâne, Haiti, just fifteen miles from the epicenter of January’s earthquake, was reduced to rubble. Non-governmental organizations have pledged the funds to build more than 28,000 transitional shelters for local residents, but so far only a fraction of them have actually been constructed. Thousands of residents are still stranded in makeshift tent camps.

This month, a team of investigative reporters I’m training managed to expose, in a front-page report in Haiti’s only daily newspaper, some of the reasons for the delays.

Six journalists from six different backgrounds come together to publish their first investigative report on international aid, making the front page of Haiti's only daily newspaper.

2010 hasn’t been kind to Haiti. Not that the past few decades – or even two centuries – have been generous, but an earthquake, hurricane and the introduction of cholera have made these past eleven months particularly challenging. It’s also why there has been so much hype about Sunday’s much-anticipated presidential and parliamentary elections.

Six officers from New York City were standing around the tent camp in Haiti. Several questions later, the reporter I was working with had his first scoop.I generally reserve Tuesday mornings to work with Louis-Jean Olivier, a young journalist with the Haiti Press Network. Although Olivier had been studying journalism at the State University, he didn’t start working as a reporter until after the January earthquake, when on a fluke he ended up filing a story for HPN. He so impressed HPN’s owner that he was hired on the spot and has been working for the agency ever since.

When the sky turned black and the rain started to fall last Friday afternoon, I took refuge in a shelter enclosed by glass on two sides. I watched as the first tree that fell bounced off the roof of the shelter, and then crashed onto the parking spot next to my car. Seconds later another tree fell, and the wind continued to sing like a tortured soul as branches hurled around me.

All I could think about was the camps. The camps. At least I had a secure roof over my head, one that had survived the quake.