´óÏó´«Ã½

The date 12 January 2010 has many painful memories for Haitians - a magnitude seven earthquake shook the country, killing around 230 000 people.

The capital, Port au Prince, was badly affected, and one year on the streets are still littered with rubble, and a million people whose homes were destroyed are camping in sprawling tent cities.

One building which survived more or less intact was the Hotel Oloffson - a well-known landmark in the city.

The gingerbread-style hotel was where Graham Greene wrote his famous novel, The Comedians, about the country's descent into barbarism under the rule of Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute.

In its heyday, the hotel was popular with tourists, but as the Duvalier dictatorship tightened its grip in the 1980s, Haiti became less attractive to holidaymakers, and the hotel only just survived through the patronage of foreign reporters and aid workers.

In the late 80s, Richard Morse - a Haitian American - took over the lease of the hotel and rescued it from ruin.

Richard Morse is famous in Haiti for his music and political activism, and is also a Voodoo priest.

For Outlook, the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Mike Thomson met up with Richard at the Hotel Oloffson and asked him all about the hotel's history and surviving the traumatic events of last year.

From the Hotel Oloffson, Mike visited a school for the disabled in Port-au-Prince.

There he met Dieumene Cloristin, who was born without arms and had been abandoned by her parents.

Despite these challenges, Dieumene's determination to achieve her goals shines through.

She has taught herself to play the piano with her toes, she is a keen singer, she loves dancing, and she has even started to write a book.

Mike had previously met Dieumene shortly before the earthquake and returned to meet her for Outlook to see how she had been getting on over the past twelve months.