Sitting in the offices of Haiti Satellite in Patronville, a suburb outside of Port-au-Prince, Luke Renner spoke with us about what he’s seen over the past week. Renner is the founder and president of a non-profit media company called Fireside International, which operates three projects in Haiti including the Caribbean Institute of Media Technologies (CIMT). (He created the video seen above.)

Renner has been on the ground in Port-au-Prince since the day after the earthquake, and his updates have been read by thousands on Twitter (@firesideint), as well as through interviews he has done with NBC, CNN, BBC and other mainstream media outlets.

Where do you live in Haiti in relation to where the earthquake has had its greatest impact?

We live about 90 miles to the north of Port-au-Prince, on the northern coast of Haiti. We live just oustide the city of Cap-Haïtien. It’s only 90 miles, but if you drive it, it takes about six hours because of the conditions of the road.

So on the night that the earthquake happened, I wanted nothing more than to leave Cap-Haïtien, come to Port-au-Prince, and begin finding ways to help immediately. But it was in the afternoon when the earthquake happened, the sun set shortly thereafter, and it really just wasn’t smart to try and travel that road in the middle of the night.

Where are you now? Where are you operating out of to capture the stories that you are sharing online?

There’s an office here for Haiti Satellite. They actually provide our satellite Internet access up north where we live in the city of Cap-Haïtien. They’re based here in Patronville, so it made a lot of sense when I came down, because I had a relationship with the gentleman that owns the company, he’s allowed me to set up my laptop and my Lacie hard drive and basically call this home away from home.

As you’ve traveled to different parts of the region, what are you seeing? Are there any areas that are relatively undamaged?

When we drove down from Cap-Haïtien, that six to six-and-a-half hour drive, we passed through a number of major cities within Haiti that, for the most part, I can say suffered little to no damage whatsoever.

One of the large cities that’s been in the Haitian news in the past is Gonaïves. It’s been slammed by hurricanes quite a few times in the past. Gonaïves seemed to be fairly untouched by this earthquake. Also, the city of Saint-Marc, which is closer to Port-au-Prince. All of these areas are relatively unaffected.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t feel it. Obviously, if we felt it further north, then they certainly felt it. It just seems that that far out it didn’t really make the kind of destructive impact that it did in Port-au-Prince and further to the south of Port-au-Prince.

Are there any signs that life may be getting back to “normal” at this point?

One of the immediate things that I noticed upon arriving in Port-au-Prince, the day after the earthquake, was that despite the fact that I was moving about on foot and passing lots and lots and lots of people, because there have been so many people displaced and still are, one of the very first things I noticed is that no one was asking me for money. And begging in Haiti, unfortunately, tends to be an everyday normal thing. In fact, people who don’t have great needs, if they see an outsider or a foreigner, they will ask for money or food or whatever.

I think historically international visitors have liked to give stuff away down here, so it’s sort of just a matter of good practice, if you see someone who’s obviously not from Haiti, if you go up and ask them for something, they might give you something, whether you need it or not.

But I noticed immediately that no one was asking me for anything. In fact, being the blan, the white, usually they’ll at least point you out, and it was as though I wasn’t there. So it’s been that way for several days. I’d say “business as usual” was no more. Yesterday was the sixth day, and yesterday someone begged from me, a younger kid. And it was sort of your normal begging. I could tell that he was with some family, and they had some food nearby so it wasn’t a completely desperate situation.

I realize it’s strange to use begging as sort of a gauge for that, but it was kind of nice to have this kid ask me for something, because I felt like people were starting to come around full-circle a little bit. And it’s true in other ways, as well. Folks are going back to market. People are definitely working to clean up the mess. They’re getting back to work and moving on.

As the mainstream media moves on, Luke Renner and Fireside International remain committed to telling the stories of the courageous and hopeful people of Haiti. You can follow those stories on Twitter at @firesideint or online at www.firesideinternational.org.