Click here for a slideshow of images on the ground in Haiti.
PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) – The sign above the sprawl of tarpaulins, lean-tos and makeshift shelters reads: "SOS! WE NEED YOUR HELP!"

You see these appeals all over the Port-au-Prince, scrawled on cardboard and painted on banners made of bed sheets. Some include cell phone numbers. Almost all are in written in English.

Many Haitians can’t understand why the aid they see swooping into the capital’s international airport in the bellies of U.S. military planes isn’t reaching them on the streets. Two weeks after the earthquake, whole neighbourhoods have yet to see a food parcel.

But as economic activity slowly returns to Port-au-Prince, people are starting to get back on their own feet. They help themselves by selling what they can. More trade brings competition. Competition brings prices down.

"Before the quake, these cost five gourdes (12 cents) for five bags,” said a man selling sealed plastic bags of water by the curbside. “After the quake, five gourdes got you one. Now you get three.

According to this unscientific water-bag index, the cost of slaking your thirst has fallen 40 percent in the past few days, though it’s still three times more expensive than it was before the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Fuel prices are also down, which is important because diesel and gasoline are the life-blood of the relief effort and the lubricant of normal life. Without diesel, you can’t transport aid. Without gasoline, you can’t run generators. And without generators, banks can’t reopen, hospitals can’t function, phones can’t be re-charged.

The United Nations says Haiti has enough petrol for more than two weeks. Gone are the long lines at filling stations, where people waited for hours in the blistering sun with jerry cans.

At a National petrol station in Delmas, prices were back to 130 gourdes ($3.20) a gallon, the level set by the state. Right after the quake, prices hit 500 gourdes ($12) a gallon. On the black market, they were far higher – up to $200 a gallon.

"In fact, we always had petrol in our underground tank,” said Alexander Alne, a National pump attendant. "The problem was we didn’t have electricity and we needed to test things so the pumps didn’t blow up."

Downtown, where the quake hit hardest, the streets are buzzing with hawkers and vegetable sellers, shoe-shine men and sidewalk barbers. It feels almost normal, and for a moment you forget the apocalyptic backdrop of flattened houses and public buildings.

Then a whiff of decomposing bodies beneath the rubble brings it all back.

HUNGRY PEOPLE
And yet life goes on. Garbage trucks are beginning to clear the mountains of trash that attract rats and flies. Men replace tires by the roadside or rent out jacks for car-owners to do it themselves.

Everywhere, people carry poles and planks to construct shelters, already mindful of the rainy season approaching in April. Women lug crates of Coca Cola. Some band together to cook rice and beans in huge iron pots by the side of the road. Boys tout chewing gum and shaving cream to drivers stuck in traffic jams.

"We’re so hungry. Please buy something," said sixty-something Mary-Rose, selling yams, oranges and dried beans on a street corner in Petionville. She buys the produce from a wholesaler down the road and tries to pass it on at a small mark-up. Five gourdes gets you one of her oranges. Today is her first day back as a trader.

So much has yet to reopen in the capital – schools, commercial flights, the national TV station. The clean-up has barely begun. But day by day, services are being restored.

Outside the banks and money-transfer agencies, lines snake around the corner while U.N. troops stand guard. At Signal FM, one of the capital’s biggest radio stations, crowds mob the entrance, hoping to get a message to a loved one on the air.

You see similar scenes outside the embassies, NGO headquarters and the U.N. compound. Most of all, people want employment, as drivers, translators, fixers, helpers. A new website – www.jobpaw.com – lets people upload their CVs and register to work with NGOs and the government. But how many people have Internet access?

GETTING BACK TO WORK

Meanwhile, a U.N. cash-for-work scheme aims to put up to 220,000 Haitians to work clearing rubble and doing other jobs. Pay will be the legal minimum wage of 150 gourdes plus food.

At the airport, peacekeepers have spread razor wire at the side gates. Haitian police have been liberal with tear gas when things threaten to spiral out of control.

But mostly there is order in the capital. The United Nations strongly denies rumours that gangs control the slums. On a downtown night patrol with Sri Lankan peacekeepers, I saw hundreds of people bedding down peacefully alongside each other in the streets.

Concerns about sexual violence, trafficking and violence are valid. Our local translators say they’ve heard gunshots in the night near their homes. But they talk more about the camaraderie of communities and the solidarity of survivors.

So much about this disaster is unprecedented, from the concentration of the devastation to the mind-bending problems of access. This is a tsunami-sized emergency in and around a single city. The port was smashed and the international relief effort relies mostly on a single runway that is perilously short.

The 7.0 reading on the Richter scale belies the true intensity of the earthquake. On the Mercalli index, which gauges actual shake force, the quake measured 11 on a scale of 1 to 12. I know of only two earthquakes in history that have hit 12.

Despite the horrors, Haitians are anything but passive victims, although that’s not the impression given by much of the media and some in the aid world.

“The problem with Haiti is that people are so dependent on aid, they just expect everything to be given to them,” said one aid worker, who had yet to leave the U.N. compound since arriving two weeks ago.

That’s not the impression out on the streets.

Haitians need help but they are anything but helpless. A week ago, the city was utterly paralysed. No food, no water, no petrol, little aid. Today, people are doing the best they can to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. There is desperation in Haiti but there is also dignity.

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