they say there were more than a million people in the city area. Wikipedia article talks about how what little industry existed there in the 80s has since fallen apart, and that generally Haitian economy is agrarian one. But, nevertheless, they still apparently had this city of a million people somehow.
So, what sort of jobs did these city people have there before the earthquake? And can they somehow resume doing them? Or do the aid organizations just have a million poor people on their hands to feed in perpetuity?
I don’t have experience with Haiti, but based on my experience in Yaounde, an African metropolis where half of people make less than a dollar a day, there is probably a thriving informal market. Some common ways to scrape by: selling fruits/veggies, vending phone credit, driving motorcycle taxis, cooking up a pot of soup and selling on the street to workers or students, selling small goods- cigarettes and the like, selling home-made snack food, hauling water to homes without running water, filling tires for motorcycles/bikes and doing light repair work, providing household help, prostitution. This is often supplemented by light trading- bringing city goods to the village and village goods to the city when you go back to visit. Surprisingly, often the poorest parts of the city will be the most economically active.