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A woman in Leogane, west of Port-au-Prince, carries bags of rice distributed by the United Nations as aid begins to reach the people.Ricardo Arduengo

Port-au-Prince did not need yesterday's dawn.

As a powerful aftershock rumbled through the broken city, screams echoed through streets choked with the homeless.

"I was so afraid," said Mary Yolene Carrena, who lives at an intersection with her family, her house flattened. "I am always afraid now."

Octhar Saint Restil said he lay down on the ground beside his truck, clutching a few bags containing his only belongings. "I was afraid that building would fall down," he said, pointing to a crumbling house across the street.

At magnitude 5.9, the tremor was not strong enough to do any further damage to the city, though several buildings were destroyed in a village close to the epicentre. There have been no reports of casualties, perhaps because everyone is sleeping outdoors anyway.

Once the spasm had passed, the people of Port-au-Prince returned to rebuilding, on their own, a life and a city torn apart by last week's catastrophic earthquake.

Nine days after last week's horrifying quake, many of the city's streets are filling up with life and energy.

Along the streets of Delmar, a neighbourhood bordering the city centre, vendors hawked bananas, sugar cane, apples and water that they claimed was potable, though only the most optimistic believed them. One vendor in another neighbourhood sat behind a small box containing candy and small packs of cigarettes, for which he wanted an exorbitant sum, at least for locals. A woman nearby had a neat display of household items, including a small bottle of laundry detergent costing $20 Haitian. She had no customers.

The sidewalks teemed with people; cars jammed the streets. Merchants set up shop outside their stores; there are restaurants serving food. You can buy beer and other drinks, at eyebrow-raising prices.

Garbage is everywhere, much of it on fire, and the smells would rot your socks. But this is hardly a delicate population. And, most importantly, most of the dead have been removed.

Things are grimmer and quieter along the shattered blocks of Centreville, the precinct containing the ruined Presidential Palace, the cathedral, and Champs de Mars, the park where so many thousands live rough and where sporadic violence is still a problem.

But there are also reports of people starting to rebuild their shanties from the wreckage of shanties. The planners may hope for a less chaotic future for this city, but those who can are moving on without a plan.

There are looming threats. One aid worker who did not want to be quoted said the great fear now is an outbreak of cholera, which can spread quickly to deadly effect.

And there were many who could only look in hunger-etched envy at the produce on display. Jorrelien Sylvilus, 43, spent the day looking for someone who needed a welder, who needed anything. He had not eaten since taking a little bread the day before. He lost his mother in the quake.

But he refuses to lose hope.

"I have a guitar," he said, "and every day I sing to God."

As dark descends on Port-au-Prince, the people in the streets sing, too.

The impromptu bazaar fomented by this disaster is animating other parts of the country, as well. The villages along the road from the Dominican Republic offer a melee of cars, trucks and young men selling bags of nuts to the unexpected new clientele at every speed bump and pot hole.

The border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic has turned into a modern Casablanca of people looking to get in, get out (legally or illegally) or just in search of a high-priced lift, while the suburbs around the Port-au-Prince airport, the locus of arriving aid, surpass any previous notion of gridlock.

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