SPOKANE -- Downtown Port au Prince looks like a city frozen in time more than six months after Haiti's most devastating natural disaster in centuries.

The earthquake left more than a million people homeless with no relief in sight.

"I think to work in Haiti, to be in Haiti you have to be people of hope. As you see after six months very little has been done in the reconstruction and recovery. So we don't sit and weep and wonder when its going to happen, people have set up their markets right in front of the rubble," Sister Judy Dohner, St. Damien Pediatric Hospital Administrator, said.

The people of Port au Prince say the millions of dollars pledged, promised and spent is not getting to those most in need; rather gobbled up in administrative costs or sold to the media on empty promises.

One thing that was unavoidable was the filth and not just from the rubble. Streams of sewage can be seen flowing down streets, the stench overpowering in this hot tropical weather of the Caribbean. Urinating in public is not uncommon, many relieving themselves where they stand.

Driving around the capital one can see irrigation canals filled with more garbage than water, with large pigs and rooster rooting through the trash for food.

As for the living conditions in Haiti the mass number of tents cities you've seen and heard so much about is no exaggeration. Thousands of multi-colored tarps propped up with sticks and random sheets of plywood were thrown together in the chaos in the days following the earthquake. Young children, no older than three-years-old, can be seen everywhere sitting on rocky, dirt floors without clothes.

"So many of these people not only lost their loved ones but their homes, they're living in tent cities drenched every night with the rains begging for rice every day on the street - I think its very important, the sharing of grief, solidarity, that really strengthens people helps them stand up and go on," Father Rick Frenchette, regional director for Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos said.

Sadly violence within these make-shift communities is rampant and police protection and enforcement is largely absent.

But the people of Haiti aren’t waiting for relief. Walk anywhere through the capital and you’ll find miles of sidewalk vendors selling everything from furniture, artwork, shoes and clothing. Some might think the people of Haiti were left to fend for themselves, left to beg, borrow and steal to survive but clearly commerce is taking place.

Haiti's government is still thought to be steep in corruption, a mob style hierarchy that runs too deep for any immediately resolution; an opportunistic administration plagued by greed. In a sad way, the Presidential Palace, probably one of the most recognizable buildings destroyed in the quake, continues to sit in disrepair as a fragile reminder of its lack of stability and faulty foundation.

Many of its walls remain but its center portion, once standing three stories high, remains collapsed. While it's off limits and unoccupied, the Haitian flag continues to fly above.

The Port au Prince Cathedral, built in the early 1900s, was another famous structure destroyed in the quake. It’s roof collapsed in the earthquake; among the dead was its archbishop.

The building has been left in ruins, fenced off to the public, it too a reminder of what the country still faces more than six months after the deadly quake.