“He said everything would change,” she recalled. “We would have food on our plates, we would have electricity 24/7, we would have jobs for our children and salaries would increase.”

Ms. Jules, three of her five children and a cousin live in a narrow house in La Savane made from mud and stone. The corrugated metal roof leaks when it rains. The bathroom is an outhouse with a hole in the ground. With no running water, the family has to fill buckets at a public tap several blocks away.

They cook over coal — when they have something to cook.

“I didn’t put anything on the fire today,” Ms. Jules said. It had been a full day since she had eaten anything.

With the schools closed, Ms. Jules had been without work — or an income — for weeks. Even when she worked, earning $47 per month, she had not been able to amass any savings. Now she sends her children to eat at the homes of friends with something to spare.

Her despair, she said, has driven her to consider suicide.

On a recent evening, she sat with Ms. Molière, her daughter, in their house as it sank into the shadows of the night. Ms. Molière began to cry softly. Seeing her tears, Ms. Jules began to cry as well.

“It’s not only that we’re hungry for bread and water,” Ms. Molière said. “We’re hungry for the development of Haiti.”

“Haiti is very fragile,” she said.