But there is no security presence in shelters, few police are on the streets, and competing aid groups don't seem to have a clear picture of what others are doing.

Some residents think Moise is among those trying to profit from the city's misery. Moise has strongly denied that, telling The Miami Herald, for instance, that he has no idea how the Venezuelan rice, beans, milk, sugar and ready-to-eat meals reached local markets in bulk.

On a recent morning, as relief SUVs bearing French and English acronyms plowed through slimy streets, hundreds of young men and women shoveled debris into green wheelbarrows to be trucked out of the city. Watching the ragtag convoy of government trucks from their mud-packed yards, many Haitians wondered how long it would be before normal life resumes.

Haiti was already in a miserable state -- the result of rising global food prices that triggered deadly riots -- when Tropical Storm Hanna flooded Gonaives and bathed it in mud, followed days later by Hurricane Ike.

"We the people of Gonaives, we have a lot of problems, " Leonie Joseph said from the cramped rooftop of a wholesale food store she used to run with her sister Marleine. That rooftoop is now the family's new home.

The yard remains submerged in floodwaters, and the family's few possessions are covered with soiled bedsheets. Eight people, including a 3-month-old and a 3-year-old, live on the roof.

At the city's southern limits where a new lake has formed, 512 people live in a tent city. The tents are better than a roof, but it's unclear how long the tent city will remain.

CONCERN FOR LIVES

Government officials and humanitarian experts say one reason that relief and cleanup efforts seem uncoordinated and slow is that the initial focus was on saving lives.

Today, weeks after Hanna practically destroyed this seaside city, aid workers are still experimenting with how best to distribute food. And the government is still working on a plan to relocate tens of thousands of homeless people.

"It could be better, but everything is complicated here, " Joël Boutroue, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, said of the recovery. "But we are not sitting on our hands saying, 'We cannot do anything.' We are trying to do what we can."

Boutroue and Haitian Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aimé had both asked that the government name a relief and recovery czar with executive-like powers to speed things up.

There are entire city blocks that need to be condemned, rivers and canals to be dredged and schools to be opened. The U.N. has asked local authorities to open 166 schools. But with as many as 23,000 homeless residents still living in 37 schools, local officials have resisted resuming classes.

Bien-Aimé said the conflict goes beyond the spat between the U.N. and competing local officials. It also spills over to international aid agencies and governments that want to set the conditions for their assistance.

They also have conflicting agendas. Take the warehouse where 900 residents currently live. They were bused to the facility by the mayor, who did not have the owner's permission to temporarily house anyone. The U.N.'s World Food Program would like to stockpile food in the depot, but another U.N. agency is working to keep the people in the shelter.

U.N. rules prohibit mixing storage with temporary shelter.

That shelter and others like it are patrolled not by police officers or government social workers, but by self-appointed bands of young men.