Thomas denied a claim by Samedi and other residents that he has played favorites with the donations, saying that "there has been a lot of intervention in Guitton."

"There are some people here who would rather go hungry than to come to the office to ask for help, " said Thomas, who was there when Samedi discovered Tamasha's body and sponged her clean with purified water.

"We have more than 30,000 people in Cabaret who are victims of the storm, but we didn't find 1,000 mattresses, " Thomas said. No one has given even a sack of cement. There are areas where we intervened, and areas where we weren't able to."

A COMMON GRAVE

Thomas noted that three weeks after the tragedy, the Haitian government buried 27 of the storm victims, including Tamasha, placing 21 of the bodies in a common grave. Tamasha was buried in a family plot, alongside Samedi's father and an aunt.

Thomas said that each family was given $50 after the tragedy, and that his office helped Neva Samedi, Tamasha's mother, by giving her some of the donated food. Frantz Samedi said that was not enough.

"In what way did they help her?" Samedi said. "She lost her child. Two, three cups of rice is doing something? She lost everything. They could have taken that into consideration."

Even as Samedi acknowledged that the government-provided funerals lifted an economic burden for families, he lamented the way arrangements were handled. By the time the burials took place, families were barely able to say goodbye properly because the bodies were beginning to decay for lack of a freezer in the morgue.

"I wasn't given a chance to do what I wanted to do for my child, " Samedi said. "I would have given her a beautiful funeral. They didn't give us the chance at all. We asked and they told us, 'No, the mayor has to bury them.' "

Samedi struggles with emotions that shift from grief to anger. "I am leaving it all to God, " he said, insisting that he is not angry.

But, singling out one of his neighbors, an older, graying woman, he complained on her behalf: "She can't even afford a front door, much less a mattress. She's sleeping at people's houses. There are people here with a lot, a lot, of problems."

Samedi has been wearing the same outfit for a week, washing and rewearing it. But quieting the hunger pangs or replacing his lost possessions is not what he aches for. It's Tamasha.

"She was a happy child. She could write her name and count, " he said, another smile brightening his sad face. "She could count to 100. She had smarts."

But the sweet memory lasts only a few seconds before it is interrupted by the recollection of the rising floodwaters from the deadly storm and the lifeless body of his little girl sprawled on the sidewalk, alongside 11 others.

On that day, Samedi had searched for her all over town for two hours.Part of him wishes he had never found her.

"Had I not found her, I don't think I would be grieving so, " he said. "There is a big difference between when you don't see something and when you do. When I saw her lying on the ground, her eyes closed, mouth opened, that hurt. It really, really hurt."