Tourists flying in for Mardi Gras see a city pock-marked by blue tarps covering roofs that haven't been repaired.

Those who stray outside the French Quarter and Garden District find neighborhoods abandoned to the mould and rot that followed floodwaters that lingered for weeks.

Deadened traffic lights have been replaced with stop signs. Houses that were knocked off their foundations remain crumbled in the middle of the street.

More than half the city's population is still scattered across the country. Some have vowed never to return. Many are afraid to rebuild their houses until the levees are repaired and reinforced, a process that could take years. Those who came back are exhausted.

Casual conversations quickly degenerate into tales of repair work left to be done, government assistance checks that haven't arrived and the struggles to secure temporary housing amid skyrocketing rents and promised trailers that never materialize.

"It is an unbelievable nightmare. Not only did we see the destruction, but there's this retrauma from all these things that you thought you could count on in a disaster letting you down," said Ann Wilder, a counselor with the New Orleans Mental Health Resilience Team who has seen a dramatic spike in depression and anxiety.

Most people expect it will be years before the city looks normal again. Few think it will ever be the same.

Mardi Gras was supposed to be a sign that New Orleans is back in business. It was also, said the city's colorful mayor, a chance for the city to shake off its collective "pity party."

Tourism was once a 5.5 billion dollar industry in New Orleans, accounting for 40 percent of the city's tax revenues and employing 85,000 people. And Mardi Gras used to bring in a million visitors and about a billion dollars.

The crowds this year are painfully thin.

Just 11,000 of the city's 38,000 hotel rooms are available for tourists. The rest are still closed for lack of staff, under renovation or else housing recovery workers and locals who have lost their homes.

Attempts to gain corporate sponsorship for the festival failed.

So to keep cleanup and police overtime costs down, the financially strapped city cut the festival down to eight days from the usual 12.

Parades were limited to a single route and the "krewes" which organize the parades told to speed things up. It was easy to comply, considering that so many floats were destroyed in the storm and so few of the high school marching bands have reformed.

Among the devastation and the destruction, signs of resilience abound.

Like the flowers planted outside a community center in the hardest-hit Lower Ninth Ward.

Or the T-shirts for sale on Bourbon Street that say "I stayed in New Orleans for Katrina and all I got was this lousy T-shirt, a new Cadillac and a Plasma TV."

Or the clang of workers who are finally dismantling the massive barge that burst through a broken levee and came to rest on top of a house.

While less than a third of the city's legendary restaurants have reopened, those that have are seeing a steady increase in business.

As are the shops on trendy Magazine Street in the city's Uptown district, which locals have dubbed the Isle of Denial because it was elevated enough to escape the flooding and is one of the few neighborhoods where life has returned to almost normal.

"Everyone wants to shop locally," said Dannal Perry, 38, a shopkeeper who tattooed the Louis Armstrong lyrics "do you know what it means to miss New Orleans when that's where you left your heart" on her ankle while she was in "exile."

While many locals are fearful that the city will be rebuilt into a theme-park version of itself, New Orleans still has one important thing going for it. The people who have come back love their city.

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Six Months After Hurricane Katrina, Emotional Toll Still High
New Orleans, LO (AFP) Feb 26 - Every time New Orleans gets a hard rain, Gabriel Black drives to the levee to see how high the water has risen.

It has been six months since he stood guard in the lobby of the hotel his wife managed, using the flashlight mounted on his shotgun to fend off looters who rattled at the glass doors as his daughters slept uneasily upstairs.

Six months since he carried a man who had been savagely beaten to the Convention Center, only to be told by police that there was nothing they could do but let the man die.

Six months since his faith in his country was shattered.

But he has not been able to let go of the fear. And the anger. And the pain.

"I don't go out of my house a lot," he said as he sat behind his computer, his once muscle-bound frame softened by the loss of 28 pounds (13 kilograms). "I can't stand to be in crowds. It makes me very nervous."

"I definitely don't sleep. I sleep four hours at a time," said Black, 36. "My daughters go to bed, I'm awake. They wake up, I'm awake. I'm always awake."

As New Orleans struggles to rebuild entire neighborhoods destroyed by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, many of those who were caught in its wake are still struggling to rebuild their lives.

Shortly after the storm ravaged the Gulf coast on August 29, the US Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 500,000 people could be in need of mental health services.

But the trauma did not end when the winds died down, said Ann Wilder, a counselor with the New Orleans Mental Health Resilience Team.

That was because human beings require a certain level of stability and control over their lives. And nothing is normal in New Orleans.

Friends and neighbors remain scattered across the country. Many of those who have returned are living in cramped trailers or staying with relatives who never expected them to be there for so long.

Deadened traffic lights have been replaced with stop signs. Houses that were knocked off their foundations by the floodwaters remain crumbled in the middle of the street. Grocery stores have limited hours. Favorite restaurants remain closed.

"If we can't get to our normal places we live in survival mode, never moving to thrive and we physically live in a fight-or-flight response," Wilder explained.

"People come in for chest pains, they come in for vomiting, aches and pains and we know the secondary reason is depression and anxiety."

For Black, and so many others scattered across the Gulf Coast, a secondary trauma came weeks after the storm with the slow realization that the help he expected simply was not going to come.

First, it was his landlord.

While his wife managed a hotel full of recovery workers and his daughters stayed with family in Georgia, Black yanked out carpets, bleached the walls and pulled broken tree limbs off his roof.

And after promising to compensate him for the work, Black's landlord charged him full rent. And he still has not fixed the hole in the roof or replaced the walls that are leeching black mould.

Then there was the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

It took until December for a trailer to arrive and three more weeks for the officials to give him the key. It took until February for financial assistance to arrive.

The politicians may have been the worst.

Instead of pulling together to fix the problems, they pointed fingers. And they tried to pretend that reports of violence Black saw with his own eyes were exaggerated.

Black could not go back to work as an air conditioning technician. Instead, he has started working as a freelance photographer and has taught himself how to create Gothic photo illustrations by meticulously blending images on his computer.

"I've found it's been very therapeutic for me. I'm able to express things in my artwork that get rid of some of those things," he said as he scrolled through Gothic images that included a self-portrait entitled "Rage", showing his mouth full of sharp fangs.

"It comes out dark but there's always some beauty in it."

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