Bangladesh

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Some of the townspeople are beginning to build makeshift homes out of shreds. Mohammad Sharif, a farmworker, managed to find enough of the pieces of his old hut to build a two-story shack for his nine-member family. Its two decks are just cubicles really, 4 ft. by 7 ft., with 4-ft. ceilings. There is no door, so when the rains blow in at night, the family is soaked.

At this time of year, the villagers would usually be busy cultivating the land, but their fields are flooded with salt water. The 10-ft. mud wall that normally keeps out the sea was washed away in the storm. Until the dike is rebuilt, the tides will bring more salinity to the soil, eventually making it unfit for farming and threatening Ujantia's existence.

The villagers know this but are waiting for the government to start its food-for-work program, in which the state will reward the workers with rice for rebuilding the embankment. Why not go ahead on their own?

"Right now," says Shamsuddin, a young farmer, "it is an effort for me even to talk to you. How can I dig and shovel earth without food in my belly?"

The government, however, is overwhelmed just trying to deliver food and medicine to stave off death and disease; it also has to worry about reports of another cyclone building up in the Bay of Bengal. Reconstruction efforts are a lesser priority, a fact that has upset Ujantia's elders. "If we don't plant soon," says Abdur Rahman, a small landowner, "we will have no crop next season. There will be only starvation." The screams of the babies at dawn are destined to grow louder.