VILMA REYES HAS BEEN PROMISED TWO MINUTES WITH U.S. PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON THIS WEEK when he stops briefly in Honduras during his four-day Central American tour. In two minutes she can't even begin to tell Clinton how the fury of Hurricane Mitch tore through her life last October. An elegant widow in her late 40s, Reyes inherited the job of mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, from her husband, who died in a helicopter crash during the disaster. Now Reyes must put aside her sorrow and convince the President of how badly she needs U.S. help in trying to resurrect a city pushed into an open grave.

Clinton will hear many variations on the widow Reyes' tale of need during his post-Mitch tour of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras. But thanks to timely foreign aid--$5 billion so far from the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan--and Central Americans' sheer grit, the catastrophe predicted for the hurricane's aftermath never happened. Famine, pestilence and the pocketing of relief money by corrupt technocrats all failed to materialize. (Most of the money was doled out for specific projects; work was done by donors themselves.) Nor has Washington's great worry come to pass: the stream of Mitch refugees heading to the U.S. is so much smaller than the feared tidal wave.

That's not to shrug off the calamity. Mitch was one of the worst storms to hit this hemisphere. It killed more than 5,000 people and left 2 million homeless. Bridges, roads, entire shantytowns and villages vanished under floodwaters. In Honduras 70% of the banana crop was wiped out. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that simply rebuilding the region's infrastructure will cost more than $8.5 billion, and that's not counting the damage to business and crops, which could raise the total loss to more than $10 billion.

The full extent of the challenge is nowhere more evident than in Tegucigalpa. Like every other settlement scythed down by Mitch, the city of 850,000 is broke. It has 24,000 homeless. Entire neighborhoods buckled, sank and tumbled downhill during the disaster. After the initial flood crest passed, waters settled into a stagnant lake choked with corpses, dead horses, refrigerators and a swirl of papers, as all the city's education and tax records were swept away. Eventually, the waters receded and the bodies were retrieved, but as the city hall's spokeswoman, Adriana Callejas, says, "every so often, it still smells of death."

A onetime colonial silver mining town speckled with abandoned quarries, Tegucigalpa is trying to find its moorings. The mayor's office, working with federal authorities and foreign relief teams, repaired the main road leading to the coastal port within 24 hours, restored garbage collection within two days and turned electricity on within 10 days. Often people didn't wait for relief teams. In Valle de Angeles, a town of artisans near the capital, residents replaced electricity posts and rewired cables.

But some deep problems remain. At least 60% of the city's water and sewerage system was destroyed, and Mayor Reyes would like direct aid from Washington to restore these crucial services. (The American Red Cross has volunteered to help.)

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