Standing in mud that reaches up to their knees, hundreds of men form a human chain that snakes to the horizon. They are trying to rebuild a flood barrier with their bare hands. Each day at noon, the men are forced to abandon the half-built dyke as the high tide washes over it, wiping out much of their work and flooding fields and villages for a few hours before it retreats. As a result, thousands of people on the low-lying island of Padma Pakur have been forced to live in tents and temporary cabins on narrow spits of high land. They have been homeless since Cyclone Aila struck in May 2009, killing over 300 people around the Bay of Bengal. Entire villages were destroyed and the embankments that protected them from the ocean were torn apart.
