 Fatima, 30, lost nearly everything that she owned when Cyclone Sidr swept across her Bolo Bunia village in Sharonkhola upazila of Bagerhat district. She had heard the warnings about going to a shelter, but ignored them. The Thursday that the cyclone hit seemed like an ordinary sunny day, and when nothing happened by noon, Fatima decided that there was little to worry about.
Then, just minutes before the cyclone struck at approximately 6:45 PM, her daughter convinced her to go to a shelter located in a school. When the storm had past, her house was gone and everything in it. She had also lost her only source of livelihood: five goats, a cow and some fruit trees. Her husband had abandoned her long before the cyclone hit, and she was now unsure how she would be able to go on.
“Unless I can rebuild my house, I don’t know what we will do,” she says. An initial emergency government food distribution provided enough rice to last for a day. Fatima says that she had nothing to eat after that until CARE and its partner organizations in Bangladesh began carrying out distributions of BP-5 high energy biscuits, which are especially enriched in protein. CARE, which had stockpiled tons of the biscuits before the cyclone, has been distrubiting them where ever they are likely to do the most good. Fatima says that she thinks that she can live for three days on the boxes that she received.
At a growing number of distribution points, CARE has begun providing much more substantial aid. In Barakhali, a village across the river from Boloi Bunia, CARE and its Bangladesh partners were giving 34-kilogram bags of rice, pulses, potatoes, onions and salt to people who are considered at high risk.
 On a large green lawn in front of a local school, several hundred people sit on a lawn, clutching tickets provided earlier by a village assessment team that verified who was in most need of assistance.
As a CARE partner staffer calls out the names of each family, the recipients of the food walk up to a table where they sign a large ledger with a finger print. As more roads are cleared and remote areas become more accessible, the emergency food distribution is rapidly expanding. One innovation is to use shallow draft boats to deliver food to a string of remote villages along the rivers.
For Talisman, 42, who received enough food in the distribution point at Brachial to be able to survive for almost two weeks, the aid is a lifesaver. “My husband abandoned us,” she says. “I lost my house, and I am forced to stay with a neighbor.” Talisman expects the food she received from CARE to last her and her daughter at least 10 days. After that she is unsure of what the future holds.
Back in Bolo Bunya, Fatima, has no doubts about the value of the aid. “Without help,” she says, “We are not going to be able to do anything.”
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