Searching through the rubble of his home for anything still whole, Laksmiah Poleh can see life's options quite clearly. He can give up and move his family back to their home state on the mainland and, if he's lucky, find work as a tenant farmer making Rs 1,700 a month. Or he can stay on Little Andaman Island and continue to work as a peon, serving tea and running errands in the harbour works department for Rs 9,000 a month, for as long as the government will keep him. Seen through eyes made red by worry and tears, the choices dwindle to one. His best chance of surviving, and keeping his family of seven, is to keep on trying to live here next to the ocean that has destroyed everything he owned. "We are scared of the sea now, mostly because we don't know when the water will come and strike us again," said Poleh. "But what can we do? We can't leave this place and go to the mainland. We won't have anything to eat there." Their fears are common to hundreds of other towns and villages across southern Asia, where at least five million survivors are homeless. The United Nations predicts it will take up to 10 years to repair the damage wrought by the tsunami on December 26. Two weeks after the waves hammered Hut Bay, little reconstruction aid has reached its people. But working with bare hands and building materials salvaged from the ruins, survivors like Poleh are trying to help themselves. Hut Bay, on the southeast corner of Little Andaman Island, faces the open ocean northwest of Indonesia just a few hundred miles from the undersea epicentre of the earthquake off Indonesia's coast. When the first wave hit Hut Bay, a town of12,000, the water stopped just above Poleh's knees, giving him ample warning to join the several thousand people rushing for higher land. Only 43 people are confirmed dead here, although locals say the final toll may be closer to 100. But in some ways, Hut Bay's survivors now feel more cursed than those who died. The dead don't need a place to live. More than 7,000 people here have lost their homes, and at least 3,000 have fled north to live in relief camps in Port Blair. The government estimates a total of 42,000 people are homeless on the islands. The tsunami's second and third waves flattened most of the houses on Poleh's street, including his. Next door, one room of his brother's house is still standing. The ground is covered with pieces of concrete, brick and twisted tin roofing. One wall looks almost as good as the day it was painted with flowers and the words 'Good luck' for his brother's wedding in 2003. The only essential thing that Poleh, 40, denied the waves is his Hercules bicycle on which he made his escape. Every rupee he had managed to stock away in the years since he inherited the job of office peon after his father's death was in gold jewellery. He hasn't found even a fragment of the gold, which was worth Rs 1 lakh. Two weeks on, Poleh says the only aid he has received is rations of rice and lentils, and even those are hard to come by. He estimates it would cost almost Rs 2.5 lakh to build temporary shelter, at least something more substantial than the plastic tarpaulin his family lives under now. "We will just have to wait for government aid," he said with a shrug. "I don't have any money to start reconstruction of my house. I could take a bank loan, but, how would I be able to produce all the documents that are needed to secure a loan? The water has taken away everything." In Hut Bay, the local administration is in ruins, said Anindo Majumdar, a volunteer from Delhi who visited the town. Almost every public building, including the hospital, was destroyed. Tsunami/Rehabilitation The waves destroyed one month's supply of food stored in a warehouse, and looters stole the rest. The town's power station was ruined. The priorities now are to provide food, clothes and shelter. Said Majumdar: "Our immediate task is to provide relief and succour. "There has to be a rehabilitation plan, but that will take time." Despite a huge relief effort by Indian corporations, nongovernmental agencies and the military, many survivors complain that they aren't getting enough aid, especially in remote places like Hut Bay, which is almost 12 hours by sea from Port Blair. The island's lifeline is a rusting ferry called the M.V. Pilokunji, which can carry around 50 tonnes of food, fuel and other emergency supplies. Captain Gopal Rangaraj has made five, trips to Hut Bay, where he waits for the right tide and drops his ship's steel ramp on the rocky edge of a destroyed dry dock. Last week, he also dropped off several people who wanted to see if there was anything worth returning to. But when he turned his ship around and headed back to Port Blair that evening, a few hundred more people had boarded his ship. They had given up, at least for now, on trying to survive here. While the people of Hut Bay struggle to get back on their feet, Nchael Jagannath, 31, has a slight advantage. He is a building contractor. He and a friend salvaged a long wooden beam and hauled it on their shoulders to his badly damaged house. Pausing for a moment, Jagannath wiped his brow and weighed his chances of getting help from the authorities. He quickly decided they weren't very good. "The tahsildar, with whom we have to deal with," he said, "was the first to flee." ?