Bangladesh, December 4th, 2007. Everyone has his own shocking story to tell about the destruction that cyclone Sidr brought to Bangladesh. Wives lost their husbands; mothers lost their sons; sisters their brothers. Morsheda, the 19-year old mother of a small baby boy thought that she had lost everything, and then found that she hadn't. "When the cyclone came my husband was away," she explains. "The next morning I was told that he was dead."

It was the most dreadful night of her life. Her husband, Kailsen, had been at the coast, drying fish to earn a living for his small family. He saw the storm coming and the water level rising. He only had a few minutes to climb up a thin palm tree. But the water rose steadily, and Kailsen had to keep climbing higher and higher until he reached the top of the slender tree. There he stayed for six hours until the water slowly dropped back to its normal level.

"I wanted to go back to my village immediately, but I could not", he says. "The roads were blocked by uprooted trees, no car and no motorcycle could get through." In the meantime, his young wife took shelter at her sister's house. As soon as the storm weakened she ran over to her own home. It had been smashed to the ground. The wooden boards of the roof were spread all over the neighbor's garden. The walls had come apart. Her belongings were buried underneath. Her small son's hand was injured. He wouldn't stop crying. "I panicked," Morshed says, hugging her 4-months old child. "I could not see my husband anywhere. My neighbors told me he was dead." She started searching for his corpse. She was not alone, many villagers were also looking for missing loved ones.

Her son's condition grew worse and she took him to one of the mobile medical teams organized by CARE and the Dhaka Community Hospital. Her son's injuries were treated, but Kailsen was still not to be found. After three days Morsheda gave up hope. She was sitting next to the big water pond, where all villagers collect their water, grieving and scared about her and her son's future. Suddenly, she saw someone approaching. He resembled her husband. "But I was too tired and too desperate to believe it was him,", Morsheda recalls. The man came closer - and shouted her name. Morsheda realized then that this time fate was on her side. "Even though we lost everything we had, our house, our ducks and our chicken," she says. "I am happy. Because I have my family back.