Beside the gangly roots of a fallen tree, a shirtless man scrubbed his laundry by a pool of rain water.

Deep down the reaches of the Pyapon River, the villagers of Tumyung are trying to rebuild their lives in the wake of Cyclone Nargis - with whatever they can find.

Soldiers were seen interviewing families and repairing electric cables in the towns, but out in worst-hit Irrawaddy delta's far-flung villages, victims seemed to be largely on their own.

They are the group that relief workers are fighting against time to reach with medical and food aid, to prevent what the United Nations has said is a possible 'second wave of deaths'.

Accessible only after an hour-long ride in a slender 8m-long motor boat, Tumyung village has seen no officials, soldiers or government aid, said the local abbot last Wednesday.

All they have had are a sprinkling of donations of rice, potatoes and mosquito nets from charitable locals who have taken the trouble to sail out to their village and others similarly tucked away.

They make do - if they have not already been wiped out, that is.

Local relief workers and volunteers have returned from the field with photos of utter devastation farther west of the delta and in villages nearer the sea. Some shots show just a few straggly trees sticking out of mounds of earth - and no signs of other life.

In Tumyung, they count their blessings that 11 and not more of their 700-plus villagers died, mostly children and old people, said village elder U Nyan Lwin, 68.

Even so, villagers here are scraping the bottom of their rice baskets.

After the May 3 storm, this community of farmers and fishermen has been living off rice borrowed from the landowners among them. Almost one month on, their stocks of four to five baskets per family are almost gone.

The machines they use to unhusk grains are waterlogged and their buffalos have died.

The more well-to-do ones can afford the diesel needed to work the ploughing machines, catching up in time with the start of the planting season.

But for most, it is struggling with the basics of survival.

'What we need most now are roofing materials - tarpaulin, Dani leaves or even better, zinc,' said the abbot.

The storm left just 10 of the village's 200 or so houses intact, said village elder U Phoe Htoo, 64.

Bit by bit, village men glide their handsaws through the thick tree trucks that have fallen on their homes and footpaths.

Others hammer new wooden shacks together, lean-tos unlikely to survive another ferocious storm.

With entire plantations of the Dani tree - used for roofing - wiped out, they are recycling parts of old roofs that have survived or improvising by shaving betel nut tree trunks into thin strips.

As rain beats down almost daily now in monsoon season, some 40 people still take refuge within the concrete walls of the local monastery every night.

The 100-year-old monastery's pond is the only source of safe drinking water now, said Mr U Phoe Htoo, pointing to a dug-out reservoir about the size of half a football field now silted up by the sea water the storm poured inland.

The rains may soon dilute the salt and pollutants but some villagers are already suffering bouts of diarrhoea, probably from drinking unclean water.

Most of the dead bodies have been removed or washed away, but a lone corpse could be seen floating in a stream - like a giant slab of tofu, to the untrained eye - where villagers bathe, swim and wash their clothes.

Even as they wait for aid and slowly piece their lives back together, there remains the trauma of losing their loved ones.

Some are struggling with the guilt of having let go of children or relatives whose hands they were clinging on to before the tidal surge claimed them.

More than 10 villagers have been to see him for help with psychological problems, said the abbot.

'I tell them to accept that this was a natural disaster,' he said, with a calming smile.

It may take his village one year or longer to get back to normal, he said.

But villagers like odd-job labourer Kyng Win, 50, whose six-year-old daughter drowned in the storm, cannot quite see that far into the future.

'My girl is gone and I have no work now. How will I recover my life?'

stforeign@sph.com.sg