Woman and child rest beside open-air homes built of dried leaves and raw lumber at an outlying village in the western Solomon Islands in 2002.
The string of 200-plus volcanic islands and coral atolls sits along the Ring of Fire, a quake-prone network of fault lines and volcanoes that nearly circles the Pacific Ocean.
The roughly half million Solomon Islanders enjoy abundant fish, fruit, untrammeled coral reefs, and balmy weather. But many residents lack shelter and medical care and supplies—a dynamic put into sharp relief by the April 2, 2007, tsunami.
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