BY CARA BUCKLEY ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada - In a heavily damaged high school on the ruined outskirts of Grenada's capital, infants sleep on blackboards and mothers wait for help that might not come. Yolande Jack and her five children moved there six weeks ago, after Hurricane Ivan ripped through this tiny island and tore apart their home. Water streams from the roofless second-floor classrooms when it rains, and black knots of flies converge on grimy garbage-can lids. Food is scarce. Jack said she has not seen a relief worker in two weeks, only the high school's disgruntled principal, who keeps asking people staying here when they're going to leave. ''Nobody likes living here, but we don't have anywhere to go,'' Jack said, her 18-month-old son slumped over her shoulder, fast asleep. ``Nobody checks on us. People came, promised to bring mattresses for the children, but they never came back.'' Ivan caught Grenada wholly unprepared, not least because of the widespread belief that hurricanes simply would not hit. Hurricane Janet, Grenada's last killer hurricane, faded from memory after its strike 49 years ago. Every hurricane since passed to the north. Foreigners moored yachts in St. George's harbor during storm season because it was outside the assumed hurricane belt. 'The saying was, `God is a Grenadian, and that is why nothing like that is going to come here,' '' said Nadica McIntyre, head of communications for the National Emergency Relief Organization, NERO. But Ivan's 120 mph winds rewrote Grenada's story of itself. Thirty-nine people died, most crushed in their houses, and 90 percent of the island's 89,000 people lost all or part of their homes. Looting erupted, and prisoners escaped at the storm's height after guards fled the disintegrating jail in terror. For bewildered Grenadians, the pain of lost lives and homes was made worse by the visual horror Ivan left. Whipped-up saltwater and ferocious winds turned the rich green countryside brown and the lush rain forest of Grand Etang into a boneyard of toppled trees. The hundreds of monkeys that played and lived there disappeared. In the month and a half since Ivan, local and international emergency workers have struggled to help Grenada pick up its pieces. Soldiers from nearby Trinidad and Tobago patrol the streets, and troops from Venezuela are helping to rebuild the jail. All but six of the escaped prisoners were returned, and 40 of the most-hardened were sent to the island of St. Lucia. The Red Cross handed out 14,000 blue tarpaulins to cover roofs. Utility crews from neighboring islands righted power poles and restrung lines. American religious groups descended on St. George's churches, setting up soup kitchens and offering ''crisis interventions'' and psychological support. But what Grenadians need most are materials to rebuild homes and, more pressing, paid work. Pieces of shanties that clung on stilts to the island's jagged peaks still litter the hillsides. Tourism, the island's top industry, is at a standstill. Nutmeg, its trademark spice, was devastated: Ivan knocked down 60 percent to 90 percent of the country's nutmeg trees. ''What's got to be done immediately is to stop this country from going into a slide,'' said Julie Leonard, regional Caribbean advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development's office of disaster assistance. ``I don't think anybody's under the illusion that this will be a fast recovery.'' Rebuilding even the simplest of homes presents stiff challenges. Nails have quadrupled in price. Finding plywood and corrugated zinc roofing is nearly impossible. Supply routes were disrupted. Moreover, goods were backlogged by hurricane damage elsewhere in the Caribbean and by competing demand in Florida. Grenada has become a nation living under blue tarpaulin: Islanders call the storm ''Ivan Roofus,'' because it opened all but a few houses to the sky. Few homes were insured, and most Grenadians have no choice but to salvage what they can and try to hammer their homes back up. ''We have no plan,'' said Benedict Mitchell, a 60-year-old shopkeeper whose house exploded from the hurricane's pressure. ``We just know how a house is supposed to go together.'' The scarcity of supplies has bred suspicion in struggling parts of the countryside, where neighborhood jealousies simmer over who received coveted pieces of plywood or the most blue tarp. Reports surfaced of people hoarding and reselling free emergency supplies. NERO's staffers, inexperienced and instantly overwhelmed, were accused of doling out supplies to their families and friends first. ''NERO? I call it ZERO. Its distribution was done politically, and some are getting and some are not getting because of the greed,'' said Vashti A. Stanislaus Williams, who lives in the ravaged parish of St. David's along the country's southwestern coast. The National Emergency Relief Organization's McIntyre denied the favoritism charge, and said the agency instead was stretched too thin. ''Where do we get the resources to visit 300 shelters?'' she said. ``Everybody feels nobody is looking out for them. People need to get up and help themselves.'' But the agency is frozen by its lack of know-how, and sitting on stacks of plywood because no one knew how to decide who should get the materials first. Meanwhile, the marketplaces are open, but fresh food supplies are thin and have at least doubled in price. Recently, the minister of agriculture went on the radio to urge Grenadians not to eat opossum, to preserve what's left of the country's wildlife. Still, last week in the countryside, opossum could be bought on the sly for $3.80 apiece, skinned, gutted and ready to cook. Yet Grenada is slowly and painfully digging itself out. Cars again fill the narrow, winding streets of St. George's. Lights are flickering back on. St. George's University, an offshore medical school, lost many of its roofs but still has 250 students on campus and plans to have the full 1,600 back by January from their emergency placements overseas. Medical students were once before relocated, after the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada that ousted a left-wing government. Children's schools, too, are reopening, at least the few that haven't spilled asbestos or been taken over by the desperate newly homeless, such as Yolande Jack. On a recent steamy afternoon, in the depths of Grenada's countryside, an old Catholic priest took rest by the roadside. Every year for the past eight, Bill O'Connell has walked in pilgrimage around the island, usually with 30 to 60 believers by his side. This year, but for the church's sexton, he was alone. But O'Connell said the people would come back. He pointed to young sprigs of grass and sprays of wildflower poking their way through a tangle of fallen trees. Almost overnight, green was replacing brown. ''There's a new brightness, with the rains and the sun, a new coming into life,'' said the priest. ``It's a good little country for coming back.'' Then the priest labored to his feet and set off down the road. SOURCE: CARIBUPDATE.COM