He slept for two days on an above-ground tomb that had collapsed after running to the graveyard from his destroyed house nearby, too afraid to venture into the streets.

"It was like a bomb," the 26-year-old said. "I thought the ground was going to open and everybody was going to fall inside."

But there he was on Tuesday, standing barefoot on what was left of the roof of his concrete house with a sledgehammer, trying to knock it completely to the ground to allow him to build again.

Leogane, an hour outside the capital, was the hardest hit by last month's massive quake, killing much of the population, leaving the vast majority homeless and damaging nearly all of its buildings.

Still, those who remain have sought to remake their lives with their own hands, using cement to try to stabilize repairable houses, creating a mini-cinema in a camp at a football stadium and ignoring the mass graves beside a main road.

Whether or not the January 12 earthquake wiped this town off future maps remains an open question.

UN assessments have shown that up to 90 percent of the town's buildings were damaged or destroyed by the 7.0-magnitude quake. A walk through the ruins provides no reason to doubt that.

The St. Rose de Lima church at the city center is gone, its multi-colored bricks piled up like pulled apart blocks of Lego, its bells intact but on the ground. An ambulance that was parked beside it sits crushed under debris.

Houses, stores and banks are crumbled everywhere, and makeshift tents dot the town. The city hall still stands, but it took enough damage that no one dares enter out of fear it will collapse.

At a large camp at what used to be a football stadium, frames made from spare wood are covered in tarps or blankets to form shelters. In one built in the form of a pyramid, The Ten Commandments are posted above the door made from an old cabinet.

A sign hanging in one of the alleyways formed by the tents advertises nightly movies beginning at 6:00 pm.

Tamara Jean-Pierre and her sister run the business just outside their small living space, charging 10 gourdes per head (0.25 US cents).

The two nightly films? "V for Vendetta" starring Natalie Portman, and "Rambo 4" with Sylvester Stallone.

Each night, they drag the television outside their tent and hook it up to a truck battery to power it. Between 30 and 40 people tend to come, said Jean-Pierre, who did the same thing at her home before the quake.

She makes no secret about why she organizes the movie nights.

"Money," said Jean-Pierre, who has two children and is due to give birth again in May.

Not far away, a truck for a butter-manufacturing company hands out bags with soap and t-shirts carrying its brand name, its large speakers blaring Haitian hip-hop that children dance to.

Mercilien Juste, who said he heads a committee representing those living at the stadium, approves of the giveaway, especially since he feels Leogane has been forgotten by aid groups in comparison to Port-au-Prince.

"Leogane was the first to be hit by the earthquake," he said. "You would think that it would get most of the aid, but that's not the case."

A so-called cash-for-work program being organized by aid groups seemed to be having an effect, however, with crowds lined up at tables in front of the main police station to collect their pay for the first 15 days of work.

It is essentially a make-work program, designed to put money into the hands of desperate Haitians. They spend their days doing clean-up work.

Despite the activity, death is never far away with so much destruction and so many who have lost family members.

Leogane's death toll is unclear, though Haitian authorities put the nationwide number at more than 222,500.

The town's local government estimates that some 50,000 people are living in camps in and around Leogane.

To put that figure into perspective, consider the estimated population before the quake: 50,000 for the city itself and 90,000 when the surrounding area is included, said Luis Esteves of the UN's migration agency.

The UN estimates 80,000 people in the area were somehow affected by the quake.

"The compilation for those affected is basically everybody," he said.

Leogane also has mass graves, just like Port-au-Prince, but with one major difference.

Unlike the capital, Leogane's mass graves are in the town itself, alongside a main road and just in front of the cemetery. Piles of dirt and concrete sit above them, old clothes, underwear and shoes mixed in.

Elisemene Destine, 54, stood under a tree nearby and spoke of her 18-year-old daughter being buried in one of the holes along with scores of others.

"There's no place inside," she said of the cemetery behind her, mini-buses and motorbikes speeding past her, honking their horns at no one in particular.

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