The Little Girl is shopping for an emergency kit. “We don’t have emergencies here!” exclaims Badu. “This is a quiet village.” Right on cue, the ground starts shaking. The Little Girl quickly gets under a table and hangs on to its legs. Badu, meanwhile, is whacked on his head by the box he had recently placed on a top shelf. Then the shelf. As the tremors stop, the villagers run out of their houses and gather in the street outside, warning each other of aftershocks. Predictably, Badu doesn’t listen.

It’s cyclone season. People prepare emergency supplies and study evacuation routes to designated shelters. Badu is puzzled. Why all this fuss when nothing’s happened? Clouds are gathering, and the Little Girl’s radio warns of a cyclone heading straight to the village. She boards up her windows and by the time the storm hits, everyone is safe in the shelter. Apart from Badu. Worried, the Squirrel has stayed with him. The pair are eventually rescued, lucky to be alive.

Smoke is coming from the volcano’s summit and a rumbling noise is getting louder,. “It’s perfectly safe. It does this all the time,” Badu tells the Little Girl. The rumbling gets louder, and the Little Girl produces a map of the area, marked with a safe place upwind of the volcano. Ash falls and everyone covers their mouths and noses, but Badu is asleep. Fortunately, he survives, but he’s inhaled a lot of ash. The village is in ruins. Perhaps it would be wise to rebuild elsewhere.

When an earthquake hits, the Little Girl knows more danger could follow. The tide is going out far further than normal. As fish flap on the sand, a joyful Badu fills his bucket. Easy pickings! The villagers flee to high ground – tsunamis can come very fast. Badu sees the terrifying wave too late, but luckily, the Squirrel grabs him and clings to a tree as the wave crashes inland. On the hillside, the villagers want to return to their homes, but the Little Girl stops them – a tsunami is more than one wave.

Badu has sold his hillside of ‘worthless’ trees to an illegal logger. What does he care when it rains non-stop - he has all his cool new stuff to enjoy! But his house now stands on a bare hillside which is suddenly looking unstable. The villagers climb to high ground as the flood threat increases. Even Badu has to evacuate. Then the hillside collapses, taking Badu's house with it. Landslide! When the rains stop and the waters subside, the villagers replant hillsides and clear the drains of rubbish.

A sixth film accompanies this series, focusing on the strains brought about by forced dislocation – on the displaced people themselves AND the host community. This time, Badu finds himself competing with a new neighbour - a man from ‘over there’, who is impressing their boss with a much more productive garden than his own. Surely he is stealing Badu’s seedlings! Something must be done! For more on this film, entitled The Two Gardens, see our Peace programme pages.