In the spring of 2015, while working in the countryside of Munshiganj in the borderlands of southwestern Bangladesh, my colleague and I came across a strange and visually striking project rising incongruously from the flat delta landscape. It was an earthen mound, or mattir killa, meant to be used as a storm shelter. The mound was fourteen feet in height and a half-acre in size. It had been constructed in 2011 in the aftermath of Cyclone Aila (in 2009), which caused widespread infrastructural damage and displacement throughout the region. The killa, built by a local NGO and financed by a large international NGO, formed part of a vast wave of new projects in the region designed to address disaster preparedness and climate change. What seemed strange about the project was not only its visual appearance, climbing abruptly from its otherwise horizontal surroundings, but its stated purpose: what kind of shelter could this raised mound provide? In contrast to the concrete cyclone shelters that dot the region, the killa seemed to offer limited protection. Moreover, though nominally a public good, it had been built on private land. Striking up a conversation with the farmer who owned the land and whose home stood in the killa's shadow, we asked about the project and its uses. He lived some distance from the nearest cyclone shelter, so when the storms came, he claimed, his family and livestock sheltered on the killa. But he also added, “In the future, when we are surrounded by water, the children will go up there to live.”