Mary Taylor: Remembering the tsunami in Sri Lanka

For the past year, Auckland woman Mary Taylor has been fundraising to put 100 fishing boats back into the waters around tsunami-devastated Sri Lankan fishing villages. Her first acquaintance with the country came as a former tea buyer for a supermarket chain. She writes from Welipatanvila in Sri Lanka's southern coast. Arriving in Sri Lanka in the small hours of December 23, I was greeted by numerous blow-up santas and candle-surrounded buddhas. The airport is new since my last visit six months ago. An air of festivity and optimism prevailed as returning locals unloaded their duty-free giant TVs, refrigerators and fold-up Christmas trees.

The hour's journey into the city is uninterrupted. Madonna and buddha statues in brightly lit glass cases stand outside homes, side by side.

During daylight Colombo was its usual busy, crazy, chaotic and noisy self with tuktuks vying with buses for available road space. The pre-Christmas rush was on.

A day of catch up meetings with aid workers and reading the local papers prepared me for my journey south. The tsunami is understandably high profile.

The papers were full of details of tsunami aid being realised; new buildings, fishing boats, small business support and training. They were also full of the woes of buffer zone restrictions to rebuilding, unfair allocations or a complete lack of aid in some areas. The fragility of the peace accord was apparent in the media and also on the streets where there was more armed security than before, reports of bombs in the northeast and the assassination of an MP attending church in the east.

Christmas eve and it was time to head south. Twelve months on and the destructive path of the tsunami could still be seen at every turn that took us near the waters edge.

The hotels in the south were filled, but not by tourists. Families are here to remember their lost loved ones. In our hotel relatives have travelled from the UK to remember their 16-month-old who was swept from their grasp on that fateful day.

The papers were still offering identity parades for remains of the dead with bones, clothing and jewellery catalogued. Whole pages are devoted to photographs and the memory of family who drowned.

Temporary shelter was still the norm with plank one-room homes already weathered and having a look of permanency. Thankfully there were fewer tents than before. Rubble and broken homes had not moved but there was evidence of some recent clean-up operations.

I stop to talk with Ajith and Renuka Bandula. Their beachside home was flattened by the tsunami and they lost everything except their four children. The children were playing in a tyre swing - something they now prefer as they are still fearful of the sea. They used to spend days on the beach, said their mother, but now they worry about another wave.

Renuka proudly showed me the tiled floor remains where once stood her three-bedroom house. This had not come easily - Arith had to go to Dubai to work for five years to pay for it.

They were warned of the approaching wave by a toddy tapper, perched high in the coconut palm. He shouted for them to run, which they did, with infants around their necks. They stopped with the tide after one kilometre, the water having at times churned around their shoulders. They admit they are lucky; they all survived, a rarity in the area.

Today Ajith and Renuka live in a one-room transitional shelter, built by an English non-governmental organisation (NGO). Next month, they are due to move to permanent shelter.

For a proud housewife like Renuka the new home is not an attractive proposition. Situated in a housing estate eight kilometres inland, their new home is among 800 built by NGOs. Some have water tanks while others have water pumps in the street. There was variation in size and standard and yet allocation was to be randomly-computer generated. At half the size of her previous home and with only two bedrooms, no floor tiling and an outside toilet, one could understand why Renuka wasn't happy.

The greatest change was seen in the fishing areas. While broken boats are still strewn along the shore the new boats look magnificent, all sporting bright colours and the names of their global donors. Donor visibility is big here.

Tilak, who lost two boats and his mother in the tsunami is positive about the future. He is already out there catching fish in his donated boat. His wide smile tells it all.

It does look like the tide is turning - but ever so slowly. With suggestions that less than a third of pledged Government funds have actually been spent, there is a long way to go.

On the anniversary, the country observed a two-minute silence at the time the tsunami hit the southern coast. Memorial services were held around the country, alms giving was carried out at the temples, and families who lost loved ones lit candles on the beach. A new stamp has been released.

Boxing Day dawned bright and clear, just as it did a year ago. We headed south along the coast.

At 9.30 Sri Lanka stopped and we joined fishermen on the beach at Weligama.

Most, like us, stared out to sea, remembering or trying to imagine the scene of last year. At the northern end of this beach is an island. It was this island where the bats flew out of the caves in broad daylight, alerting the inhabitants to something amiss and thereby saving their lives.

Behind us are the remains of broken boats, enshrouded in new growth, and everywhere are discarded shoes and jandals. But also on the beach were the new boats, with their folded red and blue nets - folded because no one would be going to sea today.

We headed round the southern tip to buy some purple water lilies to use as offerings at a temple service. The water lily is Sri Lanka's national flower, a symbol of purity emerging from the mud.

We visited the opening of a new housing estate of 100 donated homes. Unlike the previous ones, these are all the same and not unattractive. We carried on round the coast to the fishing villages with which I have been involved.

That evening will be one forever etched in my memory. The children who had lost family joined together to hold a special candle ceremony at the temple. Dressed in white, the colour of mourning, they lit thousands of candles and these, together with flowers, were passed around the entire crowd of survivors. Prayers followed.

As we drove to our hotel we noted the prolific use of candles of remembrance; on streets, in front of houses, in trees and on beaches.

Tsunami night was the night of a thousand candles; a time of remembrance and of a feeling of hope.

* Donations can be made to Project Oru 100, MJF Charitable Foundation, PO Box 17118, Greenlane, Auckland.