Fisherman frightened to live by sea again

Pathum Kauintha, 2, receives food from Muslim community members.

Lalith Wijaratama turns his head away as he wipes almost constant tears.

The slightly built young Galle fisherman has lost his parents, his home, his livelihood.

He will not go back to the sea, which he now fears.

And he cannot tell us how he will find money to support his wife and 18-month-old daughter, who survived the Boxing Day tsunami with him.

Lalith does not mind that the Sri Lankan Government will relocate him inland, to an apartment block kilometres from the coast he has grown up with.

He wants to go - he is frightened to live by the water now.

"People used to love the sea. Now they hate the sea," an interpreter explains.

Looking out to the Indian Ocean from Lalith's house, the water is calm, the view across the half-moon shaped bay stunning.

Glance back at land, and the beach is littered with the wrecks of fishing boats, and the houses have been virtually flattened. Just one part of one wall of the Wijaratama home remains among the rubble of the poor beachside community.

When the tsunamis struck, Lalith was at home with his labourer father and his mother, his wife and baby.

He says he saw the water coming, gathered up his daughter and ran, holding the baby above his head when the water surged to chest height.

Finding a small boat saved their lives. His parents were not so lucky. His mother has been cremated, but his father's body has not been found.

Now, what is left of his family has taken refuge in a nearby Buddhist temple, itself surrounded by homes that have been flooded, but not destroyed - yet abandoned by people too afraid to go home.

There, Lalith and his wife can stay, and receive food and Anchor milk for his child. But he cannot sleep, instead lying awake at night listening for the next tidal wave.

While we are talking to him, a young woman approaches.

"No baby," she says, pointing to the sea. "Baby gone."

Her 4-year-old is still lost.

On the road north, at Ambalangoda, mother after mother tells us how many children they have lost.

Those who cannot speak English hold up their fingers to indicate how many in their family died. One, clutching her 2-year-old son, has a daughter in hospital. Her other three children were killed.

Her home was destroyed.

Incredibly, when she misses out on receiving a parcel of cooked rice, wrapped in newspaper and donated to her temple refugee camp by a Muslim businessman, she smiles and shrugs that she was too slow.

Teenaged armed sailors try to keep order so that everyone can receive a parcel. Their guns force people to crouch down and leave when they have been given food.

But there is simply not enough to go around.

Just metres away, around the corner from the lines of people waiting to see a row of doctors, a Korean Christian church group is unloading carton after carton of instant noodles.

There is a problem, though. The Koreans want to give the food to anyone who asks, but the temple monks want it distributed through them.

With the Koreans unable to understand English, let alone Sinhalese, there is an impasse.

We are told the monks know who is from their community and who needs the food. They will make sure outsiders cannot come and take from refugees.

But there is no one there who can make the aid workers understand, and they do not want to give the monks control of the food.

So the boxes sit unopened, and it will be hours before their contents can be distributed.

Opposite, sitting on a shaded school step, a frail elderly woman holds her hands out, begging, taking her hands to her mouth. She is hungry.