The global effort to ease the suffering of the millions of people stricken by the tsunami disaster was stepped up again on Friday as it became clear that aid was still not getting to those most in need. Naval vessels, two of them British, were heading for the region last night to lend assistance as thousands of tonnes of aid continued to be flown in and the US raised its aid tenfold to $350-million.
But UN officials admitted that they were deeply concerned about aid not reaching devastated areas such as the Aceh province of Sumatra and the coast of Sri Lanka. Lack of coordination and transport bottlenecks were exacerbated in some areas by bad weather.
The official death toll remains at about 124 000, but last night the UN warned it was approaching 150 000, and, after visiting the region, Sweden’s foreign minister, Laila Freivalds, said it would rise to nearer 200 000.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, said: ”What we see is that the figures may be approaching 150,000 dead. The vast majority of those are in Indonesia and Aceh, which is the least assessed area because of logistical constraints …
”We will never ever have the absolute definite figure because there are many fishermen and villages which have just gone.”
Indonesia says 100 000 people may have been killed there alone. About 5 000 foreigners, mainly Europeans, are still missing. Four South Africans have so far been confirmed dead in the crisis and about 12 are still missing.
Grieving families reflect on life after the wave
Nalin Wickremesinghe, 44, assistant manager at the Mutwal branch of the Commercial Bank, Colombo, Sri Lanka
On Sunday morning my sister, Kanthi Wickremesinghe Amit, the senior translator for the Sri Lankan parliament, and her husband, Morano Amit, who edits Hansard, were driving south from their home in Panadura with their daughters, Shenya, 20, and Tania, 15.
Neither could drive and their driver was on holiday, so they had hired someone new. They were going to the pilgrimage spot at Kataragama, which is sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims.
They stopped for a picnic on the beach. Three miles after they resumed their journey, the wave hit their car. The driver escaped and he came to Colombo to tell me. They are all missing.
She was a first-class English-speaker. Although her parents were Buddhist, they sent her to the Good Shepherd convent school in Panadura. She worked for various government offices before coming top in the exams for parliamentary interpreting.
A group from parliament went to the area on Monday to try to find her and her family, and I went on Tuesday. We could find no trace of the car.
My sister was 10 years older than me. She was like a second mother. When I was a boy, she bought me a toy every month.
I told my two daughters, who are 12 and10. They are shocked. We used to visit my sister once a month.
My wife was very close to Kanthi’s children. She took some time to accept the reality, but this didn’t happen only to our family.
I came back to work on Thursday. The bank manager told me to stay at home and recover but I felt if I stayed at home I would just think about it all the time. We have to be strong, so I came back to work. Just imagine a whole family gone. I don’t have anyone to call me uncle. I have no siblings and no family now except for my mother, who is 79.
Nurhayati, 43, from Vaba Aceh, Indonesia
I am in the Kedah neighbourhood of Vaba Aceh looking for my sister Faridah’s four children who were with her when the tsunamis struck so we can bury them together.
We were lucky that we were able to identify Faridah’s corpse yesterday because most of the bodies cannot be identified. We identified Faridah by her unique bracelet. Her wedding ring was missing. It was probably stolen.
We were also lucky to find her because she was more than a kilometre from where her home had been. Her children were aged 12 to 20. There’s only one left, Rina, who was with us in Sigli (a town 70 miles east of Vaba Aceh) at the time of the earthquake.
My sister was such a kind person. She was always smiling, laughing, even when having to get up early. Her husband Hermanto, who is also missing, was a truck driver while Faridah was a cook. She would get up before dawn every day to bake cakes. Then at 6am she would cycle to the market and sell them. She could have made many more because she always sold out but she wanted to be home when the children returned from school.
She was always there for others, wanting to make sure her family was happy and comfortable. She has been like that since a kid. She was two years older than me and looked after me. We had four younger siblings and she kept us in order quite strictly but also loved us and played great jokes too.
I remember once on my birthday, I was about 15, Faridah pretended to have forgotten it was my birthday and sent me to a market a long way away to buy some special vegetables. I was really mad because I wanted to be celebrating my birthday, not shopping for her.
But when I came back an hour later I almost fainted because she’d prepared a surprise party for me. We had such a great time. It was one of my best birthdays ever.
Hari Krishnan, 43, a fisherman from Chinna Kalapet village, Pondicherry, India
As usual on Sunday morning, while my wife and three children slept, I left in my boat at 4am to catch fish.
I must have gone about 20km from the shore. It was a very calm day, the sea was placid, I did not sense anything amiss.
On such days, I have sometimes taken my sons Kuppuraj, 14, and Anburaj, 10, out to sea, but never very far.
To my horror, when I came back at 2pm I found the village devastated. My house was just 50ft away from the sea, and it had been washed away.
Someone said my younger son had been taken to the Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences. I rushed there and I could see Anburaj through the glass lying in a room. He was on a respirator.
I told the doctors, ”I will sell my boat, my nets, I will do anything, but please save my son’s life.” Instead, three days later they gave me his body.
Anburaj knew how to swim. But I never let him go into the sea on his own. I always made sure I was around.
My wife told me that that morning he had gone off on his cycle wearing jeans. Those are heavy trousers, so I think that’s why he could not swim and save himself.
Anburaj was very happy and lively, so he was popular with other children in the village. Even older kids liked to play with him. And he was so loving and obedient. Even his teacher cried when he died.
I never wanted him to become a fisherman. He was good in studies, especially mathematics, so I had told myself I would spend any amount necessary to give him a proper education, which I never had. I would’ve let him choose any profession he wanted.
I have gone to Sabarimalai (a Hindu temple in Kerala where devotees believe all their wishes are granted) 14 times and I have always had only one prayer, that my family should be well, that my children should enjoy good health.
For the first time this year, in early December, I took Anburaj to Sabarimalai.
He was very religious, like me, and I remember at the temple he kept reciting: ”Oh Lord, I bow before thee, Oh Lord, I bow before thee.” I did not know the Lord would take him away so soon.
I can continue to fish for only some more years, maybe until I am 55. So I had placed great hopes on my sons, that they will get a good education and support the family.
But Anburaj is gone. We don’t even have his photos. The sea took those away too.
Francis Jacob, 70, a retired teacher and member of the Nicobarese tribe, Car Nicobar island
Although my family and I survived, many of our friends and neighbours did not. My village has been washed away.
We were living in Malacca, a community of 4 000 people on the east coast. I’m a retired teacher of English and Hindi. My neighbours were fishermen, government servants, teachers, and farmers who reared pigs. We were simple people. We were good people.
Our island had a small river. We would eat bananas and coconuts and yam and jackfruit. All of this has been destroyed.
When we saw the wave, I started running up the hill into the jungle. I left everything behind – not just my possessions but also my way of life.
Eventually I was taken to Port Blair (the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands) in a plane. I will have to spend up to four months in hospital getting treatment for my asthma.
We had no warning for this. Nobody expected this. It has altered everything. Eventually I will go back to Car Nicobar. I hope we can rebuild our village. Everybody has to belong somewhere. – Guardian Unlimited Â