Tsunami recovery fuelled by record charity

ULEE LHEUE, Indonesia, Dec 26 (Reuters) Deny Syahputra, 24, lives alone in a wooden house built by an aid agency after his parents, sisters and a brother were swept away in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that smashed into this Indonesian port town.

''I hope that my family are in heaven now,'' he said today as prayers commemorating the disaster began at a nearby mosque.

''When I remember, I feel sad, but I realise I'm not alone in having this experience. It kind of gives me comfort to know that other people also suffer the same thing,'' he said.

Two years on, Indian Ocean communities have made impressive strides in recovering from a mind-boggling disaster, thanks to an army of aid workers and an astounding outpouring of charity across the world.

But tens of thousands of people are still living in temporary shelters in Indonesia's Aceh province, worst-hit by the December 26, 2004, tsunami that killed or left missing about 230,000 people along the Indian Ocean rim and left around 1.5 million homeless.

And the psychological scars are still fresh for many people who lost entire families to the monstrous waves.

Syahputra was selling fish when he felt the 9.1 magnitude quake that triggered the waves. He tried to rescue a neighbour's child before the waves swept her from his arms and carried him for several kilometres, he said.

He was one of 600,000 people in Aceh who lost their livelihoods after the disaster. He is selling fish again in Ulee Lheue, a ghost town after the tsunami but now rapidly recovering with ferries and fishing boats using rebuilt port facilities.

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