"Mama, please forgive me for saying this but I think all of us are going to die," she cried as she gazed in terror at the 30 meter wall of water towering over her quiet seaside town, writes Krissie Vitasa, Contributor, Melbourne, the Jakarta Post, Features - October 28, 2007 at http://www.thejakartapost.com/.
Forwarded by Budhi Mulyawan 291007.

Oblivious, her mother immediately gathered the entire family in the second floor of their home.

Fear and panic crawled up her body. Her hands and legs shook uncontrollably as she tightly clung to her 4-year-old brother to find comfort. "If you survive this, promise me you'll take care of your brothers and get your bachelor's degree," her mother pleaded as it were her dying wish.

Outside, the thunderous, roaring crashing of waves ceased the helpless cries of the town's residents. In a matter of seconds, chaos took over the town. Men, women and children ran to escape the extraordinary force of mother nature.

But for some it seemed too late.

Her body was thrown against the gushing water. Waves so powerful, her hands slowly slipped away from her brother's shriveled body. She became numb to the pain as thoughts of losing him crippled her, and so tried to battle these emotions with prayer.

Not knowing how to swim, she struggled underwater.

The first wave passed, the second, then the third.

The waters finally subsided. She found herself alone, clinging onto the trunk of what was once a banana tree.

She floated among an ocean of dead bodies.

Fueled by hope and determination to survive, she wrapped a piece of a dead man's T-shirt around a branch and began to wave it frantically hoping that there was someone left to hear her screaming for help.

After 10 long hours drifting away to sea, her cries were finally answered by the calls of a local fisherman.

***

Three years on, Merlinta Anggilia is still reminded of the exact events that took place the day a tsunami took away almost her entire family.

"It felt as though it was the end of the world," the 19-year-old recalls.

On December 26, 2004, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake under the sea of Aceh, north of Indonesia, triggered a tsunami that killed at least 130,000 people in Indonesia alone. Among the dead were Merlinta's parents and two brothers.

"I didn't find their bodies. I don't know if they survived or not," she says as tears rolled down her face.

For sometime she lost hope but found the one reason to stay strong. Three months after the tsunami, Merlinta was reunited with one of her other brothers, the only other survivor in her family.

"After the disaster, I told myself that I didn't want to go back to school because I'm alone. I have no family. I thought to myself, what is the point of living in this world? But when I saw him again, my spirit was enlightened. He's like my inspiration now. I'm the one he will look at. My position now is a mother, father and sister to him," she says.

And yet up until now, she waits for a miracle to come -- the day God answers her prayers and brings back her family.

Despite losing her loved ones in the disaster, Merlinta is not at all reluctant to tell others about her experiences during the tsunami. In many ways, sharing her story has become a vehicle to release emotional pain as well as gain acceptance, which has allowed her to mature to the woman she is today.

It was on that day that she believes she saw death for the very first time right before her eyes.

"I remember seeing cars on the streets with running engines. Inside were dead people, even babies, with their body parts and insides, blood, scattered all over the place. The situation in Aceh at that time was terrible. You couldn't really do anything," she says.

In addition to high numbers of displaced and dead, Aceh also suffered disastrous damage. All across Merlinta's ravaged town, scraped bare by the waves, are the remains of wooden houses people used to call home. The town she loves so much is barely recognizable.

Old landmarks are gone and yet a mosque in the middle of the town stands tall, and alone. This is where thousands of tsunami victims, including Merlinta, found refuge.

"I stayed there with all the other victims. I even slept with dead bodies. I didn't eat for two days, there was no food, no water, nothing," she says.

For days, they waited for help. Foreign aid, non-governmental organizations and journalists only arrived three to four days after the tsunami struck.

Merlinta considers their arrival as the beginning of a new chapter in her life. On that day, she began her active involvement with social and developmental organizations, such as Medicine Sans Frontiers Switzerland, Care International Indonesia and Aceh Monitoring Mission.

In particular, she helped these NGOs communicate with the tsunami victims by translating English to Acehnese or Bahasa Indonesia and vice versa.

While her enthusiastic involvement allows Merlinta to give back to the Acehnese community, it has also become a form of livelihood.

"I have to work in order for my brother and I to survive. We have to eat and he has to go to school," she says.

Merlinta is a tsunami survivor with power and resilience and yet is vulnerable to the immediate hardships one faces once you lose your loved ones.

The recent Idul Fitri again reminded her with the memory of her parents.

"I want to hug my parents. But I have no parents. I want to go to their grave, but I don't know where they are."

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