Samantha Brown – Southeast Asian-based journalist and editor

Sri Lanka’s devastated fishermen on Wednesday sent a shipment of fish to the president as they pleaded with people to resume eating seafood in the wake of the Asian tsunami disaster.

At the southern fishing village of Mirissa, where around 300 boats support some 1,300 families, three boats of fishermen returned to sea Tuesday night and sent part of their catch north to the capital Colombo, relief workers said.

The president is due to accept the parcel at 6:00 pm (1200 GMT), they said.

Many of the fishermen here still have boats which they are desperate to use so they can earn a livelihood but they cannot sell their fish due to rumours of them nibbling bloated corpses or being infected with viruses.

"There have been SMS messages going around suggesting that there was a virus in the fish, they even gave it a name, and it spread around like a bushfire," said Belgian Pierre Pringiers, whose company helped organise the president’s fish shipment as a publicity stunt as part of its relief work.

"Look, there are boats out there on the water. Now they have to go out. This is a very small beginning," he said.

Fisherman Lasantha Jayasooriya, 30, told AFP he was afraid to go back out in his boat after the disaster which killed more than 30,000 Sri Lankans but was willing to go because he needed to earn an income.

"There are many fish on the boat today but we cannot send it to the market because nobody will buy it," he said, standing in the shade of one of the damaged boats tossed from the harbour onto high ground like a toy.

"We want to work again if only somebody will buy the fish," he said, adding that a shipment sent to Colombo last week shortly after the disaster was rejected by normal buyers due to a lack of demand.

Around 20 fishermen and their family members were killed in this village alone, along with thousands of others along Sri Lanka’s southern coast, where the fishing of tuna, marlin and mullet and others is a crucial industry.

The fishermen who have survived and their families have no other way to earn an income, Pringiers said.

"If they don’t get back into fishing, they’re in trouble. This whole coastal belt has no revenue at all. We have to get them back to a state of taking responsibility for their lives," Pringiers said.

Nearby, fish sizzled on a coconut-husk fuelled barbecue, as the fishermen cooked up some of their catch rubbed with salt and pepper to eat in front of other villagers and the media to demonstrate its safety.

"We have been in touch with the WHO (World Health Organisation) and they say the fish should be perfectly okay to eat," Pringiers said.

A large number of fishermen who were out at sea in their trawlers only discovered the tragedy when they returned to the devastated coast.

Seafood is a staple for most Sri Lankans and despite the country being an island, it is a net importer of seafood because of the heavy consumption.

Wearing a donated red T-shirt, pale green pleated skirt and rubber thongs, Waruni Delpagodage, 18, ponders her future in the refugee camp her destitute family has fled to in the tsunami aftermath.

"A year. I think my parents will have to stay here for about a year, that’s how long it’s going to take to rebuild our house," she said, standing erect with her hair tied back neatly in a long ponytail.

Delpagodage is one of Sri Lanka’s lucky survivors. Her father, who works in a betting shop, and her mother, a hospital employee, also lived through the horror of the giant waves that smashed into Sri Lanka on December 26.

But she and her 14-year-old brother Vijantha watched as the parents were ferociously ripped away from them in the Asian quake disaster that has killed at least 30,196 Sri Lankans.

"We were so afraid," she said.

The teenagers spent two hours hunting for them, not knowing whether the parents had survived the wave that destroyed their home, their belongings, and for Delpagodage, her most prized possessions: her certificates and her two flutes.

"I feel so sorrowful. I lost my certificates, I had 25, and 10 of them were all-island (national) certificates," she said. One was for second place in a national flute competition.

Lacking water, food and anywhere to sleep, her family and their neighbours — all 85 of them, as two plainclothes police have meticulously recorded in a ledger — camped out in a provincial government office on high ground.

Delpagodage is pinning her hopes on the Sri Lankan government delivering on its promises of help — and on generous international aid.

"The government has a responsibility to rebuild houses for all of us. The president (Chandrika Kumaratunga) said they will take steps to build houses quickly. We think she will do it," she said.

"But I don’t think the government is able to help everyone. A lot of people’s homes were destroyed, so NGOs should help as well, and international help is needed. I think people will help us."

World leaders are due to meet Thursday in Jakarta for a summit to help coordinate global relief efforts for the Asian tsunami victims. More than two billion dollars in international pledges have been made to help deal with the crisis.

Concrete plans for rebuilding seem a long way off however as Sri Lanka grapples with its biggest disaster in living memory. For today, just getting enough food is this camp’s top priority.

An old man, stick-thin, walks up the stairs with a plate of fragrant fish curry. But that is lunch, and the people say they have now run out of dry food: rice, lentils, canned fish. They are not sure who is bringing more, or when.

Sri Lanka’s extensive network of temples, mosques and churches has been tapped to help give an estimated million refugees temporary shelter and to hand out food.

But other camps such as this one have spontaneously sprung up and officials are grappling with keeping track of who needs what, while the threat of deadly diseases breaking out looms large.

"Two toilets and one bathroom for 85 people — it’s not enough," Delpagodage said. One is a 50 metre (yard) walk up a narrow dirt path, the other is a 200 metre hike away.

Although her school is on vacation until January 10, the student — who hopes to be a doctor if her grades are good enough and someone helps pay her tuition — has been trying to keep up with her studies.

But it is noisy, there are no desks, and trying to sleep in a room on a floor with 84 other people is difficult. And then there are the nightmares.

"I hear bad noises in my dreams. I hear people shouting and the sound of the wave: ‘shoooooooo!’," she says.

Her brother Vijantha won’t say whether he dreams about the day the sea gulped down his village: "I’m trying to forget it."

Fishing runs in the veins of N.G. Punchihewa, 71: his father was a fisherman and his grandfather before him.

Punchihewa’s son, too, was carrying on the tradition until the December 26 tsunami struck.

But now the 37 boats that plied the waters night and day off the southern Sri Lankan village of Thotamuna, at the scenic mouth of the Nilwala river, are lying damaged beyond repair and stripped of their nets and equipment.

The roaring killer wave swept one boat a kilometre (half a mile) up the river.

"I am suffering. I cannot believe what has happened," said the sarong-clad Punchihewa as he surveyed what was left of the village, where each boat supported four or five families directly and many more indirectly.

"All the fishermen’s houses are gone."

They were not flimsy structures, but solid brick and tiles. Still, they proved unequal to the force of the tsunami and many are flattened. Punchihewa’s house has a few walls standing but will need to be demolished.

He said he knew a deadly disaster was about to strike when suddenly the ocean receded, sucked out towards the horizon for miles. When he saw the wave rise up, he screamed at his family to run.

They were a few of the lucky who survived.

The tsunami has left about 30,000 dead in Sri Lanka, the Indian Ocean island nation where thousands of families depend on fishing for their livelihood.

"This is my village. I have lived here for 70 years," said a heartbroken Punchihewa. "I have nothing to do. It’s not just me, it’s all the villagers, because they lost everything."

More than 300 bodies have been recovered in this area, squashed under rubble, drowned in their homes or washed into the palm-fringed shore. And still they float in on the relentless surf, or are carried along the river.

Sheets of corrugated iron cover the latest two bodies, an embroidered pillow case hanging on a stick marking the spot for the police, who will eventually come to collect them.

They were too disfigured for the villagers to recognise, but they hope perhaps a relative will spot the ring they gave to a loved one, or the colour of a sari wrapped around the decomposing flesh.

The clinging stink guides those still alive to the corpses rotting under wreckage that towers two metres (yards) high in some areas, a week after the disaster struck. They then inform the teams of soldiers, now focusing on clearing the area, who recover the bodies.

Often they find just a putrefying dog, cat or big fish that was swept onto the land. More than 50 people remain missing.

It will cost Punchihewa, who earned around 25,000 rupees (250 dollars) a month catching tuna, shark and other fish depending on the season, 150,000 rupees to replace his small boat with an outboard engine.

Civil engineer Chandana Galappaththi, 35, has been luckier. He arrived from Colombo at his retired parents’ home on the day of the disaster to find them safe.

He has stayed to help the village clean up and says while aid to rebuild is crucial, the fishermen want new boats and nets so they can help themselves.

"If these people have employment, they can somehow help the rebuilding themselves."

Nihal Priyanthi, 30, lost his mother and three-year-old daughter to the sea. Standing barefoot in puddles left by overnight rain now steaming and stinking in the rising humidity, he said he wanted to get back to work.

"If I can get fishing nets, I am willing to go back to fishing. I need something to start again," he said. His house, directly on the beach, is in ruins and he sleeps in what is left of his boat.

He is worried about proposed regulations to move buildings back 500 metres (yards) from the beach, far from the land that has been in his family for generations.

"This will disturb my fishing. And I have no other options for employment."

Some people however say there is no way they will stay, fearing disaster again.

B.S.P. Somawathie, 65, her long grey hair tied in a neat plait, is one of those who will head inland. She pointed to the toilet block left standing on her land — everything else is wiped out.

Somewhere far from Sri Lanka’s bloodied coastline, with her tour guide son and his family, she hopes start over again.

"I’m very sad," she said.

Most of the villagers are lodged at a crowded refugee camp set up in a college at the nearby town of Matara, where they have access to some food and are sleeping on classroom floors while awaiting help rebuilding.

Teams of South Korean sanitation workers are meanwhile spraying chemicals around Thotamuna’s streets in a bid to prevent cholera and typhoid outbreaks — the next killer threat.

Broken water pipes gurgle. Seagulls squawk. People pick over what is left.

It is a far cry from the relative prosperity these villagers are used to.

"Nobody used to seek food from others here," said the fisherman Punchihewa ruefully.

Sri Lankan Catholics in the southern town of Matara have celebrated the return of a statue that disappeared during the Asian tsunami disaster only to be found days later unscathed.

Around 100 Catholics held mass on Sunday at the Our Lady of Matara Shrine, where some 200,000 Sri Lankan pilgrims typically converge for a major feast in September each year, priest Charles Hewawasam told AFP.

"Everyone loves Our Lady of Matara," he said of the statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus, near the tsunami-ravaged church built across the road from a sweeping beach on the Indian Ocean.

Its waters rose viciously and smashed into the island nation on December 26, creating its worst disaster yet, with a death toll nearing 30,000.

The statue disappeared from its glass encasing when the first wave swept across the church grounds as a congregation of around 100 celebrated mass inside on Boxing Day.

"A 12-year-old boy who saw it disappear says she slipped out of her glass case and headed straight out to sea like an outboard motor," he said of the statue, found by Sri Lankan fishermen in 1907 and whose origins remain unknown.

He said Matara’s Catholic community of around 200 people, 18 of whom were killed and two are missing, believe she kept the sea at bay after the first wave for several minutes before a second struck.

This allowed people to clear away some dead bodies and collect injured people and then flee the scene themselves, he said.

"Her solidarity with the people led to her facing the same struggle as the people, with Jesus, and she came back after the journey with them," said Hewawasam.

The statue was found a few days later hundreds of metres (yards) away in the backyard of a Buddhist resident who returned it to the church, but it was taken to the nearby town of Galle for safekeeping.

On Sunday the statue was brought temporarily back to Matara for mass.

"The people were really happy to get her back, because they were so worried for her," he said, adding that while the jewellery from the statue was taken by the sea, the infant Jesus crown balanced on its head was still there.

The statue is particularly revered because of its chequered history.

When it was first found in poor shape by fishermen in 1907, the bishop of Galle sent it to his home country Belgium to be repainted.

"An atheist (in Belgium) found her and demanded money that we couldn’t afford and refused to pay and he was so angry he smashed her," Hewawasam said.

The pieces were collected, it was repainted, and the bishop collected it personally when he was on vacation in Belgium.

When he arrived in Sri Lanka and retrieved his luggage, he was told the statue had been discarded because the cargo ship was overloaded, but two weeks later it turned up in a parcel, sent by another ship.

Lalith Fernando, secretary to the bishop of Galle — and who survived the tsunami by clinging to a toilet block — said retrieving the statue was the church’s greatest priority when the waters receded.

"The buildings, people’s property, they can be bought again. But this statue is unique."

In the grounds of a college at this southern Sri Lankan town lashed by tsunami a week ago, giant pots of rice and lentils are being cooked over wood fires for the masses crowding into classrooms.

Workers flit around the grassy courtyard and a team of South Korean medics had set up shop in one wing, their fresh faces and cowboy hats starkly contrasting with the downcast appearance of refugees desperate for their help.

Aid is trickling through to Sri Lanka’s battered south, but at levels far below what is required. Crucial food shipments are arriving irregularly, sparking scuffles put under control by armed police.

At Rahula College in southern Sri Lanka’s Matara, 2,000 people are being fed, sheltered and given health care by medics, but as scores of more homeless arrive daily, worker Gunasena Gamage rattles off a list of items urgently required.

"We need vegetables, we have very, very few vegetables, and this is the main problem we face. And we need vegetable oil, mattresses, pillows, mats, women’s underwear, baby powder, feeding bottles, mosquito nets, cups," he said.

"And there’s not enough room. There are so many people, accommodation is really a problem."

Even as relief items started reaching Matara, though slowly, many other affected regions were without any aid thanks to flash floods which made relief work difficult, especially in districts such as Ampara on the east.

In Matara, at Kemagoda temple just outside Dickwella, a smaller settlement further east along a stretch of coastal road hammered by the tsunami and still being cleared of debris, around 1,000 people have been waiting for hours for food to arrive.

Aid worker I.W. Damitha pointed to a mountain of tangled clothes people had rushed to donate but said they had no food to distribute to the people whose homes are still standing but who remain hungry.

"All these people are hoping for something to collect… They have been waiting for five or six hours because we have nothing to give them," he said.

The atmosphere is calm, but scuffles break out when supplies arrive. The crowds are only kept in control by two armed policemen, Damitha said.

An array of soft drink bottles filled with water are kept in the locked store to hand out as well. Asked if the water is clean, a worker shrugs: "It’s somewhat safe."

The World Health Organisation said it was working against the clock to prevent outbreaks of diarrhoea and cholera at the camps and voiced fears that malaria and other mosquito and fly-borne diseases could break out within a week.

"Our main objective is preventing outbreaks," WHO representative to Sri Lanka Kan Tun said during a visit back to Rahuna College.

"The main thing is (to ensure the cleaning up of) garbage. The second is getting enough toilet facilities. And the third is access to clean water."

With most of their houses completely flattened, the refugees will not be budging anytime soon, said aid worker Gamage back at the college.

"The government is planning to rebuild houses within six months, but we don’t know if that is practical. And people are afraid of going home, they are afraid of another big wave," he said.

Fisherman Sheldon Jayasvoora, 34, sitting outside a classroom nursing a bandaged arm injured as he fled the tsunami that pulverised his home, is one of those dependent on the aid getting through.

And even then, his future is uncertain — he is too frightened to return to work on the unpredictable ocean that suddenly rose up and killed thousands.

"But I want to make a living. Whatever I can do to get by, I will do."

Wearing shorts, rubber thongs and a pair of washing up gloves, New Zealander Scott Gardiner is standing in a sewerage drain ankle deep in sludge, joining the huge effort needed to clean up Sri Lanka.

The 29-year-old artist and his girlfriend Bianca Wilks, 27, are among scores of tourists refusing to leave this popular resort village torn apart by last Sunday’s tsunami, which killed nearly 29,000 Sri Lankans.

The couple watched the disaster unfold from their second-storey guesthouse room, with Gardiner immediately recognising that a tsunami was about to hit when big waves rolled in and then the ocean drained back hundreds of metres.

"I was on the beach screaming at people to get back," he said, before they ran for their lives to higher ground. Then they were left grappling with the horrendous destruction — and were overcome with the kindness shown to them.

"These people are the most accommodating people. They took us into their homes, they made sure we had food. And these were people who had lost everything. It was inspiring," he told AFP.

"It’s nice to help because they’ve been so helpful to us."

Wilks and Gardiner have been pitching in along with a bunch of about 60 local surfers leading the charge in Hikkaduwa, who said they have received hundreds of emails from foreigners pledging donations towards reconstruction.

One of the surfers, who gave his name as Mambo and who lost 12,000 dollars worth of stock at his surf school, has been helping coordinate the cleanup, methodically dragging the masses of debris onto the road and sweeping it up.

"The surfers and their families are helping out each other. We want to get back our Hikkaduwa again," he said, pointing out a pair of bandanna-clad Japanese women clearing gutters.

The pair, previous visitors, had booked flights to Sri Lanka as soon as they heard about the disaster.

"We have connections all over the world, and these people have come to help us. Friends are important now," Mambo said.

Frenchwoman Francoise Clottes, 42, is on her 10th trip to Sri Lanka as part of a four-month vacation from her job as a train ticket inspector and was on her way to Cambodia to volunteer as an English teacher when the tsunami hit.

"But I think they need my help here more now," she said, working up a sweat in the tropical sun, and wearing just one rubber glove as she sweeps.

So far, the clean-up here has been almost completely done by locals and volunteers, she said. No armed forces or police, who have been overwhelmed by the terrible extent of the national disaster, showed up until days afterwards.

Even now, Britons Ian and Anna Betts said locals and tourists have been paying themselves for diesel and drivers to get private earthmovers to shift the rubbish from the streets due to a dire lack of official assistance.

"All this money they say on the news is being donated, it’s not getting down here. They could use any trucks. Where are the trucks? Where’s the food?"

The couple, who have friends in hard-hit Thailand they are not sure have survived, said they saw no point leaving.

"We didn’t lose anything. We’re helping out — not leaving like the people on the package tours whose buses have come in to take them out again. We don’t mind because we’re travelling for a long time," Ian said.

New Zealanders John and Linda Hutton also saw no point joining the mass exodus of tourists out of Sri Lanka when they were unscathed.

"We thought once things settle down, we can help. Plus from a selfish perspective, the weather is glorious, the beach is still beautiful, and it’s probably raining in the interior," John said.

"People are devastated and we are so privileged, so why not help?"

Fearful of a bleak economic future, tsunami scared Sri Lankans in this southern holiday resort village that was flattened by the killer sea surges are urging foreign tourists to return.

Nearly all the survivors here depend on foreign tourists who are lured by a coconut palm-studded surf beach and excellent diving.

Many of the locals earn enough during the peak season — right when Sunday’s calamity struck — to get by for the rest of year.

While the horror of recovering and identifying bodies goes on and relatives search for the missing, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans at the periphery of the tragedy are petrified.

Beach masseuse Banda, 36, is distraught.

"I’m going crazy thinking about what to do now," he said, ambling down the main beach.

"I have a family — my mother, two aunties and a brother who I need to help. If I don’t help my family, they are finished.

"When tourists don’t come, we have nothing to do. It’s not only me — everyone in this area."

Sri Lankan government officials claim that nearly 50 percent of the tourists have left the country in the last few days following Sunday’s tsunamis.

There were around 19,000 foreign tourists in the island when the sea surges killed nearly 29,000 people, including over 100 foreigners.

Ravindru Yuhathugoda was standing in the midday sun outside his electronics shop, still at a loss as to what he should do to start getting his life back together, and fretting that the tourists may not return.

"I can’t think," he told AFP.

"Now we are all just looking, looking, looking … I’m afraid. What are we going to do? Everyone has this problem. How are we going to live?" he said, holding an orange handkerchief over his face against the dust.

"Mostly people just aren’t here — they’re all dead."

Helen Kaeferstein has run the Hotel Blue Note for more than 20 years, which unlike many other beachside operations, withstood the tsunami’s onslaught, but had its contents largely ruined.

"All the people who live here, I don’t even know if they are alive and can reopen," she said, drying out salvaged furniture in the debris-strewn garden and shaking her head.

Many guesthouse owners spent big just before Christmas, anticipating a good season, she said. She’s hoping for a return to normal business in one to two years at best, but does not know how they’ll get by in the meantime.

"We have to have aid from the government in order to reopen," said H.W. Kularatehna, who owns a clothes shop that remains standing but was trashed by the sea, which lifted up fishing boats and dumped them outside his back door.

"All the people here earn money from tourists, even the fishermen. We’re helpless, hopeless, actually."

Some tourists however are confident that adventurous backpackers will be back as soon as a few weeks.

"We’ve spoken to friends who are still coming out in a month. If the beach is clean, and there is somewhere to stay and eat, they’ll come," said Briton Anna Betts, who is staying on to help with the daunting mop up.

"It will probably be more for independent travellers, who will want to come here because it won’t be full."

Linda Hutton, a 52-year-old New Zealander, agreed.

"One or two restaurants have been ticking over. And they’re doing a good job cleaning up. If people could come here and support them, it would be great."

Signs of normalcy despite the horror are already emerging, with a few restaurants selling warm beer and basic food.

Rupani Nanayakkara’s family-run restaurant has reopened its tables to patrons amid piles of water-damaged beach clothes piled high on chairs from its downstairs shop.

But the veneer of calm is fragile.

As an unseasonal storm rolled in the waves, Nanayakkara ran up to customers grasping her backpack.

"Excuse me, the waves are very high," she said, gesturing towards the surf, and getting ready to flee.