Family torn apart by tsunami is reunited

AN INDONESIAN girl who was swept away in the Boxing Day tsunami seven years ago spoke yesterday about how she broke down in tears after tracking down her parents, who had long lost hope of finding her alive.

The 15-year-old showed up in Meulaboh earlier this week, saying that not long after the wave hit she was “adopted” by a woman who called her Wati and forced her to beg, sometimes beating her.

When the teen stopped bringing in money, she was told to go and find her parents.

She turned up in a cafe in her home town, which had been devastated by the disaster when she was eight, only knowing her grandfather’s name.

But she eventually tracked her parents down with the help of a local taxi driver.

“When I saw my mother, I knew it was her,” she said yesterday. “I just knew.”

With tens of thousands of bodies washed to sea in that province alone, many families continue to cling to hope of finding lost loved ones.

Yusniar binti Ibrahim Nur, her mother said: “She has her father’s face.

“And when I saw the scar over her eye and mole on her hip, I was even more sure.”

Wati remembers her father putting her into a boat with her younger sister, long presumed dead, and then getting separated. She says she remembers being surrounded by water and crying. Her father says he put both of his daughters on the roof of their house.

“Maybe she fell into the boat, maybe someone helped her. I just don’t know,” he said.

“I just thank God my prayers have been answered,” Wati said. “For years, I searched everywhere. I’d really given up.”

The tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations hit Aceh – closest to the epicentre of the magnitude-9.1 quake that spawned the towering waves – the hardest.