This is Nancy-Amelia Collins and I am in Lhungna along the devastated west coast of Aceh, 20 kilometers outside Banda Aceh. There are about 20 people standing around me and they have told me they have just come down from the mountains. It is the first time they have actually come down since the tsunami struck.
Right in front of them is where their village used to be, but there is absolutely nothing left standing. You can see a few foundations, but basically there is just debris everywhere. And these people have been searching through what was once their homes, just looking for anything, anything at all, that they can salvage from this.
They are not finding anything except occasionally bodies or just bits and pieces of junk.
And they are telling me even though the situation is like this, and it is as bad as it is, they still want to come back here. They still want to rebuild. They understand that may take a long time. They understand that it is going to be very hard for them to make a living.
But they all want to come back and they feel this is there home and this is where they belong. And they all say to me, even if another tsunami came, they are not going to worry about it because this is where they were born and this is where they want to die.
