Exhibition captures tsunami survivors' tales

The moving stories of tsunami survivors are chronicled in a powerful exhibition which will open in Belfast and Dublin in the New Year.

Nearly 250,000 people lost their lives when the natural disaster hit the Indian Ocean region on Boxing Day 2004.

Christian Aid have brought together children’s art, photography and personal testimonies to highlight the human cost of the tragedy.

One image shows a half-finished bridge outside the town of Nagipattinam in southern India.

Selvamai, 34, graphically described how the construction was used to save lives. “I ran to the flyover and climbed the scaffolding.

“Hundreds of people were trying to climb up. Women could not climb in their saris, and they kept falling.

“Two thousand people climbed on to the bridge. Under it, we could see bodies and people’s possessions and roofs.

“We saw the third wave come. The sea was a dark, grey colour. In all my life, living by the sea, I had never seen it like that,” she said.

Another image is of a graveyard at sunset on the outskirts of the village of Manatkadu, northern Sri Lanka. A total of 73 people are buried in the sand dunes and those who survived lived in a temporary camp run by the UN.

Local woman Desilda Mary, 20, said: “We don’t know what happened to my mother and sister. We can only imagine.”

Another survivor is pictured wearing a red sari in front of her partly destroyed home in Palhayer, southern India. Kajendhri, 28, said: “I thought I was going to die, but I wanted to live so I could see my children again.”

Organisers said one of the most striking aspects of the exhibition is drawings and paintings by children in Jaffna at the northern end of Sri Lanka.

One of the pictures, in brightly coloured crayon, shows a blue sea with people being swept away, while another is of a group of survivors standing on a hill looking out to sea.

The Jaffna Social Action Centre, a Christian Aid partner, is helping children to come to terms with the trauma they experienced when the waves hit.

Every time I see the sea… Life after the Tsunami, also shows how more than £3m (€4.5m) raised by the public on both sides of the Irish border has been spent.

The exhibition will be at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, from January 9 to 16 and Christ Church in Dublin from January 20 to February 3.

:: It can be viewed online at www.christian-aid.ie.