In the fishing villages of Tamil Nadu on
India's southern tip, life has followed the ebb and flow of the tide for
generations.
Fishermen bring their catch in to shore
where buyers haggle for a good price and sell it on at market. Women lay
the fish out to dry in the sun. What people here know of the sea, its currents,
its fish, its moods, they learnt from their ancestors.
Yet, within a few hours, the tsunami swept away centuries-old traditions. The seismic blast of the Boxing Day earthquake has altered currents, the anatomy of the seabed, perhaps even fishing grounds.
Starting over
These fishing communities are hard-working people, not predisposed to analysing their plight.
Prince David, Tearfund's Regional Advisor in India, explains. 'There's a sense of people accepting this as their fate. I haven't seen any anger against God. People are just looking for ways and means to survive.'
Hard-working fishermen don't find it easy to accept handouts either. But many of them lost everything.
Local organisations involved in distributing emergency food in the first weeks after the disaster moved quickly on to help people regain their independence.
The Discipleship Centre, with which Tearfund works in partnership, has provided cooking equipment and storage containers, even in the relief camps. It has also set up food- and cash-for-work schemes involving local people in planting trees, rebuilding homes.
And two other Tearfund partners, Eficor and the Christian Missions Charitable Trust, are building homes and providing fishermen with new boats and twine to mend nets.
Stunned silence
People still have a long way to go, but they've come a long way too.
Prince David thinks back to what he saw along the southern coastal road a few days after the tsunami. He'd been involved in the Gujarat earthquake of 2001 and the 1999 Orissa cyclone - but nothing could have prepared him for this.
'We drove for miles and found no people. Villages were like ghost villages. You just had to move 300m or 400m from the sea and people were huddled in temporary shelters. The silence was quite deafening.
'It happened on a Sunday and a lot of children were playing by the seaside. If they'd been in school, there would have been fewer deaths. Everyone had a story of death.'
Pulling together
Prince David has travelled widely as he's assessed local organisations' capacity to respond and the kind of support Tearfund could offer them.
He's been impressed not only by people's resilience but also by their willingness to help one another - and none more than the nuns of Kanyakumari district.
The Stella Maris Sisters, who work in partnership with Discipleship Centre, didn't hesitate to share with the 2,000 people around them whose villages had been wiped off the face of the globe.
'The head is a small lady in her late-60s, extremely gracious and very devout who simply opened the gates of her institution to let people in. The nuns fed them from their own rations.'
Holes in the net
Prince predicts Tamil Nadu will be back on its feet economically 'within three years'.
Yet, there will be those who fall through the net. Prince remembers a young mother with young children whom he met at the Stella Maris centre. She had lost all their relatives, including her husband.
'She has to bring up those two children but she has no skills or resources. If she has nothing to fall back on, she is probably going to fall by the wayside into something like commercial sex work.'
There is also widespread concern about India's remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands where the relief effort is still making slow progress.
The Indian government is limiting access to some islands which are not only geopolitically important but also anthropologically significant because of the primitive tribes inhabiting them. Thousands are still living in relief camps where Tearfund partner the Disaster Co-ordination Committee is providing food and essentials.
God at the centre
When news of the tsunami hit the TV headlines, Prince had just returned from church where he'd been preaching about putting Christ at the centre of our life.
The importance of practising what he preached on Boxing Day has never been more real.
'It was terribly confusing because you've got up to give this talk that people have thanked you for and then there's this disaster which sweeps people into the sea. I remember thinking: "Does what I said really mean anything?"
'Emotionally I have felt drained when I've seen pictures of human bodies being moved by machines: that kind of thing scars you. But God has lifted us up. Nobody wanted this disaster but I'm grateful to God for giving us this opportunity to serve.'