A 14-year-old Indonesian girl who was swept away in the
devastating 2004 tsunami has been reunited with her family after seven years,
her parents said Friday.
An Indonesian girl separated
from her family during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has been reunited with her
relatives after seven years living as a street child, her parents said Friday.
Mary Yuranda, who is now 14,
showed up at a cafe in the city of Meulaboh, in the tsunami-battered Aceh
province, looking for her parents.
She was reunited with them on
Wednesday after a local taxi driver identified her family from details she had
provided, ending a seven-year ordeal in which she lived with a widow who forced
to beg on the streets.
"When she saw her mother
she yelled 'mama' and ran toward her," her father, Tarmius, told AFP by
telephone.
"Both of them hugged each
other and cried," he said.
Mary's mother, Yusnidar, said
her daughter had grown so much that she had not immediately recognised the
girl.
"The birth marks on her
belly, plus a mole and a scar on her face proved that the little girl was
mine," said Yusnidar, 35.
"I cannot tell you how
grateful I am," she added.
The parents, who said the girl
did not want to speak to reporters and was recovering from frequent beatings by
the widow, said Mary separated from them after the family was swept away during
the the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
The widow found the lost girl
and took her to the provincial capital Banda Aceh, renamed her 'Herawati' and
made her work as a beggar, handing out frequent beatings to keep the girl
obedient.
Last Tuesday, Mary refused to
beg any longer, enraging the widow who put here on a bus to Meulaboh.
The area was among the hardest
hit during the disaster, and Mary's father recalled how the family were torn
apart by the massive waves.
"We were all in a pick-up
truck, trying to out race the big waves that were headed our way," Tarmius
said.
"We had hardly driven out
of the village when we were hit by the first big wave," he recalled.
The truck with the family of
two daughters and a baby boy was swept several kilometres away and came to a
stop only after hitting a two-storey house.
"We tried to climb on top
of the house, but my wife and baby got trapped between the car and the house
building.
"I managed to get my
daughters on top of the house and grabbed the baby just before another wave
washed away my wife and daughters," he said.
"When I returned home that
night I tried to find my wife and two daughters," he said, adding that he
had found his wife the next day.
The pair began a search for the
lost girls, traveling to different districts whenever there was word of
survivors being found.
Their eldest daughter is still
missing.
In December 2004, a giant
9.1-magnitude quake off the coast of Aceh province on the northern tip of
Sumatra triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that claimed 220,000 victims,
with Indonesia accounting for three-quarters of the figure.
AFP
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