INDONESIA: While the flattened cities of Banda Aceh and Meulaboh continue to grab attention, the effect of the tsunami is equally if not more catastrophic on villages in remote areas such as Sirombu on Nias Island, North Sumatra.
Here the wave wiped out 119 people and displaced more than 4000. Five schools, five churches, two mosques, two health centres, 111 bridges and more than 400 homes were destroyed.
Already extremely marginalised, the impact on these people is far greater, sinking them for good below the poverty line.
The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimated that 800 fishing canoes were destroyed on Nias alone.
For these already impoverished fishermen and farming communities, their lives might as well have ended, as they have lost everything.
Nias is predominantly Christian and like most of the islands, including the Mentawai group, it is isolated from Indonesia. Ignored by central government and crippled by corrupt local leaders, Sirombu and Mandrehe are the kind of areas no one ever hears about and few outsiders visit.
Even Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, donated directly to church-based organisations when he visited recently instead of local government, because it is currently being investigated for corruption.
Lives here are lived in a continuing cycle of poverty and neglect where women still die in childbirth.
Seven women alone including their babies died in villages in the surfing paradise of Teluk Dalam just last month.
The majority of people barely finish elementary school and malaria and other diseases randomly kill.
According to Surfaid International, a medical organisation headed by Irishman Brian O'Callahan and one of the very few organisations operating on Nias and the Mentawai islands, these areas face a serious risk of epidemics, with malaria already as high as 25 to 30 per cent in some places.
"We need to get these whole communities under nets," says Dave Jenkins, the medical director and founder of Surfaid International.
"These islands are a dream location for surfers and divers with luxury surf charters offshore," says Jenkins, who set up the organisation after holidaying in the area.
Unable to reconcile himself to the huge discrepancy between what he was doing offshore and the abject poverty that confronted him on land, he rallied friends and colleagues together to start a medical organisation that could improve the health of the communities on the islands.
He says the focus should be on sustainable solutions. However, the current situation calls for an emergency response, especially to curtail malaria which weakens the population through chest infections and malnutrition. His organisation is distributing nets, vaccinating against measles and supplying micronutrients and vitamin A.
Apart from Surfaid International, few aid agencies or organisations work here.
So when the tsunami hit, local community groups did their best to respond to the needs of the displaced and those affected.
Saro Gea, a co-ordinator for the Emergency Response Unit, a church- based organisation, says they are helping the displaced by supplying food, clothes, mattresses, medicines and kitchen goods donated through other partners. But he says they are limited in what they can achieve. They lack volunteers, transport and computers to carry out their work effectively.
In a cramped room which serves as one of the shelters, a cacophony of coughs greets you upon arrival. Here 138 people are living, sleeping and eating on floors, some clearly still in shock, others sick, but all survivors of the wave that swept their homes away.
On these islands life is simple, with people barely earning enough to sustain their families. Now whole fishing and farming villages in Sirombu and Mandrehe have been wiped out for good.
The local market, lifeline for so many livelihoods, was also destroyed. Supply lines are now interrupted and people throughout these islands are facing critical food shortages, as they can't sell or buy their goods. Prices have risen 32 per cent, with sugar almost doubling in the space of three weeks.
Children's education is threatened as parents no longer can afford to send them to school. No one is fishing as their boats were destroyed and all are too afraid and stunned to return to the sea.
Ama Aspirasi Gulo sits alone amid the ruins of what was once his home in Sisarahili, an area accessible only by foot or motorbike, 3 kilometres from Sirombu. Like Ama's, families had lived here for generations.
"It was a peaceful life, all the families had their own economic resources through coconut farming and selling. We enjoyed life even if we were far away from the city," says the 40-year-old father of four, showing me the flattened homes of his neighbours and where they died.
He recounts how the earthquake shook their homes but no one moved as no one anticipated a flooding. But then the waves rose up and enveloped the whole village. "People were crying and shouting to God to come and help them. But God didn't come, only more water," he says, adding that 68 people he knew here died. His family escaped by climbing coconut trees.
Ama is determined not to return here. He plans to rebuild his life somewhere else away from the sea, away from where his forefathers have lived for generations. A whole way of life and culture washed away and gone forever.