Girl Lost In 2004 Tsunami Back With Family
The girl's mother said she easily recognised her daughter
9:33am UK, Saturday December 24, 2011
An Indonesian girl who was washed away in the Indian Ocean tsunami seven years ago has been reunited with her parents who gave up hope of ever finding her.
Earlier this week, Wati, 15, walked into a cafe in Meulaboh, a town in Aceh province, and said that she had been found and "adopted" by a woman shortly after the wave hit.
She said she had been forced to beg on the streets but was kicked out when she stopped bringing in money.
Yusniar binti Ibrahim Nur, Wati's motherShe has her father's face. Then I saw the scar over her eye and mole on her hip and I was even more sure.
Wati then set out to find her family but had very little information to help her - just the name of her grandfather Ibrahim.
Someone at the cafe tracked down a man by that name, and the man - unsure if she was actually his granddaughter - quickly summoned her parents.
"When I saw my mother, I knew it was her. I just knew it," said Wati, who was given that name by the woman who found her. Her original name is Mary Yuranda.
The tsunami on Boxing Day in 2004 killed 230,000 people across a dozen nations and caused billions of pounds worth of damage.
It hit the province of Aceh, closest to the epicentre of the magnitude 9.1 quake that created waves 30 feet (10m) high, the hardest.
With tens of thousands of bodies never recovered in the province, many people continue to cling to hope of finding lost loved ones, putting up fliers or ads in newspapers.
Mary and her father Tarmius
But reunions are extremely rare and often not officially confirmed.
Wati's mother, Yusniar binti Ibrahim Nur, 35, said she did not need a DNA test to prove the girl was hers.
"She has her father's face," she said, adding that she had stopped believing she would ever see her daughter again.
"Then I saw the scar over her eye and mole on her hip and I was even more sure."
Wati and her father had different accounts of what happened on the day of the tsunami.
The teenager says she remembers her father putting her into a boat with her sister, who is still missing and presumed dead.
The father says that before the family was separated, he put both of his daughters on the roof of their house.
