Kids show resilience in tsunami aftermath

"I play cricket in the afternoon and then I don't think about the tsunami," says Pradeep. "I think about the tsunami when I have free time, and hope it won't come again. But I don't think about it when I'm playing cricket or watching cartoons."

Chamika Madhusan, who plays 50 feet from the water where he has lived all his 11 years, says he forgets Dec. 26 when his friends are around. "I don't want to go swimming or be a fisherman anymore," says Chamika, whose father is now an unemployed driver and whose mother sews. "I'm only afraid of the ocean now when I'm alone."

"I saw big waves come falling over walls and houses," says Gathmini Vihanga Vithanage, a third-grader in Galle, "Tsunami destroyed everything in my house ... school books, toys, and our two pet ducks, love birds, and fish tank. I'm very sad."

An Indian Navy medical team brought a psychologist to Galle who tells reporters that in the days after the tsunami, children were extremely anxious and some did not speak.

Many children also have not been told of parents or family that have perished. Shenan, for example, was told that his mother and two sisters swam away, but will come back someday.

What's unhealthy, most informed adults agree, is allowing kids to run unsupervised for too many days or weeks in environments or landscapes that often look as if they've been carpet-bombed. The school holiday period in which the tsunami hit will end on Jan. 10.

Kingsley Wickramaratne, governor of south Sri Lanka, affirmed this week that tents will be set up near schools that are destroyed, and that children will be required to attend classes starting on Jan. 10, as normal.

Children's advocates are encouraging parents here to reestablish normal routines for their children. "What children mostly need in a traumatic situation such as this is some normalcy," says Unicef chief Carol Bellamy after visiting refugee children in the ethnic Tamil region north of Sri Lanka. "...Being able to play, that's what children like to do. Going to school. That's the best thing."

But there are other reasons to return to school next week. One is that, of 14 young people between 5 and 17 interviewed this week, including two young Buddhist monks, none actually knew what a tsunami was, and only three could say clearly what an earthquake was. There is little idea of how elementary geophysics works, and little understanding of maps and laws of nature. Only two children actually say their parents discussed the tsunami with them. One local father says that it is not customary in Sri Lanka's rural areas for young children to participate in family discussions with elders.

With his back to the ocean, Chamika says he doesn't know why the wave came, "but I would like to learn. I hope they will teach this in school now."

Some teachers interviewed say they didn't know what a tsunami was either, but that curricula will probably adjust. An English teacher in Marissa says she used to have kids write out English language news, but dropped the assignment since kids disliked news. Now, she says, parents and students both have approached her asking that news programs be put back.

The one agreement this week among children is that no one wants to brush up against another tsunami, and that telling coastal citizens ahead of a wave makes good sense. Shenan's cousin, who is in her 20s, says "the Sri Lankan people have no system to warn them of destruction."

Rangika, too, hopes for more warning. "I think the wave could happen again, and it is better if someone would tell us," she says.

But Rangika is not someone who ponders these things for too long. Instead, she treated reporters and dozens of family members to another rendition of "Twinkle, twinkle," her small voice heard around the wreckage: "How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky...."

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