After the tsunami, kids find their way forward - with helping hands

The drawings show square houses, green trees, and a big yellow sun rising over blue ocean. In some, stick figures are running or swimming - or drowning.

Anda Nita, a 4-year-old tsunami survivor, looks up from his paper. What's he drawing? "Mountain," he says, and goes back to sketching more humps.

"They always draw the mountains," sighs Prawoto, a social worker who runs a play group for around 50 children at a refugee camp here. To the kids, many of whom lost family members as well as their homes in the Dec. 26 tsunami, mountains provided an escape from surging ocean.

Prawoto, who started the play group, says drawing gives kids a chance to express feelings about the giant waves that uprooted their lives. It's also a way to voice darker fears of an uncertain future, and all that was left behind.

It's an approach that has paid off in other tsunami-affected like Sri Lanka and Thailand. Experts in child protection and psychological counseling say that most children can slough off horrific memories that would haunt many adults, and can find solace in play.

"What we've found is that [children] have been really willing to discuss their experience. It's very helpful. It helps us to understand what's on the inside," says Charlie Melvin, a psychosocial counselor at Save the Children, a US charity.

A tiny percentage of children, though, may require specialized trauma counseling in the future. To make sure such cases are identified, Indonesia is training around 1,800 teachers at 612 schools across Aceh in social psychology and trauma awareness. Even if no cases emerge, teachers will be better equipped to deal with the tragedy's aftermath, say educators.

"You don't need to talk about tsunami all the time. But if the children do want to tell their stories, listen to them," says Abdul Aziz, an education officer at UNICEF, which is supporting the training.

Of the $960 million pledged in US government tsunami aid, $52 million has gone to support programs in Indonesia. A "good portion" of this amount is earmarked for psychological activities, according to Betina Moreira, a spokesman for USAID in Indonesia. The scale of the tragedy and its impact on the mental health of survivors make it a priority area.

"The number of families broken up, children left without parents, and parents left without children is much greater than any other disaster we've dealt with in Indonesia," she says.

For remaining family members, separation is difficult. Some parents have been reluctant to let their children attend school and play groups since the tsunami struck. Or they wait outside during class, afraid to be away from their children, who often share their parent's anxiety and find it hard to concentrate, say educators.

This fear is understandable, given the tsunami's devastating impact on Aceh's young generation. Aid workers estimate that at least one-third of the 235,000 people listed as dead or missing in Indonesia were children who were unable to overcome the giant waves.

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