Alamsyah walks around his becak, a motorized rickshaw, with a wrench in his hand. The engine was full of seawater when he found it. The transmission is shot. The canopy that covers the passenger seats was shredded by the wave that hurled the vehicle half a mile inland.

The becak is his livelihood, so Alamsyah is happy to have found it. If he can get it working, he can again start transporting fish to the market, earning money to feed his wife and two children without aid.

Reporters on the Job The Monitor gives the story behind the story.

Get all the Monitor's headlines by e-mail. Subscribe for free.

E-mail this story Write a letter to the Editor Printer-friendly version Permission to reprint/republish del.icio.us [ What's this? ] digg [ What's this? ]

The couple does take some assistance, visiting a local camp in the fishing village of Lampulo that has been carved out of the Hotel Rajawali - a concrete structure that survived. There, they and others receive monthly allotments of rice, sugar, and oil.

But now, Alamsyah has fewer mouths to feed. He found his becak while he was searching for the bodies of his three older children - 14-year-old Rahmat, 9-year-old Risa, and 7-year-old Khalid. Alamsyah knows he will probably never see them again.

But Alamsyah is not the sort to mull the past. While neighbors wait for government-provided housing - barracks that can each house 12 families - Alamsyah rushed back to the flattened wasteland he called home, and started to build again.

Today, his family lives in a small wooden house built of scrap wood, window frames taken from destroyed homes, a door he found someplace, and corrugated tin sheeting as a simple roof.

The land belonged to his brother, a fisherman whose whole family disappeared. Alamsyah knows that he, too, could be swept away by another big wave. But he can't worry about maybes and could-bes.

"This is my brother's land, so if we don't build here, we might lose it," says Alamsyah. "We're starting from zero. If we have enough to eat, and if I can get my becak working, then that is good. If the government wants to build a house for us, that would be good, but I don't think that's possible yet."

The sheer grit of Alamsyah and his wife, Juriah, is strangely reassuring. Where others see complete devastation - Lampulo is a 360-degree landscape of flattened homes, salt-water ponds, and boats washed hundreds of meters inland - Alamsyah sees opportunities. And yet, if he is a hardy entrepreneur, it is only by necessity. "The government is building shelters in other neighborhoods, but they are too far from my work," he says. "I don't know if a tsunami might come again, that is up to God. I just need to take care of my life."

Most homes in the area were shaken to the ground and swept away by one, two, three massive waves, leaving no sign that anyone ever lived here, except for scattered bricks, chunks of concrete, and a few tiled foundations. Yet many people are rebuilding, often in small clusters, claiming territory before it is taken away by the government or allotted to someone else. Most are fishermen or rickshaw drivers, like Alamsyah.

The materials come from homes further inland, solid structures that are still standing but damaged. Some owners have put up Indonesian flags, not out of patriotism, but as an indication that they are still alive and don't want their homes looted.

Inside, on white tile floors, Alamsyah and Juriah sit with their two sons, 2-year-old Reja and 6-year-old Feri, all that is left of their family of seven.

When the earthquake struck, Alamsyah was delivering fish in the city. Feri was with relatives inland. Juriah was in the street, chatting with neighbors about the quake with Reja and her three older children. Then she heard the shouting: Water!

With her children, she ran to the tallest building, a two-story house. Reja was in her arms, but the other three trailed behind on the staircase, the oldest holding on to Juriah's hand. When she reached the second floor, there were 100 people there.

"When the wave came, there were only 15 of us left, and my children [Rahmat, Risa, and Khalid] were gone," says Juriah, as she ties Reja to her hip with a head scarf.

Some fishermen were at sea at the time, unaware of the disaster until they reached shore that evening or later, to find homes destroyed and families scattered or swept out to sea. But they had their boats, and today Lampulo is thriving once more.

"I have heard that the government is going to provide housing for victims," says Juriah. "We don't want to wait for others to build Banda Aceh. We can do it ourselves."

Rugged rebuilders

Gunther Kohl, an engineer at the German government development agency, GTZ, says this rugged individualism is common. "Fishermen are doing what they have always done, they go out and build their own houses," he says.

As chief engineer of GTZ, Mr. Kohl is part of the planning process to construct 12,800 387-square-foot homes in 10 relocation centers. He understands that many families may be impatient, but says that building a large city like Banda Aceh is so complex that the government needs time.

"If the government wants to say that nobody can build within one or two kilometers from the sea, then this means the government has to find new land to build on," says Kohl. "Then land rights have to be sorted out and people will have to be compensated for land they've lost. It's so complex it's unbelievable."

In the meantime, Alamsyah is happy to have a roof over his head. His house has survived almost daily aftershocks, even the major quake on March 28. After one relatively minor shakeup, his family rushed out of the house, in case some of the roofing caved in.

It's not much, but for now, it's home. And his becak is working again, though it still needs some repair before Alamsyah can start his business again.

"We will be here," Alamsyah says with a wry grin. "If I'm still alive, I will be here."