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Tsunami orphan's worst days may be in the past
By Paul Wiseman
GALLE, Sri Lanka - Thushari de Silva grew up wild on the beaches of this southern town. Her family couldn't afford to send her to school.
She spent her days running in the surf, playing loudly with her brothers and getting into trouble.

Then tragedy changed everything.
As the ocean started rising off Galle on Dec. 26, Thushari, then 14, and her two brothers climbed to the roof of their beachside shanty. The water roared in and carried away their parents, who were downstairs trying to lock up: two more dead in a tsunami that claimed nearly 200,000 lives and left an arc of death stretching from Indonesia to Sri Lanka and beyond. Like tens of thousands of Sri Lankans, Thushari had lost everything.

USA TODAY met Thushari on Jan. 5 on what was perhaps the second-worst day of her life. Local child-welfare officials had summoned her older half sister from the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, 70 miles north, to decide what to do with Thushari and her two brothers, Sanjeewa, 17, and Sandayuwan, 10.
Thushari was desperate to join her half sister, Aathiligoda Vithanage Wasanthi, 21. But Wasanthi lived in a crowded factory dormitory in Colombo with no room for the girl. Only Sanjeewa was old enough to go to Colombo and find work; Thushari and Sandayuwan would have to stay behind in government children's homes.

Sobbing and screaming, Thushari begged Wasanthi to take her. In a rage, she tore off the earrings Wasanthi had brought her as a gift and threw them away.
As the first anniversary of the tsunami approaches, Thushari is still living in a government children's home in this fishing and tourist town of 90,000. "I'm sad about my mother and father," she says. And the child who romped in the ocean just a year ago is now terrified of the water.

The tsunami's devastation still marks Thushari and thousands of others here, but in many ways the teenager's life has changed for the better. She is attending school for the first time and has begun to read and write. Scrawny and disheveled in January, she has put on weight and looks neat, her hair in black ribbons and braids. "She fatter and she's prettier," her sister Wasanthi says. "She's much better off than she was at home. Her mother didn't send her to school. Now she is getting educated."

In some ways, Thushari is a typical teenage girl: She giggles uncontrollably and wears a T-shirt that proclaims: "I love horses." In the confusion last January, officials had said she was 12. Thushari, who was 14 then, is now 15.
The Senehasa Children's Home, where Thushari lives with 30 other girls, has opened a bank account for her: The government deposits 1,000 rupees ($10) a month and individual donors give more. A Sri Lankan couple started sending money to Thushari after the couple's relative in the United States read USA TODAY's account of her story. Officials hope she will have enough money to get off to a good start when she has to leave the government home by age 18. So far, she has more than $300 in savings - not bad in a country where labourers earn $50 a month.

So in at least one way Thushari is doing better than many other victims: She has a permanent place to stay and doesn't have to worry about where she's going to get her next meal. Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have been unable to return to work; they depend on aid for their basic needs. Nine hundred Sri Lankan children lost both parents to the tsunami. Only 10 - including Thushari and her brother Sandayuwan, now 11 - remain in government homes. Nearly all the rest have found refuge with relatives, says Yasmin Haque, an official with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Colombo.

Reports that child traffickers and pedophiles were abducting child tsunami victims proved exaggerated, but worries remain. Child-welfare officials in Galle refused to let USA TODAY take photographs of Thushari or the girls' home.
(Courtesy USA Today)

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