By Simon Gardner
Hambantota, Sri Lanka - Raking through the shattered remains of this once bustling fishing and trading hub on Sri Lanka's south-east coast, survivors of last month's tsunami are desperate to start over.
On Wednesday, the seaside town of Hambantota did just that - reborn in a forest clearing 1,5km inland as precaution against any repeat of Sri Lanka's worst natural disaster.
The new Hambantota will go by the same name, swallowing up a hamlet known until now as Siribopura. Its beaches and Indian Ocean views are gone, replaced by a verdant canopy of treetops.
"I am so happy the town is coming here," said fisherman MJ Raseek after watching President Chandrika Kumaratunga lay the first brick of the first of more than 2 000 new houses the government plans to build here over the next four months.
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"This will give our people a better future. A safer future," he added, tucking a grubby Homer Simpson T-shirt into his traditional sarong. "I'm waiting for the government to give me a boat so I can start fishing again."
The last seaside staging post for tourists bound for a safari holiday in Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve nearby, the majority Muslim town was one of the island's hardest-hit communities.
The December 26 tsunami struck on market day, when hundreds of people from nearby villages had flocked to town. More than 4 500 people died here alone, out of a national tsunami death toll of over 38 000.
Hundreds of decomposing corpses have been pulled out of a lagoon behind the town. Sarees and shirts are still tangled in the branches of trees that the waves dumped there.
Only a handful of buildings, including a gaudy green mosque, survived.
But the rest of the vast patch of rubble where the town used to sit will be bulldozed and turned into a conservation area.
The government has banned any rebuilding within 100 metres of the shore, so there will be no more beachside hotels or cafes - though officials hope tourists will one day return to beaches tarnished by mass death.
"We can't face another tsunami," said Chamal Rajapaksa, Deputy Minister for Plantations and Industry, listening to Kumaratunga address a crowd of locals from behind a massive security cordon - the legacy of two decades of civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels.
"Moving the town here is a precaution we must take," he added.
Heavy trucks and JCB diggers are clearing away trees and bushes to make way for a brand new infrastructure - including a new community hall, bus terminal and sewage treatment plant. Piles of bricks and mounds of sand lie at the ready near plots marked out in chalk.
The government has earmarked 15 towns to be rebuilt from scratch along Sri Lanka's southern and eastern shores, many of which will likely be moved to new sites, Rajapaksa said.
But back among the foul-smelling ruins of the old town, young boys scavenge through garbage for scrap iron to sell, and some locals are angry at the government plan, vowing to stay put on land that has belonged to their families for generations.
"The president came to Hambantota. We are the people who are affected. Why didn't she come to see us," said Sithi Alkanai, 32, whose fisherman husband and two children drowned when 10-metre waves crashed into the town.
"This is my land, I own it. I want to rebuild my house here," she said, standing in front of a blue tent she now calls home.
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