A teenage Indonesian girl swept away in the Indian
Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day seven years ago has been reunited with her family.
Fifteen-year-old Wati was eight when the devastating tsunami wiped out the
village of Ujong Baroh in Sumatra’s Aceh province. Her family survived the
giant tidal wave but little Wati was carried away. The last time her mother saw
her was when the water carried the little girl away. She was desperately
clinging to her three children in an attempt to keep them all together, but her
efforts were in vain as she lost her grip on Wati. Yusniar never thought she
would see her daughter alive again. Wati’s family made several attempts to find
her but no one reported seeing her alive.
A miracle happened last Wednesday when her
grandfather Ibrahim, who lived in another town, got a visit from an
acquaintance who was with a teenage girl. Wati had visited the old man in his
coffee shop. She told him she was trying to get back to her village but did not
know the way. Ibrahim suspected the teenager might be his long-lost
grand-daughter but she could not remember any of her parents’ of relatives’
names, except Ibrahim’s. Wati’s identity was confirmed by her parents several
days later from a mole and a scar above her eyebrow that she got when she was
six years old. It is still unclear what happened to Wati in her seven-year
absence. The deadly tsunami killed more than 150,000 people in several Indian
Ocean nations.
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