"How can one give aid without imposing themselves upon a village and a culture?"
-Shivana Naidoo

"I do not know if I saw hope or dreams or even recovery, but I did see a man face a force of destruction to catch his own lunch."
-Sheela Prasad

"I went to help, expecting to see people paralyzed in the backdrop of a turbulent ocean."
-Rupal Soni

"If you are going to get sick in a place full of strangers, there is no better spot on earth than India."
-Anup Patel

December 26, 2004, changed many people's lives in India and the surrounding areas when the massive tsunami hit. It was swift, without discrimination and devastating. As scientists continue to examine its impact, the affected families have been dealing with the tragic after-effects. It's nearly two years later and roads are still washed away, villages vanished into the ocean may never be rebuilt, and the human loss is still a daily reality for so many. Shivana Naidoo, Sheela Prasad, Rupal Soni, and Anup Patel, all Indicorps Fellows in their twenties, volunteered in the tsunami-affected areas of Tamil Nadu within a month after the tsunami struck. They were part of a year-long initiative to collect and facilitate the sharing of information between the government, NGOs, and villagers to help better coordinate tsunami rehabilitation efforts. Here are excerpts-in their own words-of their stories of sadness, courage and hope from the front line.

A Boy With a Nintendo
By SHIVANA NAIDOO

NAGAPATTINAM, Tamil Nadu-Of all of the images of donated objects, one stands out most clearly in my mind: A little boy, sitting on top of a collapsed bright yellow emergency relief tent, belly down and forehead wrinkled in concentration as he tried his luck advancing to the next level on a Nintendo game boy. A few kids wandered toward him, slightly interested, before tottering off to play with the more interesting sticks and sand.

At first I was alarmed. What would happen to this little boy when the battery died? What would he think when he saw the little images of Mario and Luigi being eaten by a large tropical plant? How was he the only one that had received this precious gift that my own brother back in the United States would ask Santa Claus for? Were there politics that led to his being chosen as the recipient of this token toy of the West? How can one give aid without imposing themselves upon a village and a culture? How can aid be best suited for the group receiving? Can aid hurt?

Just when I was about to lean over and attempt to convince him that the sticks and sand would be my entertainment of choice, a rumbling of shouts and screams from behind caught my ear. One child had miraculously received a full stack of tiffins, carrying a complete South Indian meal. He was running furiously to escape a crowd of hundreds of hungry children that tried in vain to snatch it from him. They nearly trampled over the boy with the Nintendo, who remained unnerved and frantically pressing his thumb to jump to the next level. I could not help but smile; these kids still knew what was best for them.

Before I left for Tamil Nadu, I had worked with my sponsoring NGO, Manav Sadhna and F.D. Ahmedabad Municipal schools, to collect money from local schools to give aid to tsunami victims. In one school, all of the students had worked together to create poster collages of the images of the tsunami. One poster had juxtaposed two popular images together, the hands of children who were victims of the tsunami and outstretched in rigor mortis, and the hands of adult tsunami survivors outstretched to receive aid. The hands of the living and of the dead looked so similar. Without the captions, it would have been difficult to tell which was which. I wanted to believe that they were all reaching out for help and receiving what they needed-the survivors support and the victims peace.

(Shivana Naidoo, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, worked in Gujarat to use the inspiring power of music as a tool to promote non-traditional learning and communal harmony, as well as generate awareness of the benefits of music and arts education.)

Self-Help Is the Best Help
By SHEELA PRASAD

CUDDLECORE, Tamil Nadu-What I saw was just as disturbing as the images of people turned animals in the wake of disaster. I saw no flailing, running, pushing or screaming. Instead, I saw a lack of energy, a lack of life. I saw men, strong and proud from years of self-sufficiency on the ocean, squatting idly at the entrances to the villages, looking bored and lost. In every village, I asked what people do all day. "Nothing," they would say. "We are bored, waiting."

They waited far from the shoreline, in chokingly hot temporary shelters made of tin and mica. They were waiting for the government to give them money, or at least advice, on how to repair their boats and livelihoods; waiting to be back on the sea; waiting to move past the tsunami, the waves and the lives they lost in that fateful half-hour.

In one village, I saw something I had not seen before-a man wading in the ocean. Many of the villagers, children, women and men, were too scared to enter the sea again. I was at another villager's house-where she was showing me the mark the tsunami water had left on the walls, the color of dried blood, and similarly sanguine water coming from her well- when through the palm trees, I saw him.

I saw him staring out at sea, sarong rolled up to embrace the lapping water on his legs. I wondered what he was thinking. I thought that, like me, he must have been contemplating how these dancing waves could be so destructive. Perhaps he was searching for those things that the water had dragged away, for clay pots and televisions, and for books and toys swimming through the foam. Perhaps he was entranced by the rhythm of the ocean.

He suddenly looked down, and jerked his body backwards. A fish, attached to a thin line, flailed in the sand. It registered. He was fishing without a boat, without a crew, with just a line and the experience of a lifetime at sea. He was not just thinking, as I had suspected. I do not know if I saw hope or dreams or even recovery, but I did see a man face a force of destruction to catch his own lunch. I saw him doing, actively rebuilding today.

(Sheela Prasad, a graduate of Brown University, worked in Tamil Nadu.)

TLC in Adversity
By ANUP PATEL

KARNATAKA, India-I spend a half-hour trying to rally some fisherman to join us but they look at me fuzzily and detached. But there are 15 children more than willing to flex their muscle; their zeal and willingness to help compensate for the lack of "manpower." So we began hacking at a tree branch blocking the entrance of a house.

Naren, the owner of the house, perhaps feeling a little guilty that a nine-year old boy is trying to saw off a branch with a machete that is as big as the child's arm, decides to join our efforts. After hacking away for an hour in the smoldering sun, my bones become weary and my head is dizzy. I look around and see large heaps of debris burned in every direction making carbon dioxide as abundant as oxygen. Suddenly, breathing becomes an exhaustive task. I find a shaded area to collapse and remove my gloves and a pile of dry salt synthesizes in my hand.

Naren continues to chop away, unhindered by any element of nature, bearing unlimited strength and energy. He becomes the backbone of our relief efforts. Naren not only helped us clean other houses but he also recruited other villagers to join our activities.

I spent the last two days shivering in sweat in a hotel bedroom suffering from what apparently is known as dengue fever. I wasn't able to eat an ounce of food and could barely hold down a glass of water before sprinting to the bathroom. I often had trouble keeping my spinning head up. There were moments when I would forget where I was and my hallucinations made me lose touch with reality.

Even though I faced some unpleasant symptoms, I consider my illness to be a blessing. Villagers who don't speak a word of English were willing to take me to the hospital, wait two hours, and afterwards carry my luggage to the hotel room, book my bus ticket and bring me food. I am pretty confident that these villagers didn't even know my name. If you are going to get sick in a place full of strangers, there is no better spot on earth than India.

(Anup Patel, a graduate of New York University, worked in rural Karnataka to assist villagers develop innovative marketing methods for non-timber forest products that supplement family income.)

How I Espied Resilience
By RUPAL SONI

CUDDALOE, Tamil Nadu-When the dust settled, I felt like my most powerful contribution was simply listening to the stories of people. Survival. Faith. Loss. Families reunited. Neighborhoods leveled. People from all over the world coming to help. Some giving with hidden intentions. Fame. Funding. Proselytization. Most others giving altruistically. Giving everything they could. Everything they had.

Ranjit, a fisherman, lived in MGR Thittu (Tamil for island), just off the coast of Tamil Nadu. He had seen much more of the world than I had: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong. He could not have been more than a decade older than me. He was neither poor nor rich. He was content, satisfied with the things that the world offered him, with the lands that life had shown him. His home was in line with a sandbar, the only thing separating his life from the ocean. He offered to take me to his island. He told me he would show me where his house used to stand.

When the waters had come, he had been on his boat. He survived the first wave and got his family onto the boat just before the second wave crashed. He told me he did what he could, saved what he could. His wife. His children. The clothes he was wearing. Somehow, his mobile phone, too. The surges of water took everything else. His boat. His home. His parents.

I went to help, expecting to see people paralyzed in the backdrop of a turbulent ocean. Instead, I found a calm, peaceful ocean and a powerful resilience in the people on its shore. I found people who refused to forfeit control of their lives, and I left the coast knowing that they would be fine.

(Rupal Soni, a graduate of the University of Illinois, helped create a rural design school intended to bolster the basic design and marketing skills of rural artisans in Kutch, Gujarat.)