This is Blang Pon. The village of survivors. Five years ago it was unpopulated fields. Today it is a place of roads, power and plumbing where city people from Banda Aceh have turned themselves into rural farmers to start a new life out of harm’s way and they never have to return to the city of death.

At the primary school built by CARE Australia — and which like everything in the instant village of Blang Pon was opened in 2009 — the students learn their origin story from live-in teachers brought in from Jakarta and Banda Aceh.

“They learn that the tsunami is why we moved here and because NGOs from other countries built the school,” vice-principal Raziah told the Sunday Herald Sun.

Villager Hasballah Ibrahim is one of those who cannot get far enough away from his memories of that horrible day.

Hasballah was a fisherman in Banda Aceh before the tsunami rendered it a watery grave for 167,000 souls. He lost his mother and two siblings in the disaster but he and his own family managed to move to higher ground and survive.

Their house destroyed, they lived in a tent city with other homeless survivors for two years before Hasballah got work with CARE building houses in Blang Pon, and eventually moved in to one. Now he is a farmer growing cocoa, mangoes, bananas and papaya, and never wants to­ ­­work the sea again.

“I never even think about it. I wanted to move away from the coast in case it happened again. A new start for the future,” he said.

A student in class at the Blang Pon school. Picture: Alex Coppel

“It’s better now. We are happy and so grateful to the (aid agencies) and Australia for helping the people of Aceh.

“If no (aid agencies) came it would be maybe even worse for me than living in a tent. I might be homeless in the jungle.”

The tragedy of the Boxing Day tsunami hit home to Australians and not just because 26 — all but two in Thailand — died away from home.

Here was a humanitarian disaster of almost inconceivable scale in our region and on our doorstep.

Ordinary Australians reacted by opening their hearts, purses and wallets.

The Australian Government organised a $1 billion assistance package for Aceh and Nias Island.

Australian mum and dad donors gave $380 million to tsunami relief and recovery efforts including $40 million to CARE.

The children of Blang Pon Primary School, which CARE Australia helped to build. Picture: Alex Coppel

The reaction was the same worldwide. In all, an estimated $14 billion was donated across the globe, $4 billion of which was from individual donors.

On the ground the massive cash injection meant the rebuilding of schools, hospitals, roads, ports, houses and clean water supplies, as well as training, scholarships, and business loans.

“Ten years on from one of the worst natural disasters in history, the generosity of so many Australians is still being felt in Aceh, Indonesia, ground zero of the Boxing Day tsunami’s devastating impact,” CARE Australia CEO Dr Julia Newton-Howes said.

“Babies are being born safely, lives have returned to normal, and schools, clinics and houses have been rebuilt by CARE, thanks to the support of Australians.”

In Blang Pon CARE Australia hired local workers to grade roads into the countryside, build the village’s 250 houses and connect plumbing from a giant concrete tank, fed by mountain springs, to taps in each of the homes.

CARE purchased power poles and electrical wires and Indonesian government connected them to the young village that is now dotted with satellite dishes.

Hasballah’s 11-year-old daughter Sari attends the Blang Pon school where, in new classrooms set among cornfields, the 74 students learn Indonesian, science, reading and writing.

Hasballah Ibrahim, Sari, Vita, Ahmad Farici, Nurbaidah and Ikbal in the village of Blang Pon, where CARE Australia helped to rebuild the village’s houses. Picture: Alex Coppel

The lively kids play soccer and badminton on their morning break. The boys want to grow up to be, in order of preference, soldiers, police, fruit farmers, and then teachers.

The girls, the teachers tell us, are likely to marry, have children and not enter the workforce.

Sari’s favourite subject is English and she reads an English dictionary in her free time.

She was just a baby when the waves came and remembers neither Bandah Aceh nor the horror.

She loves the lush beautiful scenery of the family’s new home in Blang Pon and the cheeky monkeys of the forest.

Hasballah tells his daughter about the Boxing Day tragedy but she can’t imagine it and when asked what she knows about the tsunami says “nothing.”

The usually unassuming people of Aceh are effusive in their praise for countries like Australia who came to the aid of their disaster-ravaged community.

Midwife Sinarti tried to get away from Banda Aceh and its memories but return to help those still recovering there. Picture: Alex Coppel

A plaque on a concrete sculpture of waves at the Aceh Thanks The World memorial park remembers the “vicious act of nature” visited on the Indonesian island. The English translation states: “Grieves and sorrows haunted the people of Aceh … Help and assistance came from volunteers, governmental and non-governmental … and the armies local, national and international.”

In another part of the park where children play on seesaws amid market stalls a different plaque states “Our deepest gratitude to the Commonwealth of Australia. Thank You and Peace.” Australian aid workers have struck up lifelong friendships with those they met in the ravaged nation and village children have become pen pals with their new overseas friends.

Some tsunami survivors, like midwife Sinarti, tried to get away from Banda Aceh and its memories but were compelled to return to help those still recovering there.

Ten years ago Sinarti was working at a 24-hour medical clinic in the Aceh capital, giving stitches to a patient injured in the earthquake that preceded the tsunami, when the waves hit.

Sinarti refused to leave until the stitching was complete believing that if she helped others God would help her.

Her patient was swept away by the wave as he got on his motorbike to leave and the water carried Sinarti half a kilometre away.

Her leg was severely gashed on a tin roof but she was able to grab onto a tall tree, staying there wounded and bloody, for five hours until it was safe.

After the tsunami local woman Ernawati made an application to CARE and was given timber to extend her roadside stall and products to sell in it. Picture: Alex Coppel

Sinarti was sent to the Indonesian capital of Jakarta for medical treatment.

She never intended to return to Banda Aceh but relented when locals begged her.

“I never thought the health centre would be rebuilt. I never thought I would come back to Aceh,” she said.

“Thank God for international aid for help to build a new health centre bigger than before,” Sinarti said.

“The community now feels friendly and happy with countries like Australia.”

As a CARE project a two storey concrete clinic was built on the site of the pre-tsunami wooden one-level clinic, and 135 surrounding houses.

A decade after the waves, Sinarti now sleeps upstairs and helps treat 50 patients and pregnant mothers a day at whatever hour they ring the doorbell.

Nur Usman, with son Khairuin, who started his fish business in 1976 when he was 20, worries there could be another tsunami but refuses to leave his village. Picture: Alex Coppel

In the nearby seaside village of Lampulo 465 new houses painted in pastel colours — more than half the village — have been rebuilt by CARE.

It was here the waves destroyed Nur Usman’s business (boiling, sun-drying and boning hauls of tuna as big as one tonne) and killed all 15 of the fish factory’s workers.

“We felt happy when some agencies like CARE helped to make it sustainable for us,” he said.

“Without them it would have taken a much longer time to rebuild.”

Usman, who started his fish business in 1976 when he was 20, worries there could be another tsunami but refuses to leave his village.

“This is my land. I belong here.”

Other help came in the form of short term business grants to get the needy back on their feet without becoming reliant on handouts.

The Lampu'uk Mosque, which was the only building left standing in this area when the Tsunami hit. Picture: Alex Coppel

After the tsunami local woman Ernawati made an application to CARE and was given timber to extend her roadside stall and products to sell in it.

“I thank God. Before we didn’t have anything. After that it’s come from the N.G.Os. For the daily needs it has helped,” Ernawati said.

Today the people on the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra continue to go about their busy lives rebuilding what was torn down on that terrible day a decade ago on Friday.

They do so hopeful the natural world that betrayed them will not strike again but knowing that if it does they have friends in other lands on the other side of the angry sea.

The Sunday Herald Sun travelled with CARE Australia in Aceh. www.care.org.au/thanks

The view from the Lampu’uk Mosque. Picture: Alex Coppel