Moving on, a little at a time

"It's become exciting again to see it come together," Lin said. "I had started to hear complaints about the pace of progress, now I'm starting to hear people talk about their new house and their new neighbors." Lin, for his part, arrived in April, at the start of construction. The remaining members of the Tzu Chi office, a team of up to 20 volunteers, are there on a one-month rotating basis. They stay at a home they've rented outside of Hambantota. Vans drive them to the Tzu Chi offices at 7am every morning, weekends included. They eat breakfast together before heading out to their assigned areas, overseeing various aspects of the project.

At around 8pm, the vans drive them to a local restaurant for dinner. It was the same restaurant every night and the same meal of potato curry, rice, bananas and water for the first six months of their visit. Lee said little has changed in the past five months. They sing a song about brotherly love before eating and afterward formally report the day's progress to Lin and Lee. Then it's back to their temporary home for a quick shower and a brief sleep before doing the same thing the next day.

Each of them has taken an unpaid leave from their regular jobs back home for what they see as the privilege of volunteering. They each paid for their own plane tickets. Lin and Lee are paid modest wages for overseeing operations.

"It's maybe not as selfless as it sounds," said Chen Shun-tian (陳舜田), a volunteer from Taiwan. "We each want to help, yes, but seeing that you actually are helping provides a great feeling of satisfaction." Lee, who is Malaysian, also has his personal reasons for having volunteered. "When disasters like this have occurred in the past, anytime someone somewhere needed help, it has always been Westerners who have volunteered their time," he said. "I started thinking. `It's time we Asians from rich nations pitch in.'"

Lee's notion has caught on with local residents and might just be one of the greater things to come from the humanitarian work being done in Hambantota. Despite having lost so much themselves, the residents of Hambantota have volunteered -- nearly a hundred at Tzu Chi and hundreds more at other relief organizations -- helping translate, run errands, and perform an endless array of odd jobs. Many have said they were moved by the spirit of volunteerism they saw in the members of Tzu Chi and other NGOs.

"Tzu Chi is giving me a home. They have fed my family. The clothes I'm wearing come from Taiwan. They have saved my life," said Kotambaran, who is now a volunteer. "When I help my neighbors, I can put back some of what the tsunami took away."