After the Tsunami, One Little Girl's Will to Survive

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Dec. 26, 2009 — -- Today is the fifth anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded - the Indian Ocean Tsunami. An underwater earthquake set off a tidal wave that inundated the shores of 11 countries, leaving more than 230,000 dead.

The first and the worst region to be hit was Banda Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. More than 50,000 people died here and half a million were made homeless. Houses and shops were flattened by the wave; broken bodies littered what was left of the streets. People said the town looked like Hiroshima after the atom bomb.

At the time, aid agencies said that it would take 10 years to rebuild Banda Aceh. To rebuild human lives, they said, would take much longer. But that isn't quite what happened, not, at least, in the case of one little girl.

When ABC News first found Magdalena in December 2004, she had seen most of her family swept out to sea. At age 5 she had just buried her father, who had survived the tsunami itself but whose lungs had become choked with silt. An exquisitely beautiful child, Magdalena was so traumatized that she had lost the power of speech.

Recently an ABC News team returned to Banda Aceh, on assignment for "Good Morning America Sunday," and we managed to find Magdalena. What we found was living proof of the strength and resilience of the human spirit. Magdalena was living in a new home in the center of town, and had grown into a happy, well-adjusted 10-year-old, as beautiful as she ever was. Now she talks openly and excitedly about her life.

"What I like about being at home," she says with a smile, "is that I can look after my baby brother."

After the tsunami Magdalena was found by one surviving uncle, Pak Ismail, who had also lost his entire family to the tidal wave, a wife and two children. He adopted Magdalena immediately.

"Magdalena was a replacement for the two daughters I lost," her uncle told us, his voice cracking with emotion.

Like many survivors of the tsunami, Pak Ismail quickly remarried and now has two more children.

With Magdalena, they all live in a comfortable single-story house that miraculously was not damaged by the tidal wave. They're lucky not to be crowded into one of the 120,000 new housing units that have been built here for the survivors. Pak Ismail got his old job back as a school administrator. They live well.

What Magdalena loves most, she says, is her school, which she was proud to show me, set in its large shaded grounds not far from her house. School enrollment in Aceh is now back to pre-tsunami levels and is among the highest in Indonesia.

She showed me her schoolbooks, neatly stacked inside a glass cabinet at home. She's learning English and has high hopes for the future. When I asked her what she would like to be when she grows up, she answers without hesitation, in English. "Doctor!" she cries.

Officials say that generally, life in Banda Aceh is actually better than it was before the tsunami, because of the $7 billion of foreign aid that poured into the region. That and a peace agreement that ended 30 years of guerrilla war and opened up Aceh province.

Magdalena doesn't talk too much about her parents and siblings now, her uncle says, because it's just too painful. But he says she still dreams about them. And she prays for them, when she goes down to the sea that took them from her.

She is determined to survive … and thrive.