BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Along the ruined highway of Indonesia's northern Sumatra coast, the horizon is a flattened wasteland dotted with reminders of lives lost, wooden signs scrawled with the words "kuburan masal" -- mass grave.
Once, this two-lane road was the major artery linking fishing villages and farming communities to the bustling provincial capital of Banda Aceh.
Then, the tsunami washed much of it away.
Where once the drive from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh was an easy five-hour ride on smooth asphalt, today it's a bone-jarring, 12-hour slog on dirt and gravel. Every few yards the road is pockmarked with holes; all along the way, the devastation is inescapable.
But there are signs of rebirth. Temporary houses and schools are starting to sprout, and the Americans are poised to mend the coastal road -- and, with it, the wounded communities that once thrived along its path.
"This is a road writ large. It enables communities to become communities again, livelihoods to flourish, businesses to grow," said William McKinney, representative for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Aceh, which is funding the five-year, $245-million road project.
It is this way across the wide swath ravaged by a magnitude 9 quake and tsunami six months ago -- 11 countries where an estimated 180,000 died and 50,000 more are missing. The focus has shifted from emergency relief to longer-term recovery; donors and aid agencies are seeking to rebuild basic infrastructure and renew broken lives.
But the challenges are daunting, and complaints abound that promised funding has been slow to come, and reconstruction is not moving as quickly as hoped.
In Sri Lanka, the government says it has signed agreements with donor agencies to build 27,000 houses and has pledges for 90,000 houses in total. But some tsunami survivors, frustrated by government inaction, held demonstrations earlier this month. Hundreds carried black flags, blocked traffic and became violent when police tried to disperse the demonstrators, who were demanding promised compensation for destroyed homes.
In southern India, construction has begun on permanent housing in the devastated district of Nagapattinam. Officials there estimate that about 17,000 new homes are needed and 4,000 others can be repaired. J. Radhakrishnan, the top local administrator, said he hoped the first of the homes would be ready in three months, while all housing was expected to be completed within a year.
