Fihanna was born in Aceh, Indonesia, the day after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami. Defi, Fihanna’s mother, was in labor as she rode on a motorbike out of Banda Aceh’s wreckage to find a rural hospital with space for her to deliver.

Defi and her husband were turned away from two hospitals before finding one where she was taken in.

“When the time came to deliver the baby, my husband could not accompany me to the room because a child who was at the hospital alone, whose family had been hit by the tsunami, had fallen asleep on his lap. He didn’t want to wake the child,” she says.

“But finally, when he heard Fihanna cry, he came, and the doctor told him the baby was safe.”

Now Fihanna is in Grade 4 in a school that was built by World Vision after the other schools in her hometown were destroyed by the tsunami.

 

Photo © 2014 Mark Nonkes / World Vision