VANIMO, July 21: Under a tree just a short walk from the beach, the Rev Paul Mercieca led hymns and prayers today and tried to console homeless and battered victims of Papua New Guinea's Tsunami disaster.They huddled in dispirited groups anywhere where there is shade from the heat of the tropical sun, in clothes torn ragged or donated by people from villages like Vanimo, which was not hit but where family links mean everybody knows someone who was killed.``Together we will put it behind us,'' Rev Mercieca, an Australian Roman catholic priest who has lived in Vanimo for 14 years, said to end the impromptu ceremony. He shook hands, inspected wound dressings and touched people on the shoulder, commiserating.But already people from the villages wiped from the earth by the tsunami are making plans to return.``When my wound is cured I am happy to go home . it is my village,'' said Fabian Nakisony of Warapu, where at least 12 people died and virtually all homes were destroyed.``But we have nothing.The timber we can get from the bush, but we have no hammer, no nails, no saw. We have no plates, no knives, no clothes,'' he told the Associated Press through an interpreter.The people of Papua New Guinea's north coast are by most standards poor. They live mostly by subsistence farming in simple homes. They grow vegetables and fruit in small gardens and go fishing.Nakisony said the gardens have been destroyed, many fish killed and lagoons poisoned, perhaps by the rotting bodies of the dead.As to where the tools and supplies to rebuild the villages will come from, ``I don't know,'' he says with a shrug.Nakisony is one of thousands of injured people recuperating in nearby villages. He sat on the bare floor of a Papua New Guinea defence forces barracks wearing everything he owns. His wife sat nearby.Behind him, dozens of others, most with white bandages around at least one wound, tried to sleep on thin mattresses on the floor.The scene is repeated in row after row of barracks and at the districthospitals.Fabian Tombre, a villager from Arop, which was completely destroyed, said the village will be rebuilt further inland, away from its former site on a tiny strip of sand bounded by the sea on one side and Sissano lagoon on the other.``The people will go back, but to a better place. We will build new homes away from the sea,'' he says.Nakisony said his village, too, will be moved to higher ground, at least until villagers are confident there will be no more tsunami.``We will live up in the bush for 20 years and watch if it comes back,'' he said.Meanwhile, Prime minister Bill Skate raised the official confirmed toll to 1,200 known killed.
