Sometimes the 3-year-old boy with big brown eyes wants to call and talk to Mama. Kamaldeen doesn't know what to say.

How do you tell a child his mother, grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins - nine people in all - died in the ferocious water that he saw take his house?

Kamaldeen, 36, looked toward the pile of rubble, beyond the few coconut trees left, where his house used to stand. Beyond that, the Indian Ocean's azure waters glittered from the setting sun.

``Big sad,'' he said. ``Not small sad. All is lost.''

Over and over, the people who now live in Hambantota's tent camp here on Sri Lanka's southeast coast tell stories of death. It's the same in village after village along the ocean.

Nearly two months after the Dec. 26 tsunami, signs of lives left behind litter most of the country's southern coast. People with destroyed homes and dead relatives wait for something to happen.

The wave's devastating toll in Sri Lanka: 30,000 people dead and 1 million homeless. The U.N. International Labor Office estimated 400,000 jobs were lost.

Whether there's enough help to put the country back together depends on who you ask, but Sri Lankans agree the world's attention is starting to dwindle.

Resort Ravaged

Yala National Park just northeast of Hambantota is one of the most stunning examples of destruction.

The Yala Safari Beach Hotel and Brown's Beach Hotel, which sit just yards from the water, took the brunt of the wave there. The roads to the hotels are impassable except by four-wheel drive vehicles.

One wall in what used to the reception area at the Yala Safari Beach Hotel still is standing. Otherwise, it's piles of bricks, concrete and debris: a hotel ledger, a woman's slip-on shoe, part of a suitcase, a pair of Gap boxers. Trees are brown and dead, killed when so much salt water washed over the park.

Hotels near the 486-square- mile nature preserve were full that weekend: it was Christmas and poya, the Sri Lankan full- moon holiday.

About 220 people died in the hotels, said Lakmal Suranga, 21, who drives a safari vehicle which takes visitors around the park.

On Dec. 26, he was guiding a tour for 12 passengers. Three other safari vehicles came speeding toward him. Someone yelled: ``The water is coming!''

Then came the deer, elephant, wild boar and buffalo, galloping to higher ground. Suranga turned the vehicle around and followed the animals, escaping harm.

After the tsunami, Suranga helped recover the bodies and pile them into trucks that took them to mass graves in nearby Kirinda.

Almost no tourists have returned. Suranga used to take 50 or 60 people a day around the park. It was a good job for the young man who supports his mother, father and other family members. Now, there are only enough visitors for one or two carloads.

Better Than Before

Some areas stand in sharp contrast. In Tissamaharama, not far from the animal preserve, the JVP built two camps with money donated from CARE International. The initials stand for Janatha Vimukthi Prumuna, or People's Liberation Front, a violent rebel group that turned into a popular political party.

Party members volunteered their labor and built 20 rows of houses, each with five or six units each in a week, said J. Danukasandaruwan of the JVP, which now runs the camp. The structures are solid, with cement foundations, wood walls and tin roofs. The camp has electricity, water and toilets.

Some residents say it's more than they had in their own homes.

Sulaiha Usman, 31, lives with her only surviving child, an 8-year-old girl, her husband and her mother-in-law in a three-room unit. She has a plastic table and chairs, a gas cooker and a mosquito net and bed.

She lived near the water in Tissamaharama and, as the wave arrived, her 4-year-old daughter told her mother to run. There was no time. The wave rushed in and took her 9- month old, who was asleep on a bed.

As the water rose, Usman heard her 4-year-old screaming. Usman managed to climb on to the roof of her sister's house next door.

Her eldest daughter survived because she was visiting an aunt when the tsunami hit. Her husband was at work.

She explains the sisters' death to her oldest this way: ``One day we'll all die,'' she said through a translator. ``I thank God three survived.''

A Single Dad

Kamaldeen, whose wife died in Hambantota, was working in Oman when the tsunami hit. He made good money, about 35,000 rupees a month ($350) as a salesman in a shop. His house had a television and tile floors.

He rushed back to Sri Lanka after the tsunami, arriving within days. His wife was gone, he learned, but his two sons, the younger just 14 months old, had survived. Someone found them and took them to the hospital. Relatives heard of babies being brought to hospitals and went searching for the children.

As best Kamaldeen can piece together, the boys were carried about 400 yards, along with their grandfather, who also survived. The 3-year-old, Thuwan Saheed, had scrapes, cuts and bruises on his arms, legs and back.

The younger one, who ended up in a hospital in Colombo, had similar injuries. He is living with relatives in the capital. A dusty, flimsy tent in a camp is no place for an infant, Kamaldeen said.

By some estimates, before the tsunami, Kamaldeen's middle-class neighborhood had about 1,000 people living in 250 houses. None of the homes are intact anymore. Almost 60 percent of the residents died.

His older boy asks about the big water and clings to his father all the time. A single dad now, Kamaldeen can't go back to work overseas. Maybe, eventually, he will drive a motorized rickshaw to support his family.

Although the rubble of his house is just a few dozen yards away from the tent he lives in with his father-in-law and son, Kamaldeen has walked there only three times.

The first time, he couldn't stay long. He cried and left. He was hoping to find something of his wife's. There was nothing. The second time, he read from the Quran for all who died there.

``Send them to God,'' he said. ``After reading the Quran book, we send them all to God.''

The third time, he pulled out his wallet. Inside were two photos: a serious black and white picture of Sithie, his wife, and a snapshot of her smiling, holding one of their sons.

That's all he has to remember her by.

Researcher Diane Grey contributed to this report.