South China Morning Post teams have fanned out across the Indian Ocean, assessing the progress of countries emerging from the shadow of the worst natural disaster for generations. They have cast a critical eye on the work of governments, aid agencies and charities dealing with the daunting task or recovery and reconstruction.

What they found was an extraordinary testament to the human spirit. There was story after story of unimaginable losses being met with an even greater fortitude to carry on, to prevail. We will be telling these stories during the course of the next 10 days as a tribute, in words and pictures, to the resolve of ordinary people across the region, people like barbershop owner Ibrahim Yusuf in Banda Aceh.

The 50-something Mr Ibrahim was still trying to secure some official help to get his business back on its feet when our reporter called on him. His problem: a 20-metre fishing boat deposited by the tsunami was still blocking his shop doorway. While he waited his turn for the heavy lifting gear to come, he had moved one of his chairs into the street outside to start cutting hair again.

He lost his wife and a child, and told us: 'I now have six children and no income and I am just doing everything to reopen. Tomorrow I will start again. I just want this boat out of the way.'

Multiply Mr Ibrahim's story hundreds of thousands of times for an idea of both the scale of the problems and a sense of the indomitable spirit with which they are being tackled. The message is clear: recovery and reconstruction are under way. Progress is sometimes patchy, but there is no mistaking the direction.

Our reporters' reading of how the billions of dollars that resulted from the unprecedented outpouring of international generosity is being used gives insight into how the region will look with projects to be completed in coming years.

Ironically, it seems certain that some areas, long mired in poverty, will rebound to a point well beyond where they could have expected had the tsunami not intervened.

That certainty is borne out by the numbers: governments have budgeted more than US$7 billion over the next five years and US$3 billion has been earmarked by the world's biggest charities for development work. Even now, donors worldwide are still giving to tsunami funds.

With the emergency phase all but over, that money is now going to bringing stability to the lives of the at least 3 million people affected. Getting an estimated 150,000 people still in refugee camps into permanent housing has become a priority. Homes are being sought for fewer than 500 orphans, the lists of those to be reunited with parents or children are dwindling.

Most children are back at school, albeit sometimes in temporary structures while buildings are repaired or rebuilt. Thousands of teachers have been recruited and new textbooks and supplies shipped in.

Hundreds of social workers have arrived to provide trauma counselling to those who have lost children, parents, relatives and friends or are suffering phobias and nightmares resulting from their ordeal. Training programmes are under way to ensure the work continues after the foreign experts leave.

Aid agencies have worked tirelessly to ensure safe drinking and bathing water and adequate food is available. The World Food Programme estimates it will need to feed 1.75 million affected people this year, though at least the dire predictions of a second slew of casualties from starvation and disease did not come to pass thanks to the largest rescue operation the world has ever seen, mounted by organisations like the United Nations Children's Fund, the Red Cross and Red Crescent and Medecins Sans Frontieres.

In the longer term, the plans for major infrastructure projects are being drawn up. Indonesia's government has pledged that US$4 billion will be pouring into the wrecked province of Aceh, which bore the brunt of the devastation and where 100,000 homes were flattened and need to be rebuilt.

An extra consideration is that the tsunami has redrawn sections of the Indian Ocean coastline. That may mean a coast road is now being lapped with water at high tide or the remains of a fishing village once on the beach is now 500 metres inland. New roads, power lines and drains are all on the interminable task list.

Some towns, villages and islands have lost so many inhabitants, or been so badly damaged, that governments have decided not to rebuild them. India, for example, has felt forced to put a red pencil through plans to rebuild seven islands in the remote and beautiful Andaman and Nicobar chain. The task of shipping the thousands of tonnes of building materials to the islands is a Herculean one, particularly with 70 per cent of the islands' jetties destroyed, so priorities had to be drawn up.

But the roads, bridges and sewers are being relaid; hospitals and health facilities are being restored; livelihoods are being resumed. Mud-carpeted agricultural land is slowly being readied and made useful as southeast Asia's rice-planting season approaches.

The fishing industry, essential to so many, but in so many places reduced to flotsam and jetsam, will be revitalised as donors' funds arrive to rebuild boats or buy new ones. Piles of new fishing nets are already being unloaded from aid shipments.

Doors are slowly reopening at hotels and resorts in Thailand and Sri Lanka. But retrieving visitors, especially those with much-sought foreign currency, is not easy. Memories are not easily erased, no matter how enticing the deals and rare major natural disasters are. This was brought forcefully home last week with the powerful tremor that claimed up to 1,000 more lives on the Indonesian islands of Nias, Simeulue and Banyak, already battered on December 26.

As rescuers moved in again with emergency supplies, the world's attention was also jolted back to the tragedy of three months before - the 175,000 confirmed dead, the 125,000 still missing and the plight of the survivors.

This time, there was no tsunami - a fact quickly broadcasted by governments now alert to the warning signs and the need to react swiftly against the possibility. Disaster and emergency experts again urged greater co-ordination and effort to implement a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean.

Thailand's recovery over the last 100 days has been rapid, as our reporters found on the resort island of Phuket and north along the west coast. Progress has been less obvious in Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives, which were more severely affected, but nonetheless impressive. In Indonesia, perhaps because of problems of co-ordination, but most likely because of the scale of destruction, it is somewhat lagging.

In some places, the situation is understandable. People whose lives were once one with the ocean have now felt its fury and want to put distance between themselves and the shore. It will take governments time to move them to safer ground.

Women and children account for the great majority of victims. In Aceh especially, the gender imbalance now is noticeable, sparking concern that men will move elsewhere and that villages will not regenerate.

For governments, opportunities have been opened by the crisis to turn the tsunami into a powerful force for change. In Indonesia, it has already broken the stalemate in Aceh's 29-year conflict between the government and the Free Aceh Movement, which declared a unilateral ceasefire and later, at talks in Helsinki which largely happened because of the tsunami, relinquished its long-standing demand for independence, creating a real chance for a peace deal. Jakarta could win the hearts and minds of a restless Aceh with the way it handles the US$4 billion reconstruction.

There is a similar story in Sri Lanka, where the government and Tamil Tiger rebels agreed for a time to put their bitter conflict to one side and co-operate on the daunting task of rescue and reconstruction. Two-thirds of the island's 31,000 victims were in the northeast, which is largely controlled by the Tigers.

There are inevitable difficulties and obstacles ahead. But the heart and will are there, as our journalists and photographers found. In this issue and over coming days, they will share their findings and experiences, revealing that 100 days on, those affected are bowed by their experience, but resolute that they will overcome.