It is absurd that the Welcome Trade Centre should have survived, but typical of the selective cruelty of the Boxing Day tsunami. Still, Mr Lionel has lost everything. His building might be standing, but it will have to be demolished. There is no insurance. Twelve people have lost their jobs. It's over.

Galle, a town of 69,000 people with a history stretching back through Portuguese, Dutch and British rule, sits right at the end of the subcontinent and was hammered by the three waves that have set Sri Lanka back perhaps a decade.

In the town and surrounding districts, 4,300 people died. About 1,700 of them were on board a single commuter train - the Ocean Queen - which now stands on spare track just north of the city, like a shrine to the entire country's dead.

Galle's destruction is strikingly defined. There's the bustling, noisy workaday city, and then - as you move closer to the sea - a band of what locals call 'total damage'. The phrase scarcely does credit to the loss involved. It's as if an invading army has battled furiously for 100 metres, then packed up its heavy guns and left.

The town is fighting hard and is starting to recover, but only starting. The scale of what happened here and the everyday nature of the force that brought it - a sea that until then had been largely beneficent - is still shocking, three months on. Photographs of corpses being dragged through the flooded streets, and buses bobbing like corks around the city's war memorial, are still pored over, the events remembered daily in thousands of different ways.

Forty-four of the 142 people who lived behind the Welcome Trade Centre are dead. In the wasteland stands vegetable seller Ajeet Nisthanta, 24. He lost 10 members of his family, including brothers, sisters and small children. Three generations lived in five houses, but nothing is left. The survivors now live in a stiflingly hot tent supplied by a Dutch aid agency, but there are no mattresses. Hundreds of similar tents dot the town.

'We have always been a poor family, and now we have no work,' he says simply.

Before the waves came, the area had neat houses, an open bazaar, gardens and boat repair yards in the shadow of the town's pride and joy - the international cricket ground, its clock now stopped at 9.25am, the time the first wave struck. Survivors performed the traditional three-month danas, or prayers for the dead, amid the rubble of their former homes, living off 5,000 rupees ($390) a month and food rations from the government.

Anger is rising in Galle over what is perceived as slow progress towards rehabilitating victims and an over-reliance on the charity of others while the government sits on mountains of foreign cash, or so it is thought.

'Why is it the Sri Lankan president can't help me but the people of the Netherlands can?' Mr Nisthanta asks. Protests have so far been small and peaceful - but there is no mistaking the mood.

Opposite Galle's tatty beach, in the Jakotuwa neighbourhood, Sunil Wickramasecara - who was picked up by the waves and deposited 400 metres inland - is also waiting for a new home with his extended family. The government in Colombo has banned the rebuilding of any tsunami-damaged property within 100 metres of the sea. All along the coast, temporary homes are being nailed together to offer better protection from a blazing sun and the lashing rains to come.

'Soon the monsoons will come,' he says of the rains, probably just days away. 'We have been fed and given some medicine but we need a house.' Next to the family's nylon tent, twin statues of garish Hindu deities escaped 'without even a broken finger' while 18 homes were destroyed and 150 people killed in Jakotuwa.

'Temporary shelters will do for now ... Even if they show us some land and say 'this will be your home one day', that would be a start,' he says. The family sit in any shade they can find. It must be nearly 40 degrees Celsius in their tent.

Galle's district secretary, Gunasena Hewavitharana, says his administration is doing all it can amid 'an unbearable workload'. He seems irritated by the growing impatience as he lists real achievements - the port cleared, power restored, businesses back at work, nearly US$6 million in emergency aid distributed to 140,000 people. More than 6,000 temporary houses - wooden walls, tin roofs - will be built within weeks by aid agencies once land has been allocated, he says.

But Nirosh Meemanage, Galle's Red Cross relief co-ordinator, says the situation is becoming increasingly urgent. 'Around 40,000 people have to move to temporary shelters as soon as possible. If they are still in tents when the rains come, we are going to have problems with things like diarrhoea and malaria,' he said.

Stagnant water will sit in the ruins and become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Sanitation is already rickety at best.

With officials seemingly overwhelmed, many of the success stories of Galle's recovery have come from personal initiative and help from outside. A couple of kilometres to the south, the region's main beach resort of Unawatuna is putting itself back together. This is typical South Asian beach life, omelettes and chips, batik and postcards. The most sought-after properties were by the beach but they also turned out to be the deadliest.

Modern concrete guest houses and 200-year-old homes were treated with equal contempt by the waves.

But some guest houses are back in business, and tourists clutching Lonely Planet guides are reappearing. Along the beach, the Hot Rock restaurant is almost ready to reopen. It used to be 30 metres from the sea that now laps at its steps.

'We used to have tables and chairs on the beach and people would play ball,' says owner Wasantha Rubasinghe, 44, whose father-in-law died during the tsunami. 'Government officials have told me to stop rebuilding but I'm not going to,' he says.

He will celebrate reopening the Hot Rock this month with a breakfast for friends and family, after the three-month mourning period for his wife's father. Some foreign tourists - many of whom visit the Hot Rock every year - have donated money. A small silver Buddha above the kitchen hatch survived in place and now lords it over a new restaurant. 'In the end, he has looked after us,' says Mr Rubasinghe.

Nearby, German Red Cross volunteer Mathias Greissberger is helping dig the footings for a new family home. 'If people have a family they can rebuild themselves, but if they are alone it is useless. Many people are very shocked. Men are drinking a lot more than normal, starting in the early afternoon. Others are carrying on as normal. Sometimes it is unbelievable how strong people are.'

The Reverend Thalpe Ariyajothi Thera points out how the water was still three metres high when it reached his Buddhist temple, 600 metres from the sea. 'There is so much mental pain. People are afraid to see water,' he says.

Not P.B. Gunasiri. He is looking along a line of red and blue oru canoes - the traditional inshore fishing vessels of Sri Lanka - and is desperate to get back to sea. Mr Gunasiri's fibreglass replacement boat is emblazoned 'A.H. Zwanenburg', the name of its Dutch donor.

Thousands of fishermen have been out of work since the tsunami. Lal Hewapathirana, director of Worldview Sri Lanka, says his group and two Dutch partners, ChildRight and travel firm FoxHolland, will hand over 500 boats in Galle and nearby Matara. More than 2,000 were lost.

Unfortunately, rudders and fishing nets have yet to arrive from the government. 'I don't know when they will come,' Mr Hewapathirana concedes.

Fishermen are being given a 46,000-rupee credit note that must be spent within 30 days, but they have nothing on which to spend it. 'As an island nation we have to be prepared for all kinds of events. We should be able to rise up and solve our problems, but for that, the state must back the people,' Mr Hewapathirana says. 'But some of the people's servants seem to be sleeping. They haven't got up from their slumber.'

Nevertheless, 50 per cent of Galle's fishermen are back at work, as are many of the 1,200 businesses affected by the tsunami.

The water raced up Main Street, three metres high. Pictures taken shortly afterwards show a street full of smashed vehicles and the remains of stores. More than 100 people died there. The chamber of commerce has provided 2 million rupees to get firms up and running again, says its chief executive, K.H. Amaradasa. 'The destruction happened in seconds but construction will take time,' he says.

Some things now look like they are getting back to normal. But behind the new glass, shiny chrome and restocked shelves is a tale of debt. Street traders and friends P.H.K. Mahindapalla and Ajanta Priyalal have had to borrow 50,000 rupees from the wholesalers who provide their stock in order to get back in business. Just along from the Yaa Hussain Mosque on Olcott Street, shirt seller Z.M.M. Rifan has to pay back 550,000 rupees to his dealer before any new stock will arrive.

The people of Galle understand all too well the realities of life. They know their country is poor and that the scale of the destruction has been huge. They are still living with it every day.

At the Sudharma Buddhist College, 100 out of just over 1,000 pupils are confirmed dead and 200 still classified as missing. More than 500 of the school's Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist students lost their homes. Principal Sumith Liyanage is desperate for new chairs and desks to replace those lost in the disaster, as well as classrooms to replace the school's Save the Children tents.

English teacher A.S. Rafiudeen says the children have made remarkable progress but those displaced desperately need somewhere to call home, so family life can get back to something near normal. 'They are okay mentally. When they first came back to school they would talk endlessly of how their friends or family had died, but not now. They understand that these things happen in the world and this one happened to choose Galle. They have come to terms with it.'