Blog post from Nick Young in Indonesia

13 December
Flying into Calang in the south west of Indonesia's Aceh province, it was easy at last to see the full impact of 3 years of building work. As our 6 seater plane flew low over the area of Teunom, where British Red Cross has been working, we could see clearly the red roofs of the 1930 houses that we have built.

This was one of the areas worst hit by the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, destroying many of the houses. The land here is a completely flat plain, and the sea simply rolled in unobstructed, leaving many with no hope of escape.

Today, there are new houses everywhere, many of them built by our own team, and to a standard which no other agency has matched. They do indeed stand out for their pastel colours, sturdy design and professional appearance.

With our cameraman, who was here to record the ceremony of handing over the final house to the final beneficiary, we visited first a small estate of about 200 houses which we have built for those who owned no land, or whose land was and remains inundated, or whose parents both died - the most vulnerable, in other words. It looks just lovely, the soft green houses with their red roofs set off beautifully by the flowers already planted outside by their new owners.

We talked to Idris, who lost his wife and two children. He had just moved in, the two bedroom home that he shares with his remaining son completely bare of furniture. He lost his fishing boat too, but doesn't want to go back to sea so he is farming a little piece of land to make ends meet.

We met another man whose previous job was climbing trees to collect coconuts: he was up a tree when the tsunami struck, and clung on until the water started to subside. With his wife, he now sells cigarettes from a tray because he simply can't bring himself to climb another tree.

And then young Nazir, who tomorrow will receive the keys to the 100,000th house built in Aceh province - one of ours. Aged 15, he lost both his parents and his brother and sister, and now lives with his remaining sister.

Our next stop was a small riverside community hidden in the forest. Most of our houses are in these difficult-to-access areas. Before the tsunami, the land was 2 metres above the level of the water; now it is just a foot or two, and the area floods regularly. Here, we have built houses on solid reinforced concrete pillars well above river level.

We laughed and joked with the local people who flocked to meet us, and visited with a mother and her daughter who who each lost a husband and have just moved into two adjoining British Red Cross houses. On the way back to camp, our driver Amir told us how his parents both died in that very spot, and of his 2 week walk through the devastation of the tsunami to reach them from the college where he had been studying.

14 December
After a night of torrential monsoon rain, we returned to our "housing estate" for the ceremonial handover of keys to the 100,000th by the Head of the Indonesian Government's Aceh Reconstruction Agency (BRR), Pak Kuntoro.

In a moving ceremony, he paid the warmest possible tribute to the British Red Cross team, and praised the high quality of the houses, which he said were the best he had seen. He has been under huge pressure to get houses built, and the local Bupati (mayor) had some harsh words to say to him on that score! There is still much to do, and we have done well to complete our work so quickly.

Next stop was our own project completion party, and a chance for me to say thank you in public to our building team leader Gabriel Constantine (to whom I presented a Badge of Honour, richly deserved), the local contractors Wika and the consulting engineers and supervisors Kogas. They have all worked wonderfully well together, in a true Red Cross spirit.

It was also nice to be able to thank our fundraising director Mark Astarita who was with me on the trip, as well as our livelihoods team who have worked so hard helping local people to get back on their feet financially.

My last words were for the brave survivors of the tsunami. "We can't fill the gap in your lives left by the death of your loved ones," I said, "but we will always carry in our hearts the memory of the people of Teunom, and we hope you will hold us in your hearts too, and the friendships we have made with the houses we have built."

And then it was time to go home - "jakwoe" as it said in Acenese on our T-shirts. That night, as the rain tipped down again, everyone gathered together to dance and sing along to the local folk superstar Rafli, who had risen from his hospital bed (dengue fever) to sing at this special concert. For a while, the worries of the last 3 years, and the sadness, slipped away with the music.