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A Year Later, Tsunami-battered Aceh Searches for Security and Hope
Remnants of homes and lives. Along the harbor in Banda Aceh remain some of the most graphic scenes of the devastation wrought by the December 2004 tsunami.
Photo: Chris Herlinger/CWS
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By Chris Herlinger
Church World Service
Banda Aceh, Indonesia -- It is difficult for an outsider visiting Banda Aceh not to be drawn to the ocean.
Not to swim. Nor to fish. But merely to look and marvel at the ocean’s destructive power.
On Banda Aceh's coastline, neighborhoods like Kampung Mulia and Lampaseh Kota took the full brunt of last December's tsunami; a year later, the surviving residents, most still living in tents and awaiting completed housing, still struggle with memories of an accursed day.
They include Afifuddin, 26, an information technology graduate who acts as a community representative for Lampaseh Kota, a once vibrant neighborhood now laid waste and recovering from an almost indescribable loss of life: from a population of 5,000, the urban village now has about 1,000 residents.
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| Marzuki Arsyad, a community volunteer in the Kampung Mulia neighborhood of Banda Aceh, Indonesian, lost 13 family members. He and his neighbors are working together to rebuild. Photo: Chris Herlinger/CWS |
Church World Service provided basic relief items to his neighborhood--CWS "Gift of the Heart" Health Kits, tents, mattresses--and those have proven valuable in what has been a difficult year.
Not far from Lampaseh Kota stands another urban village, Kampung Mulia--"noble village" in Indonesian--and also a recipient of CWS assistance. It is home to Marzuki Arsyad, a one-time pedicab driver and part-time fisherman. Arsyad's immediate family fared better than many in his neighborhood--his wife, a physics teacher, works in another city and was not in Banda Aceh the day the tsunami hit. But he still lost brothers, sisters and other family: Thirteen in all.
The memories of the day refuse to lay dormant: "We were like people losing our minds. We saw these bodies--women, children, older people--all around us and we couldn’t do anything."
Staying determined and busy has helped ease a bit of the trauma; like Afifuddin, Arsyad is focused on the future and believes Aceh's full recovery depends on developing the region’s economic base.
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| A girl at a CWS-sponsored psychosocial assistance program at a local school at Krueng Kala village, south of Banda Aceh. Photo: Chris Herlinger/CWS |
Siti Mariam said the program, which one day recently housed nearly 100 lively and talkative children as they engaged in crafts making, has noticeably helped the children. Once afraid of noises that suggested the roar of the tsunami--even the sounds of helicopters sent the children cowering in fear--the young people are now engaged, funny, and "not afraid to express their emotions."
Small steps, to be sure in what remains a long process of recovery: much housing has yet to be built -- Church World Service and its partners are actively involved in that work--and Aceh itself is recovering from a double crisis: not only from the tsunami, but from a 30-year civil conflict that only recently ended.
In fact, the tsunami and recovery efforts are believed to have caused the Indonesian government and rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or GAM), to recognize the need to end a war that prior to this year, showed no signs of abating.
That is why, as reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts continue into the future and as Aceh sets to mark the one-year anniversary of the Dec. 26 tsunami, the word "security" has particular poignancy in Aceh.
"This is not just about building homes," said CWS staffer Ejodia Kakunsi after several days of visits to Aceh’s recovering coastal areas, "but building for the future."
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;
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