In Aceh, life returns to normal; hope returns too

September 30, 2005

By Stephen H. Padre, ACT International

Lamreh, Aceh province, Indonesia --How can something as commonplace as a line of laundry drying in the sun outside a house be significant? It's a sign that the residents of the house have resumed their daily routines, that life is taking on a sense of normalcy again.

Nine months after the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami obliterated their village, many residents of Lamreh, 36 km (22.4 miles) outside Banda Aceh, have moved into newly built homes and are returning to the lives they once knew. They are ordinary people who were caught in one of the world's most extraordinary natural disasters. And now, as the months have worn away some of the shock and trauma of the catastrophic event, they are focusing on putting their lives back in order. They are restoring and re-establishing the big and small things - residences, livelihoods, communities, cooking routines, and children's school schedules - the stuff of life lived in ordinary, expected ways.

For Sasrezal, 31, and his wife, Netti Suharni, 29, living normally again means operating their shop that sells vegetables. Sitting in their small business on a warm morning in late September, the couple spoke about the unexpected events in their life as a result of the tsunami and about the same things that young families like themselves in all other parts of the world are working to create for themselves - stable jobs, a healthy family, a secure future.

Lamreh, which sat directly on the shore, bore the full brunt of the tsunami, which left little in the village in its wake. The couple managed to flee and survive with their two children, including their youngest son, born just 28 days before the tsunami hit. But gone were many of their relatives in the village, their new house and businesses, and their way of life. Before the tsunami, the couple supported their family in a variety of ways. Sasrezal worked as a fisherman, grew chili peppers to sell, and ran a small shop. Netti made clothing and ran a small coffee shop.

In the first weeks after the tsunami, the couple, like so many others in their village, were too traumatized to return to the spot where their village had been. They didn't want to even think about trying to find money to survive on. Although Sasrezal says "life is really different now" after the tsunami, he and Netti have begun to put together some pieces of their life from before the tsunami.

With assistance from YAKKUM Emergency Unit (YEU), one of three members of the global alliance of churches and related agencies Action by Churches Together (ACT) International in Indonesia, the couple has reopened their vegetable shop underneath their simple, one-room house. Customers from the village drop in and buy from the selection of lettuce, carrots, beans, eggs and chili peppers, popular in Indonesian dishes, and other vegetables that sit in plastic bags on tables. Between helping customers and watching their baby, Netti sits at a sewing machine in a corner under a window and works on her current project, making a military uniform, part of her tailoring business which she has also been able to re-establish.

Sasrezal and Netti used the 500,000 Indonesian rupiah (approx. US$48) they took with them when they fled the tsunami and combined it with the 3 million rupiah (approx. US$290) they received from a YEU revolving loan fund in March as part of YEU's community-development program in the village to start their vegetable-selling business again. At first, they sold the vegetables in the village from the back of a motorcycle. A few months later, YEU provided them and others in the village with houses free of charge. The houses are constructed according to a design, approved by the villagers, that allows families to live upstairs with additional space for living quarters, storage, or running a business underneath. Essentially wooden houses on stilts, the structures fill the spaces between more solid, masonry houses in the village that survived the tsunami.

YEU was the first organization to arrive in the village to offer immediate relief in the first days after the tsunami. Now in the longer-term rehabilitation phase, YEU is working in comprehensive ways to re-establish the village. Its other projects are in the areas of water and sanitation and operating health clinics. Sasrezal and Netti have not only received the benefits of these new structures and services but have been able to contribute to them as well. In YEU's monthly distribution of food to Lamreh's residents, the couple's vegetable supplier and business are used to provide produce. YEU is working with other camps in the area to help them re-establish residents in their former locations.

At the moment, life is bittersweet for Sasrezal and Netti. They still have trauma from the tsunami, which they say they can't forget. There are regular reminders, they say, such as when the wind blows strongly or when it rains heavily. And this month, there have been some small earthquakes. "Even though we are happy, how big is that happiness?" asks Sasrezal, considering all he lost.

But Sasrezal also speaks positively about the future. He wants to enlarge their store and expand its selection of products. Their oldest child would like to live in a bigger house. And he has seen more people going to pray at the mosque than before the tsunami and feels more of a sense of community and togetherness in the village.

With their basic needs taken care of, Sasrezal and Netti are finding ways to live normally again. New houses, structures and jobs are being put back into place, and life is returning to its ordinary ways. And something else is becoming commonplace again, hidden temporarily by the tsunami: hope.

Other ACT members in Indonesia responding to the tsunami are Church World Service Indonesia and Yayasan Tanggul Bencana (YTB).

Church World Service is a member of ACT, a global alliance of churches and related agencies working to save lives and support communities in emergencies worldwide.