Two paths back from tsunami
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BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA –
Three months after the tsunami took away three of his older children, his home, and his livelihood, Alamsyah is impatient to rebuild his life. He has hammered together a home of scrap planks of wood, sheets of tin, and now just wants to get back to work. Hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance - the largest humanitarian outpouring in history - mean nothing to a man who has lost everything except the will to live.
A few miles away, at a camp farther inland, Muammar Ma'aruf sits in a tent in the heat of the day, bouncing his five-month-old baby, Tasya, in a small hammock that hangs from a spring. He has faith that the government or some foreign charity group will provide housing for him and his wife and children, at least until they can find a home of their own.
On paper, these two men look similar. Each is married with two young children. Each led a comfortable working-class life before the tsunami: Alamsyah as a fish-seller and taxi driver, Muammar as a freelance graphic artist for the TV station.
Yet both have chosen completely different paths to rebuilding after the tsunami.
Muammar is relying on foreign charity, while Alamsyah is choosing to go it alone. The Monitor will follow them over the next year, offering a window into the challenges of two families as they struggle to rebuild both their homes and their lives.
The scale of the relief and reconstruction effort is enormous, but the scale of the problem appears, if anything, just as large. At latest report, some 533,000 individuals were displaced by the tsunami. Today, many of them are living in the cramped homes of host families; the rest are staying in temporary living centers or in homes they themselves constructed.
The UN and other humanitarian groups like the International Organization for Migration (IOM), along with the Indonesian government, are just now beginning the work of building temporary homes, part of a long-term plan to resettle nearly 720,000 people.
At present, the international community - 95 governments and humanitarian groups - has pledged or contributed $6.7 billion for the overall tsunami effort around the region. It's an unprecedented outpouring of charity - all of which will likely be needed to rebuild entire communities while simultaneously feeding and housing those who have lost everything, even their jobs.
Zuhrasafita has done it again. She has returned from the market with a pocket full of money, and no groceries. It's something that she has done off and on since the tsunami struck. Zuhrasafita says that being in a crowd reminds her of the tsunami, when crowds in her neighborhood of Punge Blangcut fled for their lives.
"We saw the wave on the horizon, like clouds, black against the sky," says the young mother, who had left her children, daughter Tasya and 3-year-old son Athafayath, with her brother at a neighborhood on higher ground. "I still have trauma from that day. There were so many people, and I was at the front of that crowd. Behind me, they all died." She pauses, wipes her eyes. "Now every time I go out into a crowd, I'm afraid people behind me will die again."
For the past few weeks, she and her small family have lived in this camp for displaced people in the village of Tingkeum. Most are rice farmers, and they spend their days wading out into ankle-deep water to pluck out weeds from the rice paddy. Little boys with sticks rush out to chase off wandering water buffalo - unless the little boys with sticks are looking after the water buffalo, in which case they don't mind if the animal stops for a quick snack.
Tingkeum residents have welcomed the 107 families, some of whom are relatives. They have loaned land and even conducted surveys so that the IOM can build shelters.
"We asked for 107 houses, because there are 107 heads of families here who need homes," says Umar Dani, the manager of the camp, and owner of a local convenience store in the village. "At first, the IOM said they would build 52 houses, but I hope they will build more. These people have nothing, so we are happy that we can help them."
The generosity of Tingkeum is almost breathtaking, and a rare glimmer of hope for people like Muammar and Zuhrasafita, who have already seen more tragedy than most people see in a lifetime.
The pair say the villagers treat them like family. But even families can get on each other's nerves. With people packed side by side in tents, a temporary living center - aid groups avoid the term "refugee camp," since "refugee" signifies someone who has had to flee his country - is a cramped affair. The sounds of one tent - an argument, a soccer match on radio - drift to other tents.
It was for this reason that Muammar refused to move his family into an even more crowded camp at the TV station. There, people had to queue up for toilets and food, and Muammar says he didn't feel comfortable leaving his wife and children. In Tingkeum, the atmosphere is relatively easier, the possibility of better housing more imminent.
The couple don't fit the usual description of "victim." Both are extraordinarily upbeat and friendly. They are religious, but like many Indonesians, they follow an easygoing, nonconfrontational form of Islam. Their son, Athafayath, often entertains the family by singing the Bon Jovi rock song, "It's My Life."
Yet Zuhrasafita hasn't fully recovered from the events of Dec. 26, 2004. She survived by climbing a tree, clinging for her life while others were swept away. Muammar was at work. Her home - a brick rental in the seaside neighborhood of Kaju - disappeared, along with most of her friends, neighbors, and members of her extended family.
Like many survivors, Zuhrasafita and Muammar went to live with family far from the coastline. But after a month, this arrangement began to feel too crowded. Muammar's friends advised him to take shelter at a government camp for survivors at the TV station. But that too was crowded.
Then Muammar heard about a camp in Tingkeum, miles from the sea. The IOM had promised to pay victims cash for their labor in building temporary shelters. Muammar shifted his family into a tent there, and now he is waiting for a house of his own.
"To build our own house at this point would be difficult, because of money," says Muammar, as he takes a sketch pad and begins to doodle, drawing the outlines of a helicopter. He has not been back to the station, which was damaged and has not hired him back yet. "All we want is for the government to build a house in a different place, not on the coast."
He switches to a few words of English: "I hope, we hope. We are not pessimists."
Zuhrasafita takes little Tasya from the hammock and holds her to her chest. Beside her on the floor is a cooking stove, along with sacks of rice and sugar, tins of cooking oil, and canned fish - all of it donated each week by relief organizations like the UN High Commission for Refugees, Mercy Corps, and the International Committee for the Red Cross.
Aid like this has helped this family survive, since both parents have lost their jobs.
Just down the lane, past groves of banana trees and hardwoods, carpenters have begun laying the foundations for the shelters. They are designed by engineers at the Bandung Institute of Technology - Indonesia's top university for science - to be cheap, easily assembled, well-ventilated, and quake resistant.
There is a buzz in the village that the new families may soon be able to move out of their tents and into proper homes.
"We know we are not alone," Zuhrasafita says. "God never sleeps. I think that God will help us. And I hope that Acehnese people will be better off than before the tsunami. We are very sure about this: The world cares about us. Not just people here, but people around the world care about us."
Zuhrasafita says she still wonders why the tsunami hit Aceh, Indonesia's most Islamic province. "I don't want to say about others, but maybe God has given me this test to wake me up from bad habits," she says. "God won't give us an exam that doesn't have answers. If God gives us a test, we must be able to pass it. That is our prayer."
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