After losing all in tsunami, Indonesian men look for love to

After losing all in tsunami, Indonesian men look for love to
renew empty villages[ AP Photos DA110[ By MARGIE MASON=
Associated Press Writer=
COT LAMKUWEUH VILLAGE, Indonesia -

Looking to love to rebuild their lives

Margie Mason
Associated Press/Cot Lamkuweuh, Aceh

As Suwardi Johan drags a hoe through the soil in what's left of
his Indonesian village, he's literally digging for gold.

The 35-year-old lost his wife of 12 years along with his young
son and daughter six months ago when the earth rumbled and the
sea heaved up and chased them, ripping his family from his arms.

Now, he sifts the dirt, hoping to find a nugget of gold buried
by those same waves to help pay his new bride's dowry. Like many
here, he longs to start life over.

"We will try to make our village more alive, just like in the
past," he said, leaning on the hoe handle while looking across
the flattened neighborhood where he was born, about two
kilometers from the coast. "Remarriage is a kind of program to
help us rebuild."

Like Suwardi, many widowers and bachelors in the worst-hit
areas of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital on the northern tip
of Sumatra island, huddle in tents or barracks at night hatching
plans to woo women who survived the Dec. 26 tsunami.

All alone for the first time ...

In a place where women typically care for their husbands and
children, these men are all alone for the first time and they're
up against some tough odds. A recent report shows that in some
villages the waves claimed three times more women than men,
forcing some would-be husbands to search for love in areas
outside the tsunami zone.

Suwardi, 35, met his new, previously unmarried wife, Mursidah,
two months ago during a friend's wedding reception in Sigli,
about 125 kilometers south of his village in an area untouched by
the surging water.

The two were instantly spellbound and quickly married
unceremoniously, but they continue to keep their story hushed in
Cot Lamkuweuh village to hide Suwardi's shame -- he still cannot
afford a traditional Acehnese wedding or pay the 100 grams of
gold, about US$1,400, required for Mursidah's hand.

So far, he's saved Rp 2 million (US$208) paid by an aid
organization for clearing mud, piles of splintered lumber and
rusty shards of metal from the land where his three-room house
once stood.

He makes Rp 35,000 a day and with loans from friends and
family, he hopes to move Mursidah, 30, into his newly donated
one-room house sometime around the holy month of Ramadan in
October.

His next-door neighbor, Johan Ishak, 53, didn't let the lack
of a dowry stop him. He lost his wife and six children to the
tsunami and met his new bride, Mulliani, in a refugee camp days
after the disaster.

She was a widow before the tragedy and lost one of her three
daughters to the waves. After Johan asked for her hand, they
returned to his village where they share a tiny bedroom behind a
thin green curtain in a temporary house made of crude barn-style
planks topped with sheets of tin.

Early hopes dashed

The couple was thrilled after Mulliani, 40, quickly became
pregnant two-and-a-half months ago. But their hopes of bringing
new life to the village, where nearly 80 percent died, were
dashed when she miscarried last month after falling over debris
still littering the pitted ground.

Johan said they will keep trying for a baby, but he feels
blessed regardless to have Mulliani by his side along with his
two new daughters.

"We should try," he said, sitting bare-chested on the blue
linoleum flooring of his new house. "If it's permitted by God,
then we will have them. If not, then it's OK."

Johan and Suwardi say they've mourned their losses and are
eager to return some normalcy to their village, which sits along
a main roadway across from the crumbled shell of a junior high
school.

Everything familiar is now gone from the place where they grew
up. Only 276 of 1,350 villagers survived. A hole filled with
black, brackish water is all that's left of Johan's house, while
Suwardi has only a cracked cement foundation and a concrete well
to remind him of his past life.

Six months since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, mounds
of broken concrete, snapped boards and twisted metal have been
cleared and the ground is visible again. Tents and temporary
shelters dot land that was empty just three months ago.

A makeshift mosque made of rough lumber now serves as the
central meeting point in the village, and five women run a public
kitchen that serves up 100 meals a day for those working to
rebuild new lives.

But men are the majority being served in a village where only
85 women survived.

In four villages surveyed in the Aceh Besar district, aid
agency Oxfam International found only 189 of 676 survivors were
women. It concluded that many mothers died trying to save their
children or were unable to swim, climb trees or simply hang on as
well as men.

The disaster struck early on a Sunday morning, when many women
and children were at home while the men were at sea fishing or
working away from the tsunami's reach. The waves killed more than
128,000 people and left a half million homeless in northern
Sumatra.

Women ambivalent about remarrying

The UN Population Fund also canvassed four refugee camps soon
after the calamity and said at first glimpse, it appears that
women did suffer more losses, said Melania Hidayat, a
reproductive health expert in the Jakarta office. A full census
is expected in November.

Unlike many men who are eager to remarry and repopulate
devastated villages, the widows remain divided.

Inside a tent in Weu Raya village, Hayani, 45, threw up her
hands and said she's done with men. She and her four children
survived the tsunami, but she lost her husband. Since then, she's
had several proposals, mostly from her late husband's friends,
but she's rejected them all.

"There are many widowers, even grandfathers who are widowers,
and they try to approach us here," said Hayani, who has walked
with a crutch since her left leg was crushed by debris in the
tsunami.

"I don't want to be busy again with cooking. I don't want to
work in the rice field again. Now I'm free, but I have to think a
lot about raising my kids."

Fitriyah, 44, is more open and says with time, she wants to
find a new husband and father for her three surviving children.
Cutting fish for a cauldron of curry over a wood fire, she
giggled and shielded her face with her hands as she talked about
the bachelor government worker who is courting her.

"If God wants me to marry him tomorrow, then I will marry him
tomorrow," she said. "But I hope we're going to marry before the
fasting month."

Others like Fachrul Razi, 40, said he will wait one year for
his wife to return before searching for new love. A wealthy
businessman before the tsunami, he said only 11 of his extended
family of 700 in three villages survived the disaster. He said
it's up to him to remarry and have more children to keep the
family's vast property from being sold to outsiders.

"We have to have lineage in order to continue our big family,"
he said. "My life has now returned to zero. I have to restart my
life."

And that's just what Suwardi plans to do, whether he strikes
gold or not. Back at his house, Mursidah has come for a visit.
She's set up two small propane stoves on the floor and placed a
bouquet of silk flowers in the corner on a colorful scarf. Soon,
he hopes she'll be here permanently, raising their children and
growing old with him.

"I would like to have a new life," he said. "I remember our
nice life in the past, but I'm trying to forget about the
disaster.

"Maybe if I raise kids again, I'll forget about it."

GetAP 1.00 -- JUN 21, 2005 07:20:10