Children learn about earthquakes, tsunami

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

"Watashi wa Professor Hamada desu," says a visiting lecturer, who is greeted with a hall full of giggles. The man who introduced himself, Masanori Hamada, is from the Japan Society of Civil Engineering. He and his colleagues were here at Kartika elementary school on Thursday for a session on earthquake preparation.

"It is the most important" aspect of the society's work, he said. The entire school was packed into the mosque on the school grounds -- the space, though cramped and hot, was big enough because about half of the school's 600 students were lost in the tsunami, teachers said.

In the session, students volunteered to come to the front and read out descriptions on earthquakes and tsunamis from big colorful posters. Then they had a grand time laughing at their teachers who stumbled when trying to sing a tune on the theme, translated from Japanese. The teachers had been introduced earlier to the program, but the singing appeared to be the most difficult part.

The next part was animation, which was used to illustrate an earthquake in a crowded town, and what people do to prevent themselves from being hurt.

Then the restless students began to watch intently as the narrator took them through a cartoon about a village chief who somehow sensed that a tidal wave was about to hit the area, and managed to save his people.

A fifth grader, Zarita, nodded when asked whether she had seen the waves depicted in the cartoon, a giant wall of black water approaching homes and frightened people. She had lost classmates, she said.

In response to students' questions like "how many times a year does an earthquake or tsunami happen?" Hamada, who teaches at Waseda University, said that what was more important was that the students continue to teach their families and future children and grandchildren what they had learned, as such disasters were still difficult to predict. Japan has experienced many earthquakes and its citizens are not unfamiliar either with tsunamis.

Experts have predicted more earthquakes in Sumatra, the latest major one since Dec. 26 being on March 28 in Nias, North Sumatra. Hamada says the society has introduced the program in a number of schools in Banda Aceh since March.