Confronting tsunami to pursue dream

Confronting tsunami to pursue dream

Vijay Joshi, Associated Press/Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Rizal Shahputra has a recurring nightmare: From the top of a hill, he watches the sea rise up and swallow his native town.

The destruction of Calang, in Indonesia's Aceh province, was real enough. Eight thousand of its 10,000 people, including Shahputra's father, mother and sister, perished that day. But he was not on a hill when it happened; he was not that lucky.

The tsunami's raging waters dragged him down, hurled him against broken trees and other debris, then sucked him out into the Indian Ocean.

"I prayed 'Allahu akbar' seven times. 'God please save me,"' he recalled in a recent interview. He felt himself rise through the sea, imagining he was being pushed toward the surface by a young man in white robes, "handsome beyond words."

"I am not sure who he was," he said. "I just think my God sent the angel to save me."

Somehow he managed to build a raft out of branches and planks that the receding sea carried out with him. For three days, he survived on floating coconuts, then had only water from bottles salvaged from the debris.

Sharks circled, but he did not give up hope.

On the ninth day, Shahputra was rescued by a passing cargo ship, one of whose crew members snapped a photograph of him waving from his raft.

His extraordinary survival made him an icon of human endurance and courage, rare good news amid the tragedy of the tsunami that left at least 216,000 people dead or missing when it struck coastlines around the Indian Ocean's rim one year ago.

These days, the nightmare comes after midnight, or just before dawn.

"I know I should see a doctor but I cannot," he said. He doesn't have the money. "I used to cry, but if you cry for the deceased, their souls will not get peace. So now I have learned to laugh at my nightmares."

Today, Shahputra shares a room in a hostel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he studies English at University College Sedaya International. He lives mostly on charity, including waived tuition and hostel fees.

He has decided to become an English teacher.

That would be no mean feat for a 21-year-old who, a year ago, was a high school-educated masonry worker with little interest in an outside world that seemed beyond his reach.

"Hundred percent I am happy," he said as he lounged at his classroom desk. "English is not difficult. I read and read and read. Maybe next time I can speak better."

Shahputra's English may be scratchy and ungrammatical but his teachers say it's remarkable considering he didn't speak a word of it when he first started.

"I wasn't sure how he was going to make it after losing his family. But he is very resilient," said one of his teachers, Carrie Baber, from Pedricktown, New Jersey. "If you didn't know that he was in the tsunami you would never know from his attitude ... He always looks happy, smiling ... He is not angry with God for what happened. And that's amazing."

Shahputra was working alongside his father at a mosque construction site about 100 meters from the beach last Dec. 26 when the earth started shaking from the massive earthquake that caused the tsunami.

Father and son ran toward their house to Shahputra's mother and 10-year-old sister. At the gate, "something made me turn around and seek my father's forgiveness ... I somehow felt I would never see him again," Shahputra said.

The family decided that Rizal, being the fittest, would try his best to escape the approaching waves. He sprinted away, stopping for a few seconds to look back to see his house submerged. His family had disappeared.

He was caught in the surge and swept out to sea as the waves receded, surrounded by branches and planks with which he made a raft. For three days he had enough coconuts to eat but for the next six he survived only on water from army supply bottles salvaged from the debris.

On the ninth day at sea, Rizal was rescued by a cargo ship.

Rizal was one of three people known to have survived at sea after the tsunami and brought to Malaysia. Another Indonesian, Ari Afrizal, was adrift for 14 days before being rescued. He is now in Indonesia. A 23-year-old woman, Melawati, was at sea for five days before she also was rescued by a ship.

Occasionally, Shahputra's memories haunt him even when he is awake. "Sometimes I feel claustrophobic when I am in the classroom. I run out, making the excuse of going to the washroom," he said, switching to his native Indonesian language, his brown eyes clouding.

Shahputra sees a new future for himself now, but he will never forget where he has been. On the wall of his hostel he displays the photograph, the one taken from the deck of the cargo ship, showing a wreck of a man waving from a makeshift raft.

Above it, he has scrawled a single word: "Me."

GetAP 1.00 -- DEC 20, 2005 12:04:19