Cutlamkeah picks up the pieces, life goes on

Cutlamkeah picks up the pieces, life goes on

Ruslan Sangadji, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh, Aceh

The dust is thick here in Cutlamkueh, a once-proud village on
the western side of Banda Aceh. Silence prevails and the scenery
is haunting. Gone are the bursts of laughter and the voices of
workers.

Cutlamkueh, literally meaning "high and low, loving each
other", had just gone through its worst experience. A 9.0-
magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami tore away everything
ever built there. Their meunasah -- small prayer rooms -- places
where Acehnese feel at home, have also disappeared.

Once home to more than 2,000 people from various professions
-- fishermen, civil servants, businessmen, police and military
personnel -- the village now has only 200 people left. They have
no clue at all where their houses were once located because
everything has turned to debris and dust.

All that exists now is a scene of people searching underneath
rubble for anything that might be useful for continuing with
their lives. And they are not just looking for goods, but also
missing children, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sisters and
brothers.

"I can't even remember what our village once looked like. It's
now just all pieces of wood scattered all over here. It took more
than five hours just to find where my house was once located. And
it took me a week to do this search before I gave up hope of ever
finding my wife and four kids," said forty-three-year-old Hengki
Hidayat.

He said that his house was once situated near a fish pond
that villagers had made together. Now, neither his house nor the
fish pond can be found.

Hengki recalled that the village was more like an extended
family. He said that villagers did many things collectively.

"When one family held a party, it would be a party for all.
When a family was having a dispute, others would gather at the
meunasah to help find solutions. I'm telling you, we were so
close that everybody knew everybody," he said.

Hengky was not exaggerating. At the refugee camp inside the
TVRI's compound in the Mata Ie area of Banda Aceh, villagers
continued to stay close to each other and help each other.

"Although we can only help a little, we are one big family
that is suffering. And we don't just help each other out of
obligation; it's a necessity," he said.

In their village, Hengky's friends are seen working on
something that turns out to be a vital part of being an Acehnese:
a meunasah.

"We can't just keep on lamenting our bad fortune. It's sad
enough to experience what we went through, but it's sadder to
think about it over and over again. It's time to get up and we
hope villagers will come back and help us build this meunasah
because this is where we spent our lives together," said thirty-
two-year-old Willy Lapas, as he struggled to pull timbers and
iron sheets from the rubble.

The re-construction of the meunasah, he said, has a deep
meaning for the people. Once the reconstruction work has been
done, they will feel that their village has come back to life and
that they have a place in which they can feel at home.

"I don't know what the government's plans are for refugees
like us. We don't expect much either. But we do hope that the
government will rebuild our village right here. Don't take us
away from here because this is the place where we were born,
raised and survived," said another villager, Suardi.