Hundreds of corpses still found every day in Banda Aceh
Hundreds of corpses still found every day in Banda Aceh
Margie Mason, Associated Press/Banda Aceh
Yusniar Amara and her boyfriend watched a beautiful sunset
over the beach in Banda Aceh just after finishing a dive
together. It was the last time they would ever see each other
before the devastating tsunami washed him out to sea.
But instead of waiting for news about his fate, Yusniar put on
a mask and boots and began walking the shoreline alone pulling
out bloated bodies in search of her "honey." She's spent the past
seven weeks searching for him with no luck while retrieving
thousands of other bodies for burial.
"I'd rather be doing this than just crying about it at home,"
she said after pulling two bodies from the debris of what was
once a hotel. "I'm very upset ... I didn't get to talk to him."
Yusniar and thousands of other volunteers, who are nearly all
men, spend their days in knee-deep mud pulling bloated bodies
from beneath piles of wood and twisted metal. The lack of heavy
equipment and the sheer number of corpses -- more than 120,000
dead in Indonesia and many more missing -- means the grisly task
will likely continue for months.
Now, most bodies are now much harder to reach, often inside
crumbling houses or buried under mountains of debris.
Inside a small village nestled against a mountain, large swaths
of land once dotted with emerald rice fields are now cluttered
with heaps of tangled wooden planks, downed trees, doors and
suitcases. The earth is now a black, brackish sludge four
kilometers from the sea.
The volunteers from Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam province and
elsewhere in Indonesia sniff the air for rotting bodies and look
for circles of flies to help them find corpses. They stop at one
site and begin digging, using only sticks and their hands to lift
wood, metal and mud from atop the victim. It takes 30 minutes to
reach the bloated corpse that's so badly decomposed that it's
impossible to decipher the gender.
The crew searches for any identification before zipping the
body into a bag and placing it on the roadside where about 10
others are later added.
"It's very, very hard to say we want to continue this job,"
said Adi, a 25-year-old student who left school to join one of
the city's 77 search and rescue teams. "There's more and more and
more. It might take maybe five years to take out all the bodies
in Aceh."
His group, which has dwindled to about 30 volunteers,
continues to find about 15 bodies a day. They have two chain saws
but no heavy machinery or shovels to lift the heavy slabs of
concrete or uprooted palm trees. They trip and slide while
stepping across twisted roots and planks of wood covered with
rusty nails as they scour areas -- sometimes several times -- to
try to ensure they haven't missed anyone.
Families and businesspeople who discover bodies while clearing
their property also often call and ask the teams to come because
they are frightened of removing the bodies themselves.
In a few cases, wallets or identification cards are found and
the victim's family is located with help from agencies that keep
lists of the missing.
The volunteers' work is mentally and physically draining, but
the crew members continue to smile and joke with one another.
They say their dreams are not haunted by the grim images of their
work and that they will continue to search until they're forced
to find other work that pays.
But, sometimes, they get something better than money. Adi, who
goes by only one name, said at least one person in his crew has
located a dead loved one. Others volunteers say they continue to
be motivated by the simple desire to see their fellow Acehnese
buried with dignity.
"We cannot put it into words. It's priceless," said Zulfikar,
30. "If we quit, who else will do this?"
Yusniar says she and her boyfriend, Tirta, worked together as
rescue divers before the tsunami.
"I met with a fortune teller and he said (Tirta) couldn't make
it and his body's still in the ocean," she said. "And the soul is
saying, 'Please rescue me from the ocean."'