Menfolk may move in search of jobs, new life
Menfolk may move in search of jobs, new life
Edward Harris, Associated Press, Banda Aceh, Aceh
Siffudin beached his wooden skiff in the predawn calm and carried his freshly caught fish to an inland market just hours before the ocean reared back like a cocked fist and crushed Indonesia's coast.
The wave demolished his home and boat and killed his wife and three children, forcing the 32-year-old fisherman to consider leaving this shattered city forever.
For now, he's taken a job shoveling mud from a courtyard at a ruined hospital here -- part of an effort by development groups to keep Aceh's young men busy so they won't flee the region and undermine its recovery.
"If I can find a job, I'll go," says Siffudin, who like many Indonesians uses a single name. "I'm afraid to go back to the sea. I have nothing left."
Jobs were scarce in Banda Aceh even before the tsunami, which destroyed half the city and rendered nearly 500,000 homeless.
Across Indonesia, an estimated 9 percent of workers are jobless and Aceh is one of the vast archipelago's poorest regions.
Similar figures for the city don't exist, but in 2003, the government's employment agency found posts for only 3,800 of 21,476 registered jobseekers in Banda Aceh, official records show.
A slow-burning, 30-year conflict between separatist rebels and government forces caused many foreign firms to consider the town too risky for investment, and stable, salaried positions were few, Acehnese say.
Many young men worked odd jobs and never applied for full-time work through the government, many Acehnese say.
When the earthquake and tsunami hit, many office buildings and shopping centers in the city collapsed and a third of the city's 223,000 people died.
The waters carrying timber, cars and bodies worked like a blender, chewing through streets and carrying off storefronts. Fishermen living closest to the beach were especially hard hit.
"For the people who lived at the beach, well, most of them are lost. The survivors now want to live in the hills," says Arafat Solichin, of the aid group Aceh Community Recovery. "The people are traumatized and will leave the region, but hopefully not too many."
In the province's conservative Muslim culture, women are less likely than men to hold jobs or strike off on their own in search of employment. There are no figures for how many have already left the region.
Aid workers say a population movement from the scene of a natural disaster is to be expected, but that they hope widely publicized promises of billions of dollars of reconstruction aid will anchor people in communities across the 11 Asian and African nations affected.
The United Nations Development Program and other aid groups are trying to put the young people to work.
The UN agency has hired Siffudin and about 300 other former fishermen -- paying them the equivalent of US$3 (Rp 27,000) a day -- to help muck out Banda Aceh's hospital, where gurneys and intravenous-solution bags lay in earth soaked by the tsunami and monsoon-season rains.
The effort, funded with US$10,000 initially, is expected to increase to 3,000 people working various projects around Banda Aceh in the coming weeks, said Douglas Keh, a spokesman for the agency.
U.S.-based Mercy Corps is paying local people to bury Banda Aceh's tens of thousands of corpses, among other efforts.
Keh says the disaster-relief stage of the world's biggest-ever humanitarian assistance effort will last six months, at which point the big development dollars should begin to arrive. He's not worried about a mass exodus.
"You won't have any problems of a ghost town," Keh says. "When the recovery efforts begin, with all these billions of dollars, this place will be a boom town."
Other young men said that while their immediate job prospects are poor, family obligations will keep them in town.
But for 20-year-old Tunku Mohammed, life elsewhere beckons.
"It was hard to find a job before, now it's impossible," says the recent high-school graduate, who failed a police-force entrance exam and now hopes to land a factory job on Java island.
He is not planning to wait for the international community to make good on their promises of billions of aid later this year.
Some Acehnese voice concern that if the men leave, it could hurt their distinct culture and economic recovery.
"We do hope the young men won't leave, we need them to help develop our region. And the ones who do leave, hopefully they'll return one day," says Djunda Nafsiah, a mother of three living in one of the tent cities where Aceh's tsunami homeless are sheltering.
She's also worried that if the young men go, the young women will pine for them. But like the forces that ruined her home, it's beyond her control: "Life, death, marriage -- it's all by the hand of Allah."