Six months on, tsunami survivors wait for tide to turn

Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

Six months after the tsunami swept the region, many frustrated survivors of the disaster are still living in tents and struggling to survive, with the reconstruction efforts to date proceeding at a snail's pace.

A journalist from Volkskrant in the Netherlands, Michel Maas, arrived in Aceh with many other foreign journalists hoping to see significant changes in the devastated region after the disaster that took thousands of lives.

But he was disappointed when he went to the coastal residential area of Ulee Lheue in Meuraxa district to take some photos. "I canceled my plan, I saw no changes between Ulee Lheue now and several months ago," he told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

Ulee Lheue is not the only place that seems to have been forgotten -- almost all villages in Meuraxa district, Banda Aceh, share a similar fate.

When the massive earthquake sent walls of water as high as 10 meters rushing inland, no place suffered more than Aceh with as many as 1,000 villages and towns either being damaged or wiped off the face of the earth.

In Aceh, where 168,000 people are dead or missing, bodies are still being found. The disaster totally destroyed some 127,000 houses and damaged many more, leaving some 500,000 people homeless.

The Dec. 26 disaster also completely destroyed two hospitals and damaged five others, as well as 26 community health centers. It also destroyed 1,488 schools and damaged 239 kilometers of road, nine harbors and 11,000 hectares of plantations.

And six months later, at least 400 people in Lampaseh village are still living in battered, worn-out tents.

"The government has started to forget us. Never mind houses, we don't even have barracks," said Lampaseh village head Syahrul.

Syahrul and other people in Lampaseh share the same dream -- having a simple house where they can keep cool on hot days and warm on cold nights.

In the poverty-stricken village, whose boundaries encompass an area of 375 hectares, 75 percent of which is given over to fish ponds, the disaster not only flattened the houses, but also covered the ponds with thick mud, thereby robbing the residents of their livelihoods. Now, local people survive by selling small shrimps and crabs collected from their former ponds as well as participating in a cash-for-work program, which involves cleaning the debris from their village for Rp 35,000 (US$3.8) a day.

"Then what? We're afraid we'll end up hungry," said another resident, Nurmalasari.

She said that survivors were supposed to receive Rp 90,000 in living expenses per person each month. But six months on, they had only received one payment. "We're are all wondering what happened to the rest of our money," she said.

Aceh and Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency director Kuntoro Mangkusubroto said on Saturday that US$2.8 billion is ready to be disbursed for reconstruction work. He also said he had signed the documents for 172 projects that were ready to start right away.

But given the massive scale of the calamity, it might take more than six months to bring about significant change as the disaster left a trail of destruction all over the region. The United Nations said recently it will take as long as 10 years to rebuild what was destroyed.

On Sunday, in the other countries most affected -- Sri Lanka, India and Thailand -- ceremonies were held to mourn those lost while the survivors struggled to pick up the pieces.

Reports said that in Sri Lanka, where a deal with Tamil Tigers to distribute tsunami aid in rebel-held areas has only been signed this week, the scale of the tragedy continues to haunt survivors, many of whom have yet to rebuild their homes and lives.

In the rebel-controlled Vakarai hamlet, about 60 kilometers northeast from the eastern Batticaloa town, volunteers collected anything and everything from the rubble for an exhibition marking the tsunami anniversary, the Associated Press reported.

In southern Thailand, where many foreigners were among the 5,395 people who died, small wreath-laying ceremonies were held on Sunday at a memorial on the tourist-island of Phuket.

Gabor Szigeti, a 32-year-old Swedish survivor, returned to Khao Lak, a stretch of white beaches north of Phuket, where he saw so many others lose loved ones that day.

Szigeti and his wife survived when the monster waves smashed into his holiday bungalow. The couple returned to thank local Thais who helped them survive the ordeal, he said.

"This helped us to get closure, I'd say. I feel a lot calmer," he told Reuters.