Survivors defiant through graffiti

Survivors defiant through graffiti

Dan Eaton, Reuters/Banda Aceh

After all that was lost, the writing on the wall is a simple, defiant statement.

"The owner of this house lived. Tsunami Dec. 26, 2004," say the words scrawled across one of the few structures left standing in the waterfront area of Banda Aceh on the northwestern tip of Indonesia.

All around this city of some 300,000 people, where tens of thousands perished in just a few devastating minutes that Sunday morning, survivors have recorded their hopes and fears in graffiti.

Almost everywhere in the hardest hit areas, scratched onto walls or daubed on doors and the broken hulls of boats is the date the sea came in.

On the same waterfront wall, another survivor announces what the future holds: "Remember, all of us must die."

More than seven weeks after the huge earthquake-triggered waves crashed into the capital of Aceh province, unleashing destruction of biblical proportions, the former residential area of Ulee Lheue has become something of a tourist attraction. Cars and motorbikes carrying Indonesian sightseers clog the road.

There is also a steady stream of expensive four-wheel drive vehicles bearing the myriad logos of foreign aid agencies.

Amid the twisted debris, vendors have set up stalls selling everything from drinks and cigarettes to macabre compilations of home video footage of the tsunami as it crashed ashore.

"I needed to see it with my own eyes," said Zainal, a 25-year- old office worker, squinting in the bright sunshine.

"Why us? Why did this happen? I don't know, but it's what we are all asking," he said.

In Lhok Nga, a flattened beachfront community a 20-minute drive south of the provincial capital of Indonesia's most devout Muslim province, the graffiti has a religious flavour.

"Oh God, we repent," reads one scrawl on a free-standing concrete wall.

"Help save us from disaster, Oh God," reads another.

"You're not repenting. Just wait for the next disaster."

Hundreds of thousands of survivors now live in makeshift refugee camps or with relatives, their homes and livelihoods gone. Others are being moved into hastily built wooden barracks erected by the government, where relief workers speculate they could remain for months and even years.

Officials and medical experts speak of widespread trauma and the importance of counselling. They say survivors of disasters can sometimes feel a sense of guilt at being alive when others died, or a sense of responsibility for what happened.

At tent schools and in dilapidated classrooms, children are encouraged to exorcise their fears by drawing pictures of what happened to them.

"Art is definitely an expressive and non-confrontational way for children to show their feelings," said Shantha Bloeman of the United Nations Children's Fund.

"There is still a hesitancy from parents to discuss issues around the tsunami ... Many are going through their own forms of grief."

Although the United Nations is involved in recruiting and training counsellors, little has yet been done for the adults.

"The therapy for post traumatic stress disorder is to express their feelings, their cognition," said Peony Suprianto, a psychiatrist at the Kesehatan Daerah Militer hospital in Banda Aceh.

"One way to express it is graffiti, or to talk on the radio and television shows."

But fear, even sparked by ordinary water, remains.

"I hear from my colleagues in the camps that many survivors have post traumatic stress disorder. Even little children, two years old, three years old, if they see drinking water, bottled water, they cry and cling to their mothers," he said.

REUTERS

GetRTR 3.00 -- FEB 16, 2005 08:37:09