Tsunami couple's cafe helps family cope

Tsunami couple's cafe helps family cope

Tiarma Siboro and Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

Everyone deals with grief differently. Some block out painful
episodes, while others choose to relive their personal traumas to
get their grief out.

An Acehnese couple Maimun (28) and his wife Desi (26) have
memorialized the place they lost their three-year-old daughter,
Munira Rizkina, by setting up a modest coffee shop there named
the "Tsunami Cafe."

The couple set up the shop just a week after the calamity in a
bid to help bring back a sense of normality to the area.

The cafe, or warung kopi, is located in a ruined Lamdingin
housing complex in Banda Aceh -- a place where around 1,800
people from a total population of 2,000 perished on Dec. 26.

"I lost my daughter...I thought I lost my wife, too. I
couldn't believe my eyes when I saw my wife among thousands of
refugees at a camp located in the local council compound. It was
two days after the tsunami. All we could do afterwards was just
cry and cry until we realized that tears won't bring back our
daughter," Maimun said.

"My wife told me that Munira slipped from her hands when the
giant wave came and swept through our housing area. The water
also swept away my wife, but she survived when some young people
reached out to her and pulled her from the torrent," he said.

"We will never forget our misery and the pain of countless
others. I saw volunteers helping the victims. Bodies were
counted. I came to this area and saw hundreds of my neighbors had
perished. I couldn't find my baby and I knew that she had died,"
Maimun said.

Learning that the volunteers and foreign troops might be tired
after working day and night in the heat, Maimun decided with his
wife to set up a coffee shop along with his elder brother,
Sulaiman, 30, and his wife who also lost their daughter.

Determined to continue on with life they moved out of the
refugee camp and set up a tent in front of their ruined house.

Maimun was previously a farmer but the plot of land he tended
is now ruined by mud and seawater.

To set up the shop, the couples borrowed money from their
relatives and collected around Rp 300,000 (about US$33) in
starting capital. Since their houses were badly damaged, they
used a partly ruined two-story house abandoned by their neighbor
as its location.

They needed no additional funds to purchase furniture, they
said, as they recovered chairs and desks collected from piles of
debris.

"While our wives were preparing coffee and other supplementary
drinks for our customers, me and my brother helped volunteers
pick up the bodies lying in front of our cafe," Maimun said.

The shop, in the shell of a house without a roof and still
surrounded by debris, has proved popular. Besides providing cups
of Acehnese coffee, it also offers breakfast and lunch.

Each cup of coffee is priced at Rp 1,000, higher than the
usual price of around Rp 700.

Meanwhile, prices of meals range from Rp 3,000 to Rp 5,000.
The couples cook the meals in their tents and serve it in wrapped
paper.

Some of the volunteers also wanted supplementary energy drinks
and traditional snacks, such as fried tempeh and banana, and
Indonesian soldiers and foreign troops have become regular
customers.

The couples have to close the shop when night comes because
there is still no power in the area.

During the first days after the shop opened, the couples were
able to collect around Rp 1 million a day. But as the volunteers,
soldiers and foreign troops gradually left the province, revenue
reduced to about Rp 600,000.

However, the Maimun and his wife say they are happy. Their
cafe has become a social center, a meeting place for survivors
who discuss many things, including what they should do now, after
the disaster.

"It is good for us. All benefit -- the volunteers, the
troops, me, my brother and our wives," Maimun said.