Year on Indonesia tsunami survivors feel cut off
Year on Indonesia tsunami survivors feel cut off
Dean Yates Reuters/Lhok Kruet, Aceh
A year has passed, but for survivors of the Asian tsunami in this village in Indonesia's Aceh province, it's felt like a lifetime.
A lifetime waiting for a new home, a job or even a decent road so fishermen can find a market to sell their catch.
"We don't worry about the tsunami anymore, but what about our future, our children. Look, we are still living in tents here," said Tengku Abdullah, a community leader in Lhok Kruet, 100 km south of the provincial capital Banda Aceh.
In many parts of Aceh's west coast where the Dec. 26 tsunami vented its fury for 250 km stretching from Banda Aceh to the town of Meulaboh in the south, frustration is growing at the pace of reconstruction and the lack of jobs.
Temporary and permanent houses have sprung up in some places. But tens of thousands of survivors are still living in tents. Some complain they are fed up with promises of things they say never seem to appear.
Sitting next to Abdullah, Mohammad Ali, chief of an adjacent village that was obliterated and whose survivors now live in Lhok Kruet, said his people felt cut off from the world.
In either direction, the road is passable only in four-wheel drive vehicles, and even then heavy rains can suddenly cut the boggy artery completely.
"It feels like we are living on an island," said Ali. The state of the road has made it hard to get reconstruction materials to the west coast. Some aid groups are shipping in wood and bricks, but ports were also destroyed.
USAID is funding the rebuilding and rehabilitation of the stretch of devastated road from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh, but the US$245 million project will not be finished until 2009.
Compelling needs
Aid officials acknowledge the bottlenecks but say reconstruction is picking up in the wake of the most devastating tsunami on record, which left 231,452 people dead or missing in a dozen Indian Ocean nations.
The toll of missing and dead in Aceh alone was 169,000. In addition, moe than a half-million Acehnese lost their homes.
"One has a sense that progress is under way and that needs to be noted, particularly against the magnitude of the disaster and what it takes to actually do sustainable reconstruction," said Eric Morris, the U.N. chief recovery coordinator for Aceh.
"But there are still truly compelling needs out there of the most basic nature."
For fisherman Salamuddin in Pulot village about 50 km (30 miles) south of Banda Aceh, the morning of Dec. 26 was like any other until a 9.15 magnitude earthquake, the strongest in four decades, erupted off the coast.
Salamuddin was on the beach when he saw the water suddenly drain from the shoreline for several hundred metres. He knew he had to run for higher ground.
"Many people were in the mosque praying after the quake. But I'm a fisherman, I knew the water would come back," said Salamuddin, wearing a pink sarong and blue polo shirt.
He lost everything, including his prized twin hull wooden fishing boat. Now, he and some friends use a scavenged 15-foot boat to catch small fish and crabs near the shore.
The tsunami disaster triggered one of the biggest humanitarian responses ever. But even when aid is well-intentioned, it does not always have the desired effect.
At the village of Janguet outside the west coast town of Lamno, Turkish aid groups quickly built some of the first wooden houses for survivors. Villagers now complain about gaps in the walls that let rainwater seep in.
At the next village, fishermen complained the outboard motors they were given -- they could not remember by whom -- needed petrol, not the diesel they usually use which is much cheaper to run.
The little things
Fishermen in Meulaboh, to the south, seemed happier. International aid group Mercy Corps has put an ice-making truck along an estuary near the ocean that helps fishermen preserve their catch or venture out to sea for long periods.
"It's made a big difference. We can now go out to fish for 10 nights instead of one," said Dodi Nazzaruddin, as he loaded rectangular blocks of ice into the hold of his boat.
As the year has passed, more and more survivors along the ruined west coast of Aceh have returned to try to reclaim their villages from the brutal waves. They appear stoic, but are desperate for the pace of reconstruction to pick up.
Others living in camps are sick of the cramped conditions, the stifling heat and the leaks in their tents when it rains.
For some, it's little things like privacy that they miss.
At a camp near Meulaboh where 896 survivors live in 36 army- style tents, Usnawihay lies on her side on a dirty mattress as she breastfeeds her 23-day old baby boy. She gave birth there.
"It was hot and embarrassing. People could hear everything," said the 28-year-old mother of five.
REUTERS
GetRTR 3.00 -- DEC 14, 2005 09:55:04