wfn.org | A Year Later, Tsunami-battered Aceh Searches for Security and

["Lesley Crosson" <lcrosson@churchworldservice.org>]

A Year Later, Tsunami-battered Aceh Searches for Security and Hope
December 5, 2005

By Chris Herlinger*
Church World Service

Note: Photos to accompany this story can be download3ed at http://churchworldservice.org/news/gallery/tsunami/index.html

Banda Aceh, Indonesia -- It is difficult for an outsider visiting Banda
Aceh not to be drawn to the ocean.
Not to swim. Nor to fish. But merely to look and marvel at the ocean's
destructive power.
On Banda Aceh's coastline, neighborhoods like Kampung Mulia and Lampaseh
Kota took the full brunt of last December's tsunami; a year later, the
surviving residents, most still living in tents and awaiting completed
housing, still struggle with memories of an accursed day.
They include Afifuddin, 26, an information technology graduate who acts as
a community representative for Lampaseh Kota, a once vibrant neighborhood
now laid waste and recovering from an almost indescribable loss of life:
from a population of 5,000, the urban village now has about 1,000
residents.

Afifuddin lost a grandmother, nephews, nieces, a brother and a sister last
Dec. 26; he speaks of memories of Dec. 26--of panic, confusion, pandemonium--quietly, almost dispassionately; he is focused on the future and not the
past, but that is not always easy: many around him are still traumatized,
he said.

Church World Service provided basic relief items to his neighborhood--CWS
"Gift of the Heart" Health Kits, tents, mattresses--and those have proven
valuable in what has been a difficult year.
Not far from Lampaseh Kota stands another urban village, Kampung Mulia--"noble village" in Indonesian--and also a recipient of CWS assistance. It is
home to Marzuki Arsyad, a one-time pedicab driver and part-time fisherman.
Arsyad's immediate family fared better than many in his neighborhood--his
wife, a physics teacher, works in another city and was not in Banda Aceh
the day the tsunami hit. But he still lost brothers, sisters and other
family: Thirteen in all.
The memories of the day refuse to lay dormant: "We were like people losing
our minds. We saw these bodies--women, children, older people--all around
us and we couldn't do anything."
Staying determined and busy has helped ease a bit of the trauma; like
Afifuddin, Arsyad is focused on the future and believes Aceh's full
recovery depends on developing the region's economic base.

Education and easing trauma also have key roles, as Siti Mariam quietly
but determinedly believes. Siti Mariam, a Church World Service program
officer who helps coordinate a psychosocial support program for children
in Krueng Kala village, south of Banda Aceh, site of a resettlement
program for internally displaced persons affected by the tsunami.
Siti Mariam said the program, which one day recently housed nearly 100
lively and talkative children as they engaged in crafts making, has
noticeably helped the children. Once afraid of noises that suggested the
roar of the tsunami--even the sounds of helicopters sent the children
cowering in fear--the young people are now engaged, funny, and "not afraid
to express their emotions."

Small steps, to be sure in what remains a long process of recovery: much
housing has yet to be built -- Church World Service and its partners are
actively involved in that work--and Aceh itself is recovering from a
double crisis: not only from the tsunami, but from a 30-year civil
conflict that only recently ended.

In fact, the tsunami and recovery efforts are believed to have caused the
Indonesian government and rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh
Merdeka, or GAM), to recognize the need to end a war that prior to this
year, showed no signs of abating.
That is why, as reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts continue into
the future and as Aceh sets to mark the one-year anniversary of the Dec.
26 tsunami, the word "security" has particular poignancy in Aceh.

"This is not just about building homes," said CWS staffer Ejodia Kakunsi
after several days of visits to Aceh's recovering coastal areas, "but
building for the future."

*Herlinger is communications officer for the Church World Service
Emergency Response Program.

Media Contacts:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676; lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin (24/7), 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net