faraway

I spent the weekend in Aceh. I am working with Aceh groups to audit the voter registration list. I was with my long-time staffer and friend, Anastasia Soeryadinata. Our task is to evaluate the quality of the voter list. Together we have organized more than 500 volunteers to go out all across Aceh and check the accuracy of the voters list by interviewing voters.

I spend Sunday driving around to spot check on some of our volunteers while Anas stayed in Banda Aceh (the provincial capital) to troubleshoot. The most interesting location I visited was a newly re-built village, Lam Isek. All the houses are practically the same, cookie cutter style, white square structures with tin roofs. There is lumber piled up everywhere as construction of more new houses continues. There are no trees, the tsunami just snapped them off, tore everything away.

The tsunami completely wiped out this village. You can still see foundations of houses, the squat toilets and ceramic tiles left by the tsunami after it swept every other structure and carried it away. I spoke to the village teacher, Mr. Nasar. He told me an incredible story of survival. The tsunami killed all but two of the women from this village. His wife was one of the two. When the tsunami hit, the men were mostly at work and the women were at home. Nasar’s wife was walking home when the tsunami reached her. She lost consciousness as the tsunami swept her up. When she awoke, she was encased in a house-sized ball of vegetation, leaves and branches. She called for help and eventually people came to pull her out of the cocoon of vegetation that both saved her but now threaten to imprison her. She found herself in the foothills of the mountain several kilometers from her village. But she walked away without a scratch.

Now Lam Isek is being slowly repopulated. There are almost 200 houses but merely 50 villagers. Many villagers are still living where they took shelter after the tsunami. Many had to find jobs to earn money or schools for their children and it is difficult to move back. Mr. Nasar told me that at least there are 20 women in the village now. Many men have remarried over the past two years since the devastation. And there are children, playing amidst the jumble of construction materials afraid of my camera but alive and well.

I drove down the coast. The views are stunning and beautiful. On the right there are sandy beaches pounded by a heavy green-blue surf. To the left there is a solid wall of mountains covered in lush emerald forests. Here and there stand massive bulbous hill – more like massive rocks -- almost as high as the mountains, also covered in forests. Dotted along the coasts, communities are re-building their homes with the help of foreign donors and NGOs. Logos and foreign flags cover all these projects. There is construction everywhere.

I am amazed and humbled at how resilient these people are. People who have lost entire families, who have lived through a three-decade civil war, who are still quite impoverished are putting their lives back together brick by brick.

Jerome