Seven Acehnese young men living in a rough, homemade wooden shack on stilts in the village of Lampuuk, 30km from the northern tip of Sumatra, are learning self-sufficiency the hard way. All are the only members of their immediate families to survive last year's Dec. 26 tsunami -- 6,000 out of 7,000 villagers died -- and rather than be packed off to distant relatives they decided to band together and form their own "family."
"We've known each other for a couple of years, so were friends already," said Maulida, 25, the oldest and unofficial head of the family. "We thought it would be nicer to live together, so then we could help each other."
After living in a school for three months and then a tent near the village mosque -- the only building that survived -- for another six, they built their three-room home out of debris scavenged from the rice fields that remain uncultivated. It lets in heavy rain and they don't have mattresses, but they are thankful not to be among 67,000 Acehnese still living in tents a year after the 9.2-magnitude earthquake triggered the tsunami that wreaked havoc across the Indian Ocean.
PHOTO: AFP
More than 132,000 died in Aceh and neighboring North Sumatra province. About 37,000 remain missing. Like the hundreds of thousands of others across Aceh, the seven orphans survive on food handouts, cash-for-work schemes and sharing what little resources they have. Maulida and 19-year-old Mawardi are constructing a widows' home, financed by a Dutch organization; the rest are at school.
Several aid organizations, including Plan International, which introduced me to the orphans, are active in Lampuuk, but for most of the survivors life is a constant struggle. Permanent housing is on the way, the orphans have been told, although -- in a classic case of the poor communication bedeviling the recovery process -- none of them can remember the aid agency responsible for building them.
"We've been told they will be eight-by-seven meters and ready in six months," Yusnezal said. "We are each going to get one, but we plan to still live together. I don't know anything else, so we can only wait."
Waiting is a skill the tsunami survivors are practised at and it will come in handy in the months, probably years, to come. Reconstruction is likely to take at least until 2009.
Is it fair that the Acehnese will have to wait that long, and why hasn't more been done already? To try to find some answers I retraced the steps I took in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, going first to south-west Thailand and then to Aceh in Indonesia to compare the two nations' progress.
Tsunami, what tsunami? That's the reaction of some tourists in the Thai resorts of Phuket and Khao Lhak, says Andrew Kemp, a Briton whose five-star resort, the Sarojin, was devastated by 10m-high waves three days before it was due to open. It has just started welcoming guests.
"We're already getting people who don't know anything happened, which is a great sign," he said.
Tourist arrivals are some 60 percent down on last year but are steadily climbing and visitors who have dared to return are usually glad they have because the atmosphere is not sad; indeed many locals seem to take heart from them.
But all is not well in Thailand's reconstruction program. Virtually every local I spoke to said the government played virtually no role in consultation or co-ordination.
In contrast to Thailand, Indonesia created a special reconstruction agency (BRR) headed by a Cabinet minister. The BRR's genesis delayed reconstruction in Aceh by several months, but in the long run it will probably prove the correct decision.
BRR began as a facilitator but it is evolving into a co-ordinating and enforcing agency, setting criteria for projects. That does not excuse the fact that so many people are still in tents rather than some form of transitional shelter. It is hard to know where to pin the blame; it probably lies with everyone involved in Aceh.
As Eric Morris, the UN's relief co-ordinator in Aceh, put it: "A lot of the systems in place for emergency relief worked, but there's always a gap between relief and recovery and reconstruction."
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not