The English term ‘home’ does not translate simply into the Indonesian or Acehnese languages. Rumah (or rumoh in Acehnese) can be translated as house in English and could encapsulate some of the values of the word home. However, the more
meaningful term is pulang. Pulang is a verb, rather than a noun, and it means to go home. This term means a physical movement from one place to a place of
significance, to pulang is to return to a place of personal, family or cultural significance. It may be a place where someone was born, or where their family originates from. Pulang can be attributed to a house, a village or a broader landscape of place.
When asked about returning to the village from the emergency camps one participant, Nurmala, explained that ‘we were desperate to come home here’. Nurmala used the phrase ‘nekad pulang’ which describes her desperation to return home, this is not simply her wish or her preference, but rather her fundamental need to go home.
Central to participants’ description of returning home was the need to return to living in their coastal environment. Instead of feeling safer when moved to emergency camps inland, these participants said they were uncomfortable being away from the sea. Syukriati explained that:
For us it is normal to live on the edge of the sea, we already don’t feel [afraid]. Instead if we live far from the sea it isn’t comfortable. Another
140
reason is our livelihood comes from the sea. For example if [we] go to the city for just a moment [we] already have a headache.
Jamaliah’s expresses a similar point of view: ‘because [we are] fishers, so [we are] not afraid of the sea, so [we] don’t want to stay in Banda Aceh.’ Although Jamaliah herself is not a fisher, she classes herself as part of the fishing community. Despite the recent tsunami, both of these women said that their desire to live by the sea was so strong that soon after the disaster they wished to return to their village with their families.
The sea itself was part of the participants’ sense of home. This view is articulated by the leader in Lhok Seudeu. He described the intrinsic importance of the sea, not simply as something close by, but as part of their lives: ‘whatever the cruelty of the sea, we are children of the sea. Steadfast, [it is] the sea we search for, don’t [say we have to move] 50 metres from the sea35, it is above the sea that we are brave’. In the years since the tsunami the participants have continued to experience strong earthquakes, quakes triggering tsunami warnings have occurred at least three times since 2004. Their choice to live as sea people and return to their home with their children is not a light decision, and it is not based on a lack of knowledge. This decision was taken because they view the sea as an intrinsic part of their lives and who they are as people.
The participants’ drawings presented later in this chapter feature both the mountains and sea as key elements of the village. One participant’s drawing in particular encapsulates how important that landscape is to their identity (Figure 6.3). This participant is a fisher. His drawing shows the key features of this landscape; hills, sea, the main coastal road and fishing boats.
35
Here the participant is referring to the local Government proposal to implement a 500 metre buffer zone between the sea and houses.
141
Figure 6.3 A participant’s drawing of the village landscape featuring the sea, mountains, fishing boats, and the main west coast road in Aceh.
As one participant, Syarifuddin, explained: ‘we live close to our income, the source of our income is the sea. We are also close to the mountain so if someone cannot go to sea they can search for their living in the mountains. The sea and the mountains, these are our opportunities’. Figure 6.4 was drawn by a child while his Grandmother was drawing her impression of the village. I started to draw pictures with the child so that his Grandmother could continue her drawing uninterrupted. I expected him to want to draw cartoons, but instead he wanted to draw his village. The child’s drawing captures those same key elements of the sea, a fishing boat, mountains, the main coastal road and a house. Therefore, rather than the sea edging the village, it appears to be a key component of the village.
142
A further example of the participants’ strong desire to remain living in their pre- tsunami home was their decision to decline housing offered to their village on the East Coast of Aceh. The proposed relocation was several hours driving from their current location. In separate interviews, Zaimuddin and Muhammad Yusuf argued that if housing aid was conditional on moving, they would prefer to continue living in their own place on the coast and go without aid. When they declined the housing offered on the East Coast they had no guarantee that any other housing aid would be offered to them. Another participant, Jamaliah, explained:
At first there was no aid to make a house because it [our location] is close to the sea, so we say we are not afraid of the sea…They said they will not build houses [here]. No problem we say, we can live in huts. Then finally there is permission [to build houses].
Zaimuddin, the leader of Lhok Seudeu, similarly described a deep sense of belonging to this place:
Build houses or don’t build houses, I was fixed here. It was not that I didn’t need a house, but if it was possible to build then build [it here], if it was not possible to build then that was that... I was definitely going home. … There are many other communities who did not go home to their village until they could go home to a house; now that is the wrong way around according to my own principles.
He goes on to say that even though they were offered one hectare of land if they moved to inland to Jantho; ‘it isn’t possible for us, [it isn’t possible] for people who hold a fishing rod to be given a hoe’. For this participant, despite the damage that had been wrought by the tsunami and the difficulty of meeting basic needs for food and clean water, he described the village as having everything he needed for his life. The leaders comments about the importance of continuing as fishers within this fishing community hints at how important this is for their identity. Their connection to place was grounded in their daily activities and the socio-cultural, economic and environmental practices this entailed. Thus, participants expressed a need to return, not just to their place, but also to their livelihoods. For example, Nurmala said; ‘I didn’t want to sit in the barracks there. My head ached, just eating, I didn’t want to
143
be like that. I had to come home here’. Nurmala used the phrase ‘tinggal makan’ which I have translated as ‘just eating’, but this phrase also suggests that she is ‘just surviving, only eating’. She continues; ‘it wasn’t normal. Before the tsunami I work for my income, after the tsunami I have to work for my income too. We think of our children, to improve their future’. Nurmala’s need to return to village life was tied to her sense of worth and identity. Rohani tells a similar story. In the barracks she cooked snack food ‘without an activity, I have a headache, just sitting [still]’.
When asked why he returned to the village one male participant, Syukran, explained: I don’t know. It is true that it is what I, myself, wanted. When [I’m] in the barracks I’m lazy, I don’t want to work, there was nothing, I just sleep. In fact, people in the tents said that I am the elder…so how would it be, [when I’m] not happy. After that I came home to my village, look at the village …collapsed, broken. So rather than just stress, [I] came home.
Although returning to the village and seeing the destruction was difficult for this participant, being in the barracks with nothing to occupy him but his stress was also traumatic. As an elder he wanted to set an example, and so he decided it was better to return and begin working than stay with nothing to do in the barracks.
At the time of interview Yusran was 21, making him around 14 or 15 when the tsunami occurred. He said he stayed in barracks for 6 months before coming home. He talks about his reasons for coming home to his village:
it wasn’t nice in the barracks because it was someone else’s village… Better to be in [our] own village… In [our] village we can go to sea, can look for money, if [we are] in the barracks we are just using up our money. That is why [I] come home [to the] village.
Yusran said that there were many people already here when he came home, ‘but [it was] still sad, sometimes crying at night, better to [be] working during the day and staying with friends at night so the sadness quickly disappears’. For Yusran, even though it was sad when he came home, being home helped him recover as he could be busy working during the day. He said that at night he slept in a balai (shelter), there were 30 people sleeping there and also some in tents. After two years in the
144
tents he said that aid in the form of ‘rumah bongkar pasang’ easily dismantle-able shelters arrived.
Participants’ use of the idea of home was not restricted to the physical structure of a house, but arises from a broader sense of place-based home. For example when Nurlaila described her husband going home she said he returned to the village place. When Nurlaila talked about her husband returning from fishing, she differentiated between going home (pulang) and going home to the house (pulang ke rumah).