When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, the case study community was living on the edge of the sea. Between one quarter to one fifth of the 900 residents were lost in the tsunami. This figure is approximately equivalent to one person per household. However, the tsunami affected people differently; at least two children lost their immediate family, while other residents lost one or two family members. The number of people lost is thus not necessarily a good indication of the extent of the devastation for the inhabitants. Furthermore, many of the residents in the village were related to people in neighbouring villages where the death toll was much
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higher. One of the participants who held a leadership role in the village explained the number who lost their lives in the following way:
For our community, we did not have many deaths compared to other places because in this area we are close to hills, right, as well as that we can see the sea, so that anticipating is easier [here], straight away running and save ourselves … [there were] less than 200 deaths [here].
In addition to the loss of people, animals both wild and those in domestic farms died or disappeared. Almost all of their built environment was destroyed; houses, cafes, community meeting places29, businesses, the Mosque as well as internal roads and the main road connecting the village to neighbouring villages. Coconut and fruit trees as well as vegetable crops, both in the village and part way up the surrounding hills, were lost. The fish ponds were inundated with salt water. Fishing boats, motorbikes and bicycles disappeared. Phone and electricity lines were destroyed.
Not only were large items destroyed, but so were the materials for everyday life, such as stoves, cooking utensils, bedding, clothes, medical supplies and food. One participant, Rohani30, said that they were fortunate that a truck carrying instant noodles had crashed in the village during the tsunami. Those instant noodles were their main source of food for the first week after the tsunami. Another participant, Zaimuddin, recalls painting ‘SOS’ in yellow paint, explaining that someone had told him it meant that aid was needed. At the time of interview Zaimuddin had held a leadership role in the community since prior to the tsunami, he said a week after the tsunami occurred they had not received any aid and they were ordered (by the Indonesian army) to evacuate. He was later told that the day after they evacuated an American ship stopped at the village because of the SOS sign.
29
Including balai (wooden platforms) and Musholla (community houses for prayer and for young men to sleep at night). See Chapter 8 for a detailed description of the function of these community spaces.
30
All names in Chapters 6-9 are pseudonyms (with the exception of ‘Paul’ in Chapter 9). With my research assistants I chose names that reflected the context of the research in rural Aceh. Pseudonyms may be similar to the names of people in the village that I did not interview.
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One interviewee’s story of the tsunami stands out for me. Aged 12 or13 when the tsunami occurred, Ali explained that: ‘After the earthquake there is no chance to see the wave… straight away [I was] running…’ I ask Ali how he knew to run: ‘[I] wanted to run here [indicating on the map he has drawn that he wanted to run towards the shore], want to run to my Grandma’s house, [but] the wave was already here, already at the village road here, [I] keep running…because some people had already seen [the wave] so keep running’. Ali explained that his parents later told him that this was a tsunami as they ran to the mountains. I then asked Ali, ‘was your Grandma at her house?’ He replied ‘ngak ada lagi’ meaning not there anymore. At the time I thought Ali meant that his Grandma was already in the mountains. In hindsight I realise he meant she was already taken by the tsunami wave.
Another participant, Asiah, described the tsunami wave: ‘[it was] more than three times the height of a coconut tree’. Asiah explained that she knew a tsunami was coming:
I knew because people said [that] the sea was receding (low tide). This happened before at the time of Nabi Nuh31. People said run to the mountain therefore we just run, two of us were hit by the tsunami, my mum and my dad’s older brother.
Some participants did mention that an inundation of ocean water of two metres high had occurred within their lifetime, but that it was a slow inundation, similar to a flood. Other participants said they ran because other members of the community were telling them to, rather than knowing about tsunamis themselves.
It is possible that their ancestors were not living in this location when the last tsunami occurred. Although many participants described themselves as orang asli, meaning original people (or people originating from this place), to be thought of as
orang asli a person’s family only needs to have been in the village since their great-
great grandparents (or for five generations). For example, the village leader in Lhok Seudeu is the fifth generation of his family to live there. When the earthquake happened he said he went inside to secure his fish tank because of the strong quake.
31
This is a reference to the story of Noah and the great flood, this was the only participant who referenced Noah.
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He said he never would have done this if he thought a tsunami was coming. When he heard people shouting ‘water, water’ he started running:
Suddenly the water is coming, we are shocked… our minds are empty, we forget everything, [even] our ABCs are forgotten, …I was in one group running to the top… when I am up, when all of us are up, I remember [my wife]… I just realise. Straight away I go back down, when I am going down I meet this person going up I ask “where is my wife? My wife?” Just when I get down to the bottom I meet her.
His wife explained the shock she felt when she stopped running to look back towards her house: ‘I see my house has already, whoosh … taken by the water like this …When I saw that “Ya Allah…!” my house has gone’. Her husband continued: ‘from me to that [wave] that took our house was 50 metres’. When asked whether he had any prior knowledge about tsunamis he replied: ‘nggak pernah, apa, terlintas,
nggak pernah tergambar di pikiran’ meaning ‘[it] had never, what is the word,
occurred to me, it had never pictured in my thoughts’.
Following the tsunami, Asiah spent two days in the mountains surrounding the village before returning to the village. She explained that staying in the mountains offered safety but also drinking water from coconuts and a well that the villagers repaired and cleaned. With the tsunami, almost all communication between the village and other areas was lost. In one group interview, participants talked about receiving a ‘drop box’ from a helicopter while they were in the mountains. It was remembered because it contained ‘beautiful Indian saris’, but the participants were unsure who it had come from. At this time participants usual means of travel via the main coastal road to Banda Aceh was destroyed. Their only means of finding information was through people who walked overland (a two day walk through the mountains) to reach the village and the radio at a nearby military post.
The military radio post offered an important means of communication and
coordination. However, due to the ongoing conflict in Aceh it was not possible for all people to move freely or to communicate via this facility. This was the case for one participant who was a combatant of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). He talked about being in the mountains when the tsunami occurred and not knowing what the
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situation was in his village. He was not able to return to the village because of the on-going conflict. He waited in a tree above the village, watching to see if he could find what had happened to his family:
After the tsunami, actually there was still conflict here…[but] the GAM did not come home. In other places when the tsunami water went down the GAM people went home to their village, they go home and the army is there, that makes conflict. [But] here when the water went down we didn’t come home here, we just wait, we just wait for news like where are our households, especially not going into the village, just sit on the edge of the mountain there. Rather than making [the situation] more dangerous with the army. Either the day of the tsunami or the following day, this participant and his father carried a child that had been swept about in the tsunami waves to seek medical help in Banda Aceh. At the time he said he had to hide for fear of being recognised as a member of the Free Aceh Movement by an Indonesian soldier. For those people who were known combatants of the Free Aceh Movement, evacuating to the emergency camps was difficult because of the danger that they would be recognised by
Indonesian military personnel; one participant said that when he evacuated to the emergency tent he was unable to go outside for fear of being recognised32. Around 6 days after the tsunami, the remaining villagers evacuated to Mata Ie (Figure 6.1). The decision to evacuate was both due to the absence of food and medical supplies left after the tsunami and/or because they were ordered to do so by the Indonesian army. They were assisted by friends who returned to the village from Banda Aceh and members of the Indonesian military who had been stationed at the military post near to the village prior to the tsunami. They left the village at 6am to walk to Mata Ie, arriving at Mahgrib (the time for evening prayer)33. Like many
32
By chance this participant was able to join a German NGO program which offered sewing training in Java, this program allowed the participant to leave Aceh and return after the MoU between the Acehnese Freedom Fighters and the Indonesian Government had been signed in August 2005.
33
It is not unusual for participants’ recollections to vary as to whether they left on the 6th or 7th day after the tsunami occurred.
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other activities this journey is marked according to Muslim prayer times. Mata Ie is a mountainous area on the edge of the capital Banda Aceh, where an emergency camp had been set up by INGOs with medical supplies and food. They walked together for two days, camping overnight in the mountains.
Figure 6.1 Diagram of case study site in relation to emergency camp.
One participant, Syukriati, explained how she heard about the emergency camp: ‘on the sixth day we went to Mata Ie, there were already many sick children, and so a friend returning from there, said “go to Mata Ie... lots of help there”.’ In a group interview the women recalled the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, they described having no food after the tsunami occurred:
Nothing [no food], all empty, there was nothing, later if someone was passing we were in the path at the top there [of the hill around the village]. If
someone pass they give [us] food, whoever it was brings food. Seven days and seven nights there was no food.
In the same interview the women described travelling through Lhoong on their way to Mata Ie, many of those in the case study village were related to or had grown up with people in Lhoong. The devastation in Lhoong was more extreme than in the case study village. For example, one participant compared the experiences of these two places:
Here because we are close to the mountains many [people] were saved here. In Lhoong the mountains are far…Here we can see the water which means
Two night walk via mountains Case study
site
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we have time to run, for people in Lhoong they cannot see because the people there have many many trees, because it is dark34 they cannot see the sea. The situation described by the participants of the initial period following the tsunami is reflected in a news article published online on the 16th of January 2005:
an international humanitarian relief effort for the earthquake and tsunami victims in Aceh, Indonesia, is now busy assisting survivors of a group of villagers that have been without food and medical assistance from the outside world for some 20 days… [the] team found the group of villagers in one of its search and rescue missions on Friday, Jan 14. The group of villages, close to the town of Lhok Seudeu, is south of Banda Aceh and faces the Indian Ocean… "We saw children on their knees. As we approached them, they did not even have the energy to stand up and walk towards us. It's a pitiful sight," says chef de mission Mr Malkith Singh (who is currently at the village)… Initial reports from [the] ground say that the villages have been badly
devastated by the tsunami. "The first kilometre from the sea shore was simply wiped out," says Malkith Singh.
On the whole, the villagers are facing malnutrition due to lack of proper food as they have been cut off from the rest of the world since the tsunami. Initial reports suggest that the village only had one airdrop before being spotted by the […] team last Friday (Singh, 2005).
None of the participants refered this ship in their interviews so it is possible that people in the article were from a neighbouring village.