TSUNAMI UPDATE

ACEH, INDONESIA

A celebration of people-driven reconstruction, one year after the waves hit

Udeep Beusaree Network of 25 villages rebuilds Welcome to one of the busiest parts of Banda Aceh . . .

On the first-year anniversary of the tsunami, governments in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India all organized high-profile commemorations to honor the hundreds of thousands who died in the waves. TV viewers worldwide watched moving footage of doves being released, dignitaries giving speeches, candle-light vigils and interviews with survivors on BBC and CNN. Much less publicized, but as important, were some one-year-after events organized by some of the tsunami’s most vulnerable survivors, living in coastal fishing communities in Thailand and Indonesia. These people’s tsunami commemorations gave large numbers of traumatized communities a chance to collectively reflect on their losses, but at the same time to consider all the work they’d done rebuilding their lives and settlements over the past year. One such event was the one-year-tsunami people’s dialogue in Banda Aceh in early January 2006, hosted by Udeep Beusaree (“Live together” in Acehnese), a network of 25 tsunami-affected coastal villages which have been rebuilding their villages, with support from the national Uplink network.
A big group of tsunami survivors from India, Thailand and Sri Lanka, as well as some earthquake survivors from Pakistan and India got a chance to compare notes on all the big issues of rehabilitation - land tenure, housing, livelihood revival and dealing with misguided government regulations - with the Acehnese and Uplink groups from other parts of Indonesia.

The centerpiece of the dialogue was the enormous, people-planned and people-built rebuilding program that is going on in the 25-villages – a program which involves the construction of a staggering 3,500 earthquake-resistant houses (2,751 already finished), full roads and infrastructural facilities and an extensive “eco-development” program to restore mangroves and create layers of built and planted safety barriers between the sea and the villages.

 

By January 2006, it was shocking for many visitors to see how little the situation had changed as they went bumping out into the vast, treeless wastes of ruins and brackish water where two-thirds of the city of Banda Aceh once stood. The big chunks of rubble had been cleared away and the monsoon rains had sweetened the air and brought back the greenery of swamp grasses and the sound of crickets, but there was very little rebuilding of houses or roads. Elsewhere in the province, 70,000 people (30% of Aceh’s tsunami survivors) still languished in tents and barracks. The government’s “transitional shelter” reconstruction program had not even begun yet - forget about permanent housing! For those lucky enough to get housing being built by aid agencies, there was no choice, no involvement.
Things changed dramatically when you reached the 8-kilometer stretch of coastline where the 25 villages in the Udeep Beusaree Network are located, and where the transformation from silent ruin to cheerful and chaotic rebuilding was sudden and dramatic! Suddenly, the shiny galvanized tin roofs of hundreds of new houses appeared out of the gloom, and stretched along the horizon to where Aceh’s cinnamon and coffee-growing hills meet its narrow coastal plain. Everywhere, there were crews of people laying bricks, hammering up roof frames, sawing timber joists, pouring concrete, bending iron reinforcing bars – or just hanging out in their dozens at the little make-shift coffee houses that have continued to multiply across the ruined city. Some villagers had already planted orchards (star fruit, coconut, oranges and mangosteen), and in places where the salt water had somehow drained away, there were even some patches of iridescent green rice paddies. The roads along the villages were still bumpy, but they’d been lined with colorful banners and kerosene torches to light the visitors way home at night, in lieu of electricity.
These are the villages that just 12 months earlier had been totally leveled by the tsunami. Between half and three-quarters of their populations had been swept away, along with their houses, boats, cars, toys, books, televisions and furniture - everything. But these are also the villages which had defied the government’s original decree forbidding rebuilding within 2 kilometers of the sea, who marched out of the relief camps and back to their land, where they began energetically rebuilding their ruined houses and villages. The project to rebuild these villages makes a very potent demonstration of how much faster, cheaper, more appropriate and more comprehensive post-disaster rehabilitation can be when the survivors themselves – as a large collective group - are in charge, and are supported to do what they need.

During the 3-day dialogue, more than 150 participants were feasted on spicy Acehnese delicacies, driven around town in pedicabs by the local becak drivers group and accommodated by villagers whose new houses are finished. Besides being an inexpensive way of accommodating a large number of participants, these home stays allowed tsunami-hit people from other parts of Asia to experience first hand this exciting phase of reconstruction in Aceh. The warmth of the welcome, the quiet, the star-filled skies at night, and the pride with which these battered villagers could at last properly host guests, after a year of unspeakable hardships, smoothed over any discomforts in the slightly primitive conditions.

Bringing back the spirit with activities

 

One of the main goals behind this huge reconstruction process has been to rebuild trust and a spirit of collective action in these battered communities, to show other disaster-hit communities and the government that with a little support, even the most traumatized people can get to work right away building a better life for themselves. Especially in Aceh, where years of civil strife have left hope and social cohesion in these villages badly torn and in need of mending, even before the waves hit. Virtually every activity in the rehabilitation process has been consciously organized and designed to build this collective, self-help spirit: from surveying, to mapping, constructing temporary houses, drafting village plans, designing and building permanent houses, starting livelihood projects, revitalizing agriculture, preparing eco-village plans, etc. Uplink tried from the very start to help bring these villagers together into a network, so that the survivors didn’t feel that they were by themselves, but had brothers and sisters in other villages, other tsunami-affected cities and countries. When people mourn together, cook together, plan together, build together and create a new future for themselves together, that is real rehabilitation in the fullest sense. Mind you, the picture hasn’t all been rosy: there have been plenty of conflicts, differences of opinion, and clashes with aid groups aggressively pushing their various agendas in these villages. But the network mechanism - and the innumerable meetings and overlapping activities it promotes - allow plenty of opportunities to turn these disagreements into learning for everyone.

NEXT Page 11 Aceh
Building 3,500 earthquake-proof houses