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BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Almost a year after the lives of Indonesians living in the isolated province of Aceh were changed irrevocably by tidal waves triggered by a massive
earthquake, humanitarian agencies face an oft-heard lament: The pace of building houses is not keeping pace with the need.
Thousands of residents in Aceh — the area hardest hit by the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami — remain in tents and other temporary shelter provided by the United Nations and international aid agencies. Such tents are common in the neighborhood of Lampaseh
Kota, a particularly affected area of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.
Recently, one of the residents of the neighborhood, Afifuddin, 26, recounted to a group of visitors some of the frustrations of the last year. Lampaseh Kota, he said, had seen its population decimated from 5,000 to 1,000. He lost grandparents, nieces, nephews, a brother and a sister. Only a nephew survived.
While grateful for the emergency assistance that he and others received, Afifuddin and others clearly are tired of living in tents and eager to move past the stage of being dependent on relief aid. “The next step needs to be on making us independent,” said Afifuddin, who has a degree in information technology.
The tsunami killed an estimated 232,000 people in parts of Asia and even in far away East Africa, and it is believed as many as 170,000 perished in Aceh alone.
Humanitarian officials in Aceh say the inevitable questions and expectations surrounding a “one-year” benchmark come as no surprise. But they also note the problems posed by a disaster of such magnitude and solving them in one year.
“When you travel through Aceh, it is true that far too many people are still living in tents and shelters,” said Henrich Terhorst, head of the Banda Aceh office of the Roman Catholic aid agency Caritas Germany.
But Terhorst, in a recent interview with Ecumenical News International, also cautioned that rebuilding permanent housing is not the equivalent of distributing emergency assistance after a disaster, and involves a host of complicated issues ranging
from property rights and titles to community planning.
Such will be the case in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he said, as it was in Germany after the Second World War. It is unfair, he said, for the world to expect that Indonesia would not face similar issues.
“My grandfather once said, after the [Second World War], that ‘You have no idea what it’s like to rebuild your community from scratch,’” Terhorst said, noting that Aceh residents face a similar challenge.
Earlier this week, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, who is overseeing the Indonesian government’s reconstruction coordinating efforts, acknowledged the difficulties of such a massive task. But he said he still expected that 30,000 homes in Aceh will be completed by
the end of the year and that 80,000 more will be completed in 2006.
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