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Indonesia December 23, 2009 5:18PM
Five Years of Hard Work, Together
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Nurhayati in her rice field near the village of Rima Jeunue, Indonesia Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
My name is Nurhayati. I'm 52 years old, and I live in the village of Rima Jeunue, Indonesia.
Five years ago, my life changed forever.
Five years ago, Mercy Corps helped me begin to reclaim what I'd lost.
When the Indian Ocean Tsunami struck this area, I was gathering firewood in the hills above my village. Because of that, I survived — but I lost my children, my son-in-law, my grandchildren, and most of my neighbors.
The seawater stood over the ruins of my village for five days. I stayed up in the hills, taking shelter with other survivors however we could, until the water subsided. Only then were we able to come down off the hills, but nothing was left in our village, only the foundations of our houses.
We all found our way to displacement camps that had been set up for tsunami survivors. This was the first time I came into contact with Mercy Corps. An emergency response team gave me shelter materials, bedding and cooking supplies in those first few difficult days.
Honestly, I never thought I'd never return to Rima Jeunue after that — after all, there was nothing left but the pain of so much loss. But, again, Mercy Corps offered help to my neighbors and me: We got jobs to clean the debris from the streets and begin rebuilding our homes through a cash-for-work programme. And so we returned to our village within weeks of the tsunami.
Over the months and years of hard work that followed, Mercy Corps was there every step of the way: helping us reorganize a women's group, working with local banks to give us easier access to loans that helped us rebuild, and frequently visiting our village to make sure everything was going well.
Today, our houses are standing again. Business has returned to Rima Jeunue. And Mercy Corps is still helping us by offering technical advice on how we can double our rice harvest to gain more income and better feed our families.
I lost just about everything and everyone I had to the tsunami. But, every day since then, Mercy Corps has stayed and worked alongside us – and in doing so they became like our family. We've shared many joys and sorrows since that tragic day.
And today, we're sharing in the success of rebuilt villages. New businesses. Reclaimed lives.
Thank you for being there for us — and with us.
Indonesia December 23, 2009 2:36PM
A Woman's Touch
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami five years ago, the once-bustling village of Klieng Meuriah — like hundreds of villages in Indonesia’s Aceh province — was gone. Its buildings were shattered, its homes reduced to rubble and belongings washed away. But perhaps worst of all was the loss of humanity: dozens died, and those who survived were suddenly scattered in displacement camps across the area.
And so, for a month, the ruins of Klieng Meuriah stood empty. The village was lifeless.
Fiza Khalida. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Fiza Khalida was only 19 years old at the time. She found herself living in a makeshift shelter, alongside thousands of other survivors, at a displacement camp near the local airport — 15 miles away from what remained of her village.
During the first days of their displacement, Mercy Corps emergency teams visited the camp and delivered supplies to Fiza and her new neighbors, families from all across Aceh: food, clean water, clothes, cooking utensils and shelter materials.
Those items helped to ease the shock and restore a sense of routine to daily life. But daily life in the camps only reminded survivors like Fiza of what they’d lost. Every day brought uncertainty: when would they be able to return to their villages? What would they find once there? And what would they do then?
Mercy Corps helped answer some of those questions. Within a couple weeks of the tsunami, we launched a cash-for-work programme that paid survivors like Fiza a daily wage to return to their villages and begin cleaning up debris. Repairing the infrastructure that remained. Beginning to rebuild what had been lost.
Women from Fiza's group in Klieng Meuriah worked hard to bring about the rebirth of their village. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
That’s how Fiza, and many of her neighbors, returned to Klieng Meuriah just a month after that tragic day. They were still living in makeshift shelters, but they were home — at least what remained of home.
But the residents of Klieng Meuriah were determined to revive their village. And women like Fiza led the effort. Even while the cash-for-work programme was in full gear, Mercy Corps began working with a local women’s group on a community mobilization project.
Over the last five years, Mercy Corps has helped establish 168 project committees in villages like Klieng Meuriah, training them in subjects such as financial reporting and bookkeeping. We’ve also successfully assisted 40 villages in producing their own village plans and infrastructure maintenance plans to guide future development.
Fiza and her neighbors worked with our staff on rebuilding Klieng Meuriah from the ground up. Re-imagining what the village should look like. How it would work. And how its returning neighbors would work together to make the village better than ever.
Over the months that followed, Mercy Corps identify and prioritize what needed to be done. Together, we dug drainage ditches. We built a town hall, community centre and public kitchen. We prepared and equipped a football pitch.
Fiza with some of the chairs her group rents out for weddings, ceremonies and other events. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Life was returning to Klieng Meuriah, and women like Fiza were making it happen. But a village is more than buildings. It’s activity. It’s business. And Fiza’s group had ideas about that, too.
They made a proposal to Mercy Corps for a grant to start a small business. Fiza’s group received 50 million Indonesian rupiah (about £3,000) to buy chairs, tents, cooking utensils and food serving equipment. Today, Fiza and 50 of her neighbors run a successful enterprise that rents out this equipment and helps organise weddings and other ceremonies.
The income they receive from these events helps them meet their household needs. And — with each event — their business, their families’ fortunes and the community is growing.
“It took us anywhere from a few months to a few years to re-establish our lives here,” said 24-year-old Fiza, surrounded by her colleagues, who are also her neighbors and friends, “but Mercy Corps has been with us through it all.”
What does it take to rebuild a village that was washed away by the biggest disaster of our time? In the case of Klieng Meuriah, it was a woman’s touch.
Indonesia August 25, 2009 2:11AM
Fulfilling Cot Paya village’s dreams
Piva Bell
Program Officer, Indonesia
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My recent visit to a small village named Cot Paya in Indonesia's Aceh province was my second trip here.
Dr. Musliman Saleh. Photo: Piva Bell/Mercy Corps
The first time I came here was in August 2005, when everything was the opposite of now, because it is one of the villages destroyed by the tsunami in December 2004. The areas had been cleaned by workers from various NGOs, but I still could witness that the houses, trees and everything were flat to the ground and the area had turned to swamp, with pools of brackish water everywhere, caused by the tsunami. Cot Paya's population before the tsunami was about 1,000 people, but after it was drastically reduced to only 189 people.
But now, after four years have passed by, the pulse of life of this village has started again. The survivors are settled down in the new houses built by various NGOs. Even survivors from other areas have come to settle down with them. People have started to live normally, having left behind all the horrors of tsunami that they had experienced before.
Today, Cot Paya has around 555 residents.
In my second trip to the village, I had the chance to meet the head of Cot Paya village, Dr. Musliman Saleh. He’s a very nice, optimistic and cheerful person. He helps manage Cot Paya village really well, and is very concerned with the prosperity of his village, since it still lacks public utilities in most of the houses.
This can be seen most clearly from the residents' problems in accessing clean water. The village has only one functioning water tower. Other water towers that were built right after tsunami cannot be used anymore, because thieves stole metal and machinery, and so the engines used to pump up the water are broken.
As a result, village residents have to buy clean water from other areas, which costs 2,500 Indonesian rupiah (£0) for just one small water container. And that's not enough to fulfill the needs of one person for a day's supply of clean water. Usually, they use the water for drinking water and cooking only. For taking a bath and other needs, they used the brackish, swampy water around that still sits in the village.
The village's water tower was vandalized and no longer works, forcing residents to buy water at high prices. Photo: Piva Bell/Mercy Corps
Furthermore, the tsunami caused most villagers to lose their previous jobs, and now more than 50 percent of residents are extremely poor. Most of them are working as construction workers, pedicab drivers and housemaids, with unstable small incomes. Usually, they use the money that they get in the afternoon, after a day's work, just to buy their dinner. Therefore, it is a big burden for them to pay any amount of money every day to buy clean water.
Another aspect of the village's resurgence is its multipurpose room, which is a 1,000 square-foot area used as the centre for various village activities. The room is divided into two using a long green cloth. These ‘two rooms’ are used for the activities of women's education, women's small business activities and as a place for praying. Since it is an open room with no fence, at night livestock such as cows and goats like to sleep inside it, leaving a mess in the morning.
As a result of these challenges, the residents of Cot Paya are so relieved and thankful when Mercy Corps came and offered infrastructure assistance, including a water tower and rehabilitation of their multipurpose room. They have been dreaming about it for a long time.
I could feel and see the joy of the village head when he enthusiastically listened to the Mercy Corps field officers who came to discuss the planning of construction. What a happy moment.
Indonesia August 10, 2009 5:05AM
More happiness and laughter
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
I feel a bit odd talking so much about happiness — especially after my last blog journal from the field, written amidst eastern Congo's violence and mass displacement — but, honestly, happiness is what I'm feeling here in Banda Aceh. So, if you're looking for something besides happiness, you'd best stop reading.
I've rarely met anyone as hospitable and generous as the Acehnese people: their friendliness is genuine, their laughter contagious. It's truly joyful to spend time in their homes. This afternoon, we experienced this once again in the small beachside village of Lam Teungoh.
Lam Teungoh, just outside of the city limits of Banda Aceh, is situated just a few hundred yards from the Indian Ocean. The sea is visible from most villagers' yards or porches, which is a bit unsettling because of what happened here when the tsunami struck. On that horrific December day, more than 80 percent of Lam Teungoh's residents lost their lives. Most of the village's survivors were scattered in displacement camps around the city for at least seven months, after which they returned here and lived in tents and shacks while as they began to rebuild their homes and lives.
Four and a half years later, it seems like much of the heavy lifting and hard work is behind them. Mercy Corps has helped them reorganize a women's group that was dispersed by the tsunami, as well as providing them with the equipment they needed to resume the small business they shared: candymaking.
A single piece of bohorombrom, served gracefully on a banana leaf. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
This women's group — called Seroja, after a kind of Indonesian lotus flower — is making enough money from candy sales to provide for their food needs and childrens' school fees, as well as investing money back into their small business.
We were lucky enough to try two of their confections: timpan, a tiny cake coated in shredded coconut and bohorombrom, a sticky coconut jelly roll filled with palm sugar. Both were amazing, but one was much more fun than the other.
The women kept egging me on to try and pronounce bohorombrom, a cute word which mimics the sound of a bouncing ball in the local language. I tried, rolling my "r"s as much as I possibly could. They burst into laughter, the kind that doesn't make you self-conscious but instead just makes you want to keep it going as long as possible. So I changed bohorombrom to "vroom-vroom," exaggerating a motorcycle's engine. More laughter.
If I didn't have a translator, I couldn't understand much of what they were saying, but laughter is universal. It is immediate, endearing and powerful. I will always remember bohorombrom and how we shared in the joy of that word.
When it was time to leave, the group presented us with an elaborate bouquet of paper flowers — another one of their creations — and we made several pictures together. It felt like a silly, yet significant, moment.
Bohorombrom sums up how I feel about Banda Aceh and its people. When I leave this place for Jakarta tomorrow evening, I will be wearing a smile.
Indonesia August 8, 2009 2:46AM
Today is sweet
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Ita Riani holding her 4-year-old daughter Putri, with Ita's mother Sauda in the background. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
When we were flying in over the blue sea waves lapping the shores of Banda Aceh earlier today, I thought, “This is where it happened.” I imagined the water pulling back from the shore with a horrific sucking sound before the sea hurled itself miles ashore.
As the plane banked, headed for the runway, I saw the lush green hills and remembered stories of families running for the hills to escape the tsunami’s onslaught. In those first few days of aftermath, our staff reported that survivors spent up to five days on those hillsides, catching their food from the seawater that had drowned their homes and neighbors.
We can all recall the pictures of post-tsunami Banda Aceh: the solitary mosque standing among blocks of flattened houses, the debris-choked water, boats thrown far inland into what had been neighborhoods. More than 160,000 people died here. I was sure that the city would bear many scars from the catastrophe.
But, as we drove through the city, I saw that most signs of the tsunami were man-made: a lot of memorials built by governments around the world. A couple of boats left where they landed to show nature’s frightening strength.
The city has moved on. It is covered in flowers, growing upward and thriving. People have even returned to the beaches for lazy days spent with family and friends, drinking fresh coconut water in the shade of gazebos.
And this miraculous recovery was driven by things as small and sweet as a cake.
Sauda prepares traditional kekara, sweet rice cakes for Acehnese weddings. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
In the months that followed the tsunami, Banda Aceh witnessed a curious trend: a flurry of weddings between survivors, many of whom had lost their spouses to the disaster. But there were no shops from which to buy kekara, the sweet, crunchy traditional rice cake eaten at Acehnese weddings.
Ita Riani saw an opportunity — an obligation, really — and stepped in. She gathered nine of her friends and neighbors and applied for a small business loan through a Mercy Corps-supported local bank. They put out the word, took their first wedding orders, bought the ingredients and prepared the elaborate desserts.
Ita’s group does things the old way: they grind the rice using ages-old wooden tools. If it’s a big wedding, it might take her group a full 24 hours to make everything. But their time and commitment have paid off: each member is making about two million Indonesian rupiah (£120) each month. That’s enough to pay the household expenses, their children’s school fees and even save a little money while continuing to expand the business.
Today, they’re taking some of their orders over cell phone text messaging and planning to move their operations from their individual kitchens to a rented storefront on one of Banda Aceh’s main streets.
When I flew into Banda Aceh, I was expecting the worst. But, after seeing the place and talking to many people, it seems like life here has never been better.
Sri Lanka February 19, 2009 1:24PM
Resilience and resourcefulness
Dan Sadowsky
Website, Content and Services Team Manager
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When I asked Santhinithevi and her husband, Thawaraja (pictured here in front of their pre-tsunami house) what happened to them during the tsunami, she replied, "We hung onto trees and survived." Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Thatcher asked me on our way to the Colombo airport if I had a favorite story from our now-completed travels. I couldn't come up with one; each made its own distinct impression. But in going over all the stories we'd heard, two qualities stood out: resilience and resourcefulness.
We met people who'd survived one of the deadliest natural disasters in history and endured the profound effect it had on Sri Lanka, and who have shown courage and enterprise in their efforts to better their families' lives.
Before coming here, I'd read all about Sri Lanka's tsunami casualty figures. More than 35,000 dead. Nearly 450,000 displaced. Fifty thousand homes gone. An estimated £1 billion in damages.
So I wasn't expecting to feel so stunned at hearing my first survivor story, from a 43-year-old gardener named Santhinithevi. She told me how the wave carried her and her husband away from their home in different directions, and that each survived by clinging for hours to the top of a palm tree. Her two children were safe at school, but her mother, father, sister and several nieces and nephews lost their lives.
"I was building this fence around our property at the time, and I heard a cry at the beach," she told me, and started to giggle. "I thought there was a big catch, and I told my husband to go and try to get some fish."
The couple smiled and chuckled as they recounted their harrowing tale to me, and it was hard to determine whether their laughter helped distance themselves emotionally from the trauma, or was their way of acknowledging an event so surreal that its retelling sounded preposterous -- even to those who'd experienced it.
In other conversations, the tsunami's emotional impact was easier to gauge.
Anushika Magamamudai was all smiles as she showed us the thousands of tiny black and red guppies growing in the cement fish tanks we'd helped her build. The 29-year-old talked about how the tsunami swallowed her father's fishing boat and triggered bizarre behaviour in her chickens, many of which died. I asked if she'd lost family and friends in the tsunami. "Yes," she answered, tearing up and staring silently at the ground. I changed the subject.
Anushika hopes to quadruple the income of her husband, a rickshaw driver, by raising tropical fish for domestic and international sale. Mercy Corps is supporting 50 households with fish, tanks and connections to buyers. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
In Hambantota, Thatcher and I stayed in a beachfront hotel that lost 26 guests and 18 staff members on the morning of December 26, 2004. We arrived at night with advice to get a room far from the sleep-depriving hum of the hotel's generator. But even the generator's decibel level was no match for the thunderous waves on the other side. Staring out at the sea the next morning, I felt a shiver of fear as my eye caught a large wave that appeared to continue rising as it crested. I was trying to imagine what it must have been like to watch the sea attack.
Survival was on the minds of many after the tsunami struck. But it's also top of mind for many in Sri Lanka on any given day. Resourcefulness is a must. The people I met seized on every opportunity to diversify their income streams.
Rathnawathi, for example, tried raising chickens before she enrolled in a Mercy Corps programme that helped her start raising aquarium fish. She continues to run a roadside stall selling rice, coconuts, detergent and other sundries. And when we saw shreds of coconut laid out on a platter outside her house, she explained she was drying the fruits of her backyard trees to sell it to coconut-oil processors.
Sagarika is one of 18 employees at a new coconut-oil factory we financed. She's getting her first paycheck in a decade, but also maintaining her side business sewing floor mats. "I have a lot of work to do for myself and my family," she told me. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Sagarika is a 35-year-old mother of two who is employed full-time at a coconut-oil facility that Mercy Corps financed. Yet in addition to this job, she runs a side business weaving mats from pieces of cloth, and was more interested in telling me about plans to expand her mat-weaving business to erase past debts and pay her children's educational expenses.
Most of the people we met never receive a paycheck, but they have multiple means of making money: driving rickshaw taxis, leasing tractors, raising vegetables or chickens, baking bricks -- and almost always cultivating an acre or two of rice paddy. In a sense, they're all microentrepreneurs. They have the ideas and drive, and need only access to financial services and some technical training to run thriving enterprises.
So although I left Sri Lanka without a single story that stood out from the rest, I did take with me a renewed sense of humility and admiration for those who persevere in far more daunting circumstances than my own. Their potential, however, is still restrained by continuing conflict. The Tamil Tigers may soon be finished as a conventional fighting force, but many of the underlying grievances remain. Observers are quick to point out that a lasting political solution must complement a military victory.
Still, I spoke to Sri Lankans of all ethnicities who expressed a sense of optimism. And Mercy Corps is certainly providing reason for hope. I saw plenty of examples of what it can mean to someone to get a hand up, even one extended halfway around the world.
February 8, 2009 8:55AM
Saving the farm
Dan Sadowsky
Website, Content and Services Team Manager
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Sivagahanarathnam Yakalipudu and his 9-year-old granddaughter, Jaksena. "Before the tsunami, we had good harvests. We are still not back to that level." Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
We dipped our toes into the Indian Ocean late this afternoon after spending the day on small farms no more than a few hundred meters from the beach.
Here in Batticaloa District, along Sri Lanka's eastern shore, the tsunami sent a surge of water as tall as the palm trees into coastal communities. Only a couple of people died in the two that we visited today, Thettativu and Kaluthawalai II. But the real damage was to their farms, which for nearly 90 percent of residents here is their only source of income.
Hundreds of acres of vegetables including eggplant, chili peppers and bitter gourd were washed away. Worse still, the invading saltwater poisoned the soil for months afterwards. The farmers we talked to said nothing would grow until monsoon rains finally cleansed the soil eight months later. Even now, they said their crops seem more susceptible to disease and blight.
In recent months, we've supported more than 200 farm families by paying for fences to keep out wandering cattle and hungry goats; water pumps and fertilizers and sprayers to improve yields; onion seedlings; and trainings on how to prepare fields and get more out of their land.
These were all things that local farmers requested from their Community Action Group, the elected committee of 15 residents who prioritize projects that are then financed largely by Mercy Corps. As the group president in one of the villages explained, "After the tsunami, a lot of people did not have capital to improve their land. These are simple things we're providing, but they go a long way."
Fifty-seven-year-old Sivagahanarathnam Yakalipudu, for example, was distraught after the tsunami swept away his house and his belongings and ruined the acre of land he'd farmed for decades. "Farming is my only income," he says. "After the tsunami, we couldn't even fend for ourselves. We had to rely on others. I questioned whether it was worth living."
Since then he's received a temporary house from the government, some credit from a relief organisation and most recently a backpack fertilizer sprayer from Mercy Corps. He demonstrated for us how he uses it to coax a better yield from the chilies, eggplant, okra and cowpeas he grows. The sprayer is a costly item — 10,000 rupees, or about £53 — that saves him the hassle and expense of trying to rent one from another farmer or taking the time to do it by hand.
Squeezing the most out of the sandy soil is critical for families just scraping by. Sivagahanarathnam's wife, Paranjoti, says they're sometimes forced to skip meals because of recent spikes in food prices and the fluctuations in the health of their own crop.
There's no giving up now. Farming, Sivagahanarathnam says, is the only thing he knows. "I want to continue farming, and to lead a good life." His livelihood hasn't fully recovered from that fateful wave four years ago. But he still has hope.