adam b. ellick
In Aceh, A Life of Loss Endures
Published: June 26, 2005 Printer-Friendly Format
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia—
Life wasn't supposed to turn out this way for Ernawati. Born and raised in a poor, bucolic Indonesian village, Ernawati's childhood dreams paralleled those of most rural Indonesian Muslim girls who ask Allah for a husband, a large family — the richer, the bigger — and of course, a home.
Those dreams originated in Southern Aceh, where the chubby girl with a pushed up nose shared a crammed house without electricity with her father, a retired driver for the local gas company, and her mother, a housewife. But at 12, just days after graduating junior high school, her uncle would take her on an eight-hour bus ride that would lead her toward a life of loss.
Her uncle marketed the holiday as a brief sojourn to visit extended family. But upon arrival in sleepy Banda Aceh, the provincial capital of 300,000, Erna learned she'd receive an arraigned marriage. Despite her discontent, the fiery youth didn't dare to disrespect her family. Her new husband, a quiet 25-year-old bricklayer named Sarifudin, served as an innocent target for her disgust. They didn't speak for the first few months.
"I hated him from the start because I don't like being forced to do things," says Erna, furrowing her forehead scar.
Aceh's conservative, if not fierce, brand of Islam is fused with a pantheistic mysticism. Magic is believed to cure illnesses that locals attribute to evil spirits. So Sarifudin shuttled Erna to a supernatural who "made me like him." Erna doesn't attempt to sell the legitimacy of her transformation. "It worked," she says nonchalantly.
In Banda Aceh, Erna settled seamlessly. She made new friends and soon became pregnant with a baby girl, a daughter that would never meet her father.
Tourists to Indonesia usually make one stop, the Hindi island of Bali, where swarms of youthful Australians surf vicious waves by day, and by night, they down Beer Bintang, a half-priced twinning of Heineken credited to Dutch colonialists.
But for a sliver of Indonesian young men, who hail from Islamic Indonesian islands, Bali is an escape from their conservative upbringings. It's a place to speak English, a place to chase Japanese tourists, but mainly it's a place where foreigners mean cash in the pockets of what they can't wear back home: cargo shorts.
If Bali is as Western as Indonesia can be, Aceh is its antithesis. When Aceh received special autonomy in 2002, its local government enacted sharia, or Islamic law, that saw to an all male council of 27 Muslim scholars, who mull Islamic decisions alongside judiciary, legislative and executive branches. Sharia requires women like Erna to wear veils outside of the home, and prohibits short sleeve shirts. Roadside signs illustrate proper attire. And, alcohol is banned.
Every Acehnese village boasts an elaborate mosque that dubs as a communal hub. The road from the airport is lined with signs supporting the pro-sharia Prosperous and Justice Party (PKS), the runaway local favorite that culls voters with its motto "toward a clean and caring Indonesia."
But Islamic law in unscrupulous Aceh is a facade of sorts. The minority females who reject veils roam freely nonetheless, and many who opt to wear veils compliment them with snug jeans and tight shirts flaunting cleavage. A running joke pokes fun of town whores who adorn veils. Hotel and karaoke establishments bribe venal police officers for the right to sell beer.
Official policy and reality, in fact, are rarely synonymous here. Even the 2000 census found 1.7 million residents in Aceh, although most officials insist Aceh houses 4 million.
The Dec. 26 waves, which circled the Earth three times, were the most fatal tsunami to date, and Aceh was its most frenzied feeding ground, taking about 200,000 lives. Banda Aceh lies just 255 kilometers from the earthquake's epicenter, and the ensuing waves flattened four kilometers inland along Aceh's commercialized west coast like a fallen row of dominoes, killing 70 percent of its coastal population.
Although most media reported Aceh to be entirely decimated, its deep inlands of fertile, moist broadleaf tropical forests remain largely intact — some patches were rocked by the earthquake — and now cradle hundreds of densely crowded refugee settlements.
Two weeks after the wave, thousands of swollen, shrunken bodies that look like they were blackened in grease remained visible under collapsed bridges and remnants of tiled bathrooms. The pungent stench makes you want to squeeze your gut, instead of pinching your nose.
The devastation remained omnipresent along the inaccessible streets Erna once called home. In the town's center, tens of wooden boats, as wide as train cars, were lifted mightily by the killer wave and tossed more than three kilometers inland. The boats were pressed up against the facades of mobile telephone shops, like a mischievous boy smushing his face against a backseat car window.
But Aceh's most remarkable sight was as clean as a Corian countertop. Within an hour of my arrival in Banda Aceh, I found myself in the back seat of a 1980s black Corolla driven by Nasruddin, a local teenager who offered me a gratuitous lift. It was his first tour of the city since the wave killed his brother. We stumbled upon to a deserted coastal plain without a trace of debris. Gone were toppled coconut trees. Gone were corpses.
"Finally," I said, gazing at the ostensibly untouched area that could've passed for any Nebraskan plain. Nasruddin chuckled, nervously informing me it was once a populous neighborhood. The wave scooped up the entire village, and spit it out three five kilometers inland, without even a crumb to spare.
It's rather ironic that Aceh's demise comes at the hands of the sea, which for centuries kept it afloat. Each night hundreds of fishermen, lantern in hand, departed Banda Aceh's pristine white-sanded coastline, returning after sunrise to sell their catchings — flounder, grouper — at the morning market. Many survived the tsunami because they were at sea.
Human capital is as decimated as the town, and long-term solutions are nothing but a form of gossip in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. The health ministry lost a third of its 3,000 staffers. University faculties are slashed in half. A quarter of the 800 police officers are gone. Officially, more than 1,800 teachers have perished, and 1,110 schools destroyed.
One 18-year-old refugee fears he won't find credible work because both his house and school were wrecked, leaving no evidence of his degree. The local newspaper, Serambi Indonesia, lost 60 staffers including top editors. Refugees will eventually need national ID cards to find work, and land titles to claim property, but local government lost too many clerks to handle the imminent onslaught. Perhaps the lone bright spot is Aceh didn't have a developed insurance industry.
Before the tsunami, Aceh was hardly a shining city. Its governor sat in jail on corruption charges. The mayor was suspended, also on corruption charges.
None of that interfered with Erna and Sarifudin. Their marriage was a year old in 1990, when one witless morning Sarifudin woke up with a continually rising temperature. Four days later, with Erna five months pregnant, he died in her lap. She refused to let go of her husband, sleeping aside his dead body that night. At the funeral, relatives restrained her from plunging into the grave.
Erna, a 14-year-old widow, returned to Southern Aceh and gave birth to Salmayeti. Together, they lived with Erna's parents who comforted her in grief. Erna's loss would serve as good practice 14 years later.
Even though "village boys are cuter," as Erna proclaims, she returned to Banda Aceh with Salmayeti the following year to help her aunt sell rice at the market. There, she met a 20-year-old tailor named Ardian.
"We were introduced and got married, mainly because he was more attached to my daughter. We never even dated," said Erna.
After Adrian graduated high school, he practiced hemming on a few of his brother's pants before founding his own tailor shop that netted Rp 4 million (US$434) per month — a sizeable middle class wage in Aceh, and especially lucrative for a man lacking education and experience in his craft.
His store was anchored below the couple's tiny home in Kampung Mulia, a typically communal quarter where neighbors know not only each others names, but which chickens belong to which families.
At 15, Erna found Ardian to be her ideal partner, the antithesis of a male in this blatantly paternalistic society. Browse around Banda Aceh before noon and you'll encounter swaths of outdoor cafes packed with loitering husbands who have been on their way to work since 8 a.m. They sip sweetened coffee creamed with a raw egg, or laced with marijuana, which is illegal but rarely punishable. Men from this island — a bit larger than the state of California — are renown for impulsively squandering their earnings on coffee, cigarettes and other daily consumptions.
But not Ardian, who returned home "giving me all his earnings, never asking for more that might trouble us financially," recalls Erna.
"I was so much happier with my second husband. He was so kind, fulfilled all my wishes. He was totally dedicated."
Within two years, Erna and Ardian had a daughter in Muliana, whose eyebrow tips looked like as if they were shaped with a make-up pencil. "Villagers used to get mad at me for using make-up on a child. But her eyebrows were natural, natural," says Erna.
Muliana grew into a cranky, arrogant, but always loyal 12-year-old. "When I got sick, she kept asking 'Mom, what do you need?' But if I didn't buy her a toy, she would sneer at everyone all day."
Salmayeti, meanwhile, matured into a stunning teenager, with silky black hair flowing below her waist, and a thick unibrow her mom says made her look more Indian than Indonesian.
Just two years apart, Salmayeti and Muliana served as bait for a rebellious brother starving for attention in a female heavy house.
When neighbors glanced at Rahmat Muliyadi, an 8-year-old with a strapping frame, they commanded, "Make him a police officer when he grows up." Erna calls her son "a sweet troublemaker" who swiped pencils out of his sisters hands when they did their homework.
In 2002 Muliyadi's newborn sister, Ayu Efiana, became the focus of his relentless pestering. His persistent tickles to the gut sent Ayu helplessly screaming for mom.
"Ayu was attached to everyone, but especially me. When I started walking out the front door, she'd cry and pull my shirt and kiss my hand. She was Ardian's twin. They had the same large forehead."
Erna recalls one day when the kids were especially rowdy — "they're naughty until the age of eight, then they become loveable." She grew furious with their impish behavior and slapped theman act that would hardly draw a second thought by local standards. But for Ardian, it was unacceptable. "He became mad at me," says Erna sheepishly.
When the kids walked home from school at 1:30 p.m., they toiled in household chores for two hours. Muliyadi fetched well water for his sisters' baths. Muliana did the laundry, and washed dishes. "All I did was cook veggies," says Erna, now 31 years old. "When Dad wanted to eat, he just had to sit and it was all ready."
Last year, when the house and shop rent jumped to Rp 6.5 million annually, Erna found a new home, a 20-minute motorbike ride closer to the barren beach — yet another move that would bring death closer to Erna's door.
Life along the beach had its perks. Every Sunday they walked to the shore for a family picnic. After swimming, the kids feasted on Erna's delicacies like nasi gurih, steamed rice flavored with coconut milk, and kuah pliek-u, an Acehnese soup made from coconut milk and vegetables.
On Saturday Dec. 25, the night before their fateful day, Erna received a big bucket of shrimp from her neighbors. She cooked the little ones for dinner, and saved the biggies for a Sunday feast. Those uncooked shrimps would end up where they came from — in the sea.
Tragedy is nothing new in Aceh. The sprawling 17,000 islands called Indonesia form the world's fourth most populous nation, and the largest Islamic state. Aceh consumes the northern tip of Sumatra, Indonesian's most significant western island bordering the Straits of Malacca, one of the world's busiest sea-lanes. It's closer to Singapore and the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur than to Jakarta.
Aceh's first point of contact with foreigners came in the second century when Hinduism and Buddhism leaked in via Indian traders. But Arab traders brought Islam to its shores in the 13th century, hence its nickname, "The Verandah of Mecca."
Thriving ports and pepper trade birthed a wealthy independent sultanate with its own army and navy. It was a golden age that died in 1873 when Dutch colonizers declared war on Aceh. Fierce resistance killed more than 10,000 Dutch troops, more than in any other battle during its East Indies reign. The New York Times described the bloody attacks as "repulsed with great slaughter. The Dutch general was killed, and his army put to disastrous flight. [Aceh] appears, indeed, to have been literally decimated."
The Sultan surrendered in 1903, but its stubborn guerilla insurgency never fully subdued. Fighting dragged on until 1942 when the Japanese took control during World War II.
The Dutch tried to reclaim its rule following the war in 1945, but Indonesia, with Acehnese assistance, pushed them back and declared itself a nation in 1945 — coercing Aceh to enjoin. Today, Acehnese argue Jakarta never fulfilled its pre-1945 promise of autonomy and calls its annexation illegal.
Conflict with Jakarta continues to wax and wan, taking some 11,000 lives since the founding of Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in 1976. In 2003 foreigners were banned from Aceh under Martial Law, and a major military operation ensued. A year later Aceh's status was downgraded to civil emergency.
Erna's one foreign friend, Joe, a lanky Brit, taught English in Banda Aceh. During his three-year stint, he converted to Islam, renamed himself Yusrif and got engaged to a local girl, who he had met only several times. But martial law forced all foreigners to flee in 2003. Yusrif moved to Jakarta and returned on special two-week visas that required him to collect various bureaucratic stamps over the first five days.
"They basically made it so no one could enter easily," said Yusrif, who shrugs casually before revealing his fianc‚ died in the tsunami.
"People here are used to waking up and learning their neighbor was beaten to death," said Yusrif. "Death isn't uncommon."
After dark, mountains roared with gunfire so often that citizens like Erna were unfazed. Most Acehnese can recount a family member victimized by murder, kidnap, or extortion. Two years ago the TNI burnt down more than 500 schools. Surviving schools suffered a teacher shortage after swarms of non-Acehnese fled in fear. Remaining teachers continuously face threats from authorities.
Jakarta even banned fishing as a safeguard against GAM smuggling arms through the sea. The move left many Acehnese men unemployed, relegating them toward less lucrative employment like agriculture, fine metals, weaving and pottery.
Money talks, too. Oil and natural gas are Aceh's cash cows, and arguably the root of tension. Millions of dollars have been injected into the hands of the quasi-autonomous government. But corruption has prevented ordinary folks like Erna from reaping benefits, a ubiquitous outcome across the world's eighth most corrupt nation, according to a 2004 report by Berlin-based Transparency International.
On the fateful morning of Sunday Dec. 26, Erna and family rose at 6:30 a.m. for the first of five daily prayers. At 7:58 a.m. Erna and Ardian were sipping coffee on the porch. Inside, Muliyadi and Ayu watched cartoons, while Muliana and Erna's visiting sister boiled instant noodles. Suddenly, a 9.0 earthquake jolted the ground. Ardian instructed Erna to grab Ayu. She did, flashing out of the house toward no particular destination. Several minutes later, the earth stopped shaking. Erna returned home. "We starting eating the noodles," says Erna. The next 15 minutes would be their last together.
The scene at the nearby shore was one of jubilation. As the water retreated out two kilometers, astonished villagers raced to sweep up thousands of flopping fish that they deemed a gift from god. A few fortunate folks, suspecting the sea's overtly strange behavior, resisted the heaps of fish and wisely hopped on motorbikes ascending up the mountain.
Then, a series of four explosions erupted that Erna, still inside, assumed to be a helicopter above the sea. Everyone dashed outside, curious to ascertain the source of the loudening bangs. No helicopter was in sight. Everything appeared normal. The kids filed back into the home with Erna in the rear. At 8:13 a.m. Erna reached the doorstep and was frozen by what she saw out of the corner of her eye: a bluish gray wave lightened by yellow sand moving towards her at several hundred kilometers per hour. Scientific reports measure the wave at 10 meters high, but when asked its height, most Acehnese point to 40-meter high coconut trees and say "the wave was higher."
Erna immediately cradled Ayu and sprinted away from the wave, slowed by Ayu's weight and Erna's continual backward glances at her trailing family. After a few hundred meters, Erna began to tire. Ayu became a 10-kilo hot potato of sorts, tossed from Erna to Erna's sister to Ardian.
A police fort wall was the only savior in sight, albeit several football fields afar. By the time they neared the wall, the wave was on their heels. Erna hoisted herself atop the wall and quickly established balance. She reached down to lend a hand to Ardian, who was carrying Ayu.
Erna's outstretched hand would be several seconds too late. "My family was swept away right in front of my eyes," she says with a blank stare.
Seconds later, the wave smothered Erna too, bobbing her down into a world of darkness and perilously shooting her upward, where she dodged logs, and steel rods as ominous as confetti. Most tsunami victims, in fact, died from impact, not drowning.
"Every time something hit me in the chest, I swallowed huge amounts of water. I tried to rise, but it kept pulling me down." After 10 minutes of bobbing, Erna, reduced to her underwear and nearly breathless, rode a calmer wave for 5 kilometers over 30 minutes. She caught hold of a mango tree, before leaping onto a floating refrigerator. When she tried to lie on the fridge, she noticed a gash on her right shoulder that wrapped around to her left hip. It would be too painful to stretch her body atop the fridge.
"The salt water really hurt the wound, but I didn't really care. I floated for the next two hours."
Eventually, Erna drifted toward a small bamboo platform used to monitor rice fields. She climbed inside and found a bottle of rancid, green water. "I was too thirsty too care."
Among dozens of floating dead bodies was a large sheet that Erna wore to bed in her first night as a 31-year-old, two-time widow. It's a night she describes only as "scary."
The next morning Erna woke up to loud machinery and screams for help. The fatal waters had dissipated into soppy yet penetrable rice fields. Erna descended from her shelter and crawled through the mud for 1 kilometer. "My arms were the only part healthy enough to move. The crawling added more wounds."
While a desperate Erna searched for help, images of Aceh's demolition reached televisions in France, where an NGO named Firefighters Without Borders began culling its volunteering firefighters to sacrifice their holiday for a search and rescue mission to a region threatened with cholera and malaria outbreaks.
"When you see that on TV, you say 'they need us' and you go," said Dr. Poble Xavier, 29, the group's chief doctor.
The group planned to depart within 24 hours to rescue isolated survivors like Erna. That's what they did in Iran in 2003 and Turkey in 1999.
But Aceh would be different. Due to Aceh's severity, it took four days to pack 20 tons of equipment and assemble a crew of 13 firefighters and two paramedics.
Meanwhile, Erna's desperate crawl turned up human footprints in the mud. The sight inspired her to walk, despite an open foot wound that burned in the muddy water.
Then she found a well. As she recollects the story, she grabs the thigh of my colleague, as if to prepare us for the climax. "I drank so much water, even though it stung my throat. But I kept screaming for help, and choked on the water," she laughs.
Later in the afternoon, Erna collapsed on "a warm and cozy" road, where two men discovered her and carried her to a settlement with hundreds of equally dumfounded refugees. There, Erna heard that her neighbors, who left early Sunday morning, had survived. A volunteer took her to the neighbor's refugee camp.
Upon arrival, she sifted through the 200 refugees sleeping under makeshift tents bolstered by weak branches and topped with garbage bags buckling in the rain. She located Yani and her family living in hideous conditions. They ate paltry rice rations and drank infected water. Most refugees were brutally ill from untreated wounds and illnesses.
The firefighters, meanwhile, had just arrived in Medan, the largest and closest unaffected city to Banda Aceh with the intent to hop to Meulaboh, a village 334 kilometers from Banda Aceh and arguably Aceh's most ravaged area. But at the Medan airport, the Indonesian military instructed them to wait until it could guarantee security in Meulaboh.
"We said 'No! We came here to help.' You don't accept to wait anywhere," says Dr. Xavier.
Their decision to forgo Meulaboh proved wise, as the village was flooded with more than 12 other relief organizations the next day. When the firefighters arrived in Banda Aceh, they raced to the French-owned cement factory along Aceh's west coast, minutes from Erna's demolished home.
"Dead bodies everywhere. Just nothing but dead people," said Dr. Xavier.
They proceeded on a 20-kilometer coastal trek scanning for survivors. But they found nothing but corpses.
Deflated, the firefighters begrudgingly retreated toward Banda Aceh, stumbling upon a plot of forest housing 200 sick refugees, including Erna — although Erna had already moved into another tent because she didn't receive the sympathy she had hoped from her former neighbors.
The ghastly conditions convinced the firefighters to alter their mission from "search and rescue" to erecting a viable, long-term site called Camp 85 Lhok Nga that would eventually house and treat 1,300 refugees.
In a bid to ensure security, the firefighters wisely befriended the TNI authorities before planting a timber sign by the entrance that read: Camp 85 Lhok Nga.
The firefighters erected dozens of durable tents, and dug moats to absorb flooding. A monstrous yellow tent served as the field hospital where Dr. Xavier has treated 388 refugees for dysentery, cuts, trauma, malaria, and infections. Common wounds often resulted in amputations due to the infectious water. Dr. Xavier's seventh night, the 11th after the tsunami, is his first of uninterrupted sleep. Critically wounded patients were sent to the military hospital, a 30-minute ride away.
At the camp, water sanitation is the most concerning issue, for fears of a breakout of communicative diseases. The firefighters located a nearby well containing only two dirty bacteria. They installed a pump that sucks non-salt well water into a truck, which filters the water before dumping it in a portable 5,000-liter tank that churned out seven liters of water per refugee per day, far short of 15 liters suggested by the World Health Organization, but exceeding the two liters at nearby settlements.
Locals washed at nighttime so no one would violate Islamic law by exposing their bodies.
Camp 85 is unique in its characters, but to any passerby, it's just another tented complex. Similar establishments line every Acehnese street. Erna is just one of 800,000 refugees.
Erna arrived at Camp 85 in a traumatic state, evidenced by her perpetual grimace. Her physical condition wasn't much better. Law prevents Dr. Xavier from discussing specific cases, but Erna's bandaged right foot limps heavily. She says she has an acute respiratory infection — the most common of injuries in Aceh. "It feels like Im always suffocating in the chest." She often spits out blood.
After several days, Erna yearned to leave Camp 85 for Kuala Simpang in Aceh, where she knew a woman who owed her Rp 400,000 from a previous tailor job. But then she got word that her parents survived, and they knew her situation. She watched as surviving relatives gradually plucked away other refugees from Camp 85.
"We were always close, but I don't want to meet them. If they really care, they'd look for me now."
Her glum mood took an upward swing when Yusrif, her British friend, appeared at Camp 85 and vowed to get her an airplane ticket to Medan. Erna's expectations soared, until Dr. Xavier warned that Erna's foot was susceptible to infection, and therefore amputation. He proposed Erna stick around and cook for the firefighters for $3 per day — a job that often injects refugees with a sense of purpose.
Erna took the job. "If they offered me a free ticket now, I still wouldn't go. I have many friends in the firefighters. They don't understand me, and they mock my words with funny faces, but they make me laugh."
Erna promptly legitimized the kitchen, with the help of her three refugee sidekicks, her former neighbor Yani, and Yani's friends Amalia, 17, and Irawati, 20. Instant noodles were replaced by three daily meals of gourmet spicy meat and vegetable dishes.
Several portable gas stoves border the kitchen's orange tent. Generator-supported lamps flick on at night, as dirty dishes make rounds through three separate rinsing buckets. Large coolers serve as the storage cupboard for the aluminum plates that still have "made in Thailand" stickers face-up.
Despite its minimalist features, the makeshift kitchen is the hive of activity for snacking firefighters, curious or bored refugees, visiting relief workers, and neighboring TNI soldiers who hoard coffee.
The healthiest snack, insists Erna, is raw turnip for it enhances stomach digestion, a health tidbit that draws a bewildered snicker from Dr. Xavier "It's true," refutes Erna. "My mom and granny told me. You're wrong."
There's a two-hour span each afternoon when Erna unknowingly transforms back to her pre-tsunami being, a state where she forgets the tragedy, forgets the family, forgets her previous life.
It is 2 p.m. when Erna darts to her tent, returning in a veil and a second-hand, beige Islamic shirt. Yesterday one the firefighters bought her the veil as a gift after the girls accused her of disobeying Islamic law. Erna counters the camp is now her home, therefore exempting her from wearing a veil.
Erna and the girls, tensions high, hop into a rented jeep driven by Louie, the burliest of firefighters responsible for daily food runs. The 30-minute jaunt terminates at an outdoor market. Louie slides Erna a stack of bills before they exit the jeep. The girls opt to wait in the vehicle.
For locals, Louie's presence is the day's most amusing spectacle. At 195 centimeters tall, he wobbles like an offensive lineman along the market's dirt paths, dwarfing Erna's 160 centimeter frame. Vendors instinctively gape at Louie's massive overalls and his pale complexion drenched in sweat. Louie is Erna's human shopping cart. On each of his brawny fingers hangs a bloated grocery bag. Onlookers giggle when he lays a heavy sack of rice on his shoulder, as if it were a golf sweater.
But looks can deceive. Louie may be big, but Erna is the buying boss and the market is her natural habitat.
Erna snares at the tempeh vendor when he asks for Rp 2,000 per packet. After some back and forth, she buys three packets for Rp 5,000. Then she darts to buy pare, a warty and bitter cucumber-like vegetable, and smiles proudly after scoring a Rp 2,000 discount.
She's noticeably aggravated how market prices have doubled since the tsunami, and it's especially tough for Erna to bargain with Louie in her shadow. Vendors infer she's buying for foreigners futilely plead. "Help us out a little."
Next is a frail elderly vendor selling Acehnese tomatoes — small, wrinkly balls that add a sour flavor to soup. He offers a fair price and Erna accepts, "I only bargain forcefully if the price is much higher than before the tsunami."
Erna, however, can't keep her promise. At the carrot stall, the vendor wants Rp 3,000. Erna asks for Rp 2,000. The vendor refuses. Erna concedes. "Yeah, it's usually Rp 3,000, but I just wanted to try."
Moments later, Erna notices the girls have left the car to chat up Louie. "Before you said you didn't want to come, and now you want to come," she yells at them before muttering "flirts" with a jealous intonation.
Back to business, Erna gathers cauliflower, melinjo crackers, shrimp, tropical fruits and a branch oozing with dozens of sweet miniature bananas. Louie's hands are maxed out, so he returns to the jeep to dump the groceries, and he once again innocently tries to communicate with the girls.
When he returns, Erna asks, "What took you so long to put the bags in the car? He's chatting with Yani. He always chats with her. He has three kids, you know?" Her remark about Louie's family suggests how Erna misinterprets his amiable personality. Louie's inability to understand Indonesian makes him conveniently immune to the developing social tension.
The market contains as many horrific stories as it does vegetables. A father approaches and points at his two boys sitting in a pedicab. He starts motioning his arms as if he's swimming. I ask, "Did they survive the wave by swimming alone?" Yes, he says.
I want to hear their story, but Erna is already out of sight.
Around the corner, Erna receives a bag worth of Rp 1,000 of green chilies. "That's not enough," she snaps, before topping the bag with another handful.
At her final stop, Erna eyes a rack of beef hanging on iron hooks. When the vendor tells her Rp 110,000 for 2 kilos, she quips, "No way! I'll pay Rp 90,000 for 2 kilos." A chorus of adjacent vendors cry "Noo. Noo. Rp 55,000 a kilogram." A crowd encircles, with everyone contributing their unsolicited takes. The vendor begins chopping a slab, repeatedly chanting "okay, Rp 110,000." Erna responds, "I want this part, and this part, and no fat." Ignoring her, he packages the beef and takes Rp 100,000 from Erna.
"That's it," he says.
"No. You still owe me Rp 10,000."
After several rounds, the vendor reluctantly concedes the Rp 10,000. Erna plucks it and briskly dashes away without acknowledging her victory.
The victory isn't the money. It's the routine normalcy that Erna has rediscovered. Nothing is normal in her post-tsunami life. She's surrounded by strangers, her home is a tent, her bathroom a dirt hole in the forest, her clothes two sizes too large.
She'll never see her kids or husband again, not even in photos. Her only possessions are her underwear, and a recently received photo of Martinez, the French paramedic. But when she prances around the market, she has reclaimed absolute control of her old stomping ground. She is a remarkably painless woman shopping for food.
I remark on her strength and a rare smirk paints her face, "I have no family and I'm close to becoming crazy. I have to be strong. There's no choice. Nothing's too hard for me now."
But the return drive hits hard. Our jeep slashes through debris and dead bodies. Erna sits silently in the front, dismissing my backseat conversation with the girls.
The drive home is Erna's only medium to contextualize the crisis. Victims themselves are the least informed. Most are immune to the footage that's gripped the globe. When I asked Erna to name other affected countries, she says, "Only China."
As Erna preps dinner, she's tormented by the realization that she forgot coconuts. She apologies to each firefighter because the meat won't be simmered in coconut juice. She gives Dr. Xavier the option of waiting another day for the authentic recipe, but he refuses in laughter.
As dinner nears, we're interrupted several times. First, by a firefighter who trots by with a cow on a rope. It's a refugee of a different kind.
The next intruder is a dump truck draped in Kuwaiti flags distributing bottled water to armies of veiled women waiting in a dysfunctional line.
Then, the girls chime in again.
"We're waiting for white guys now, because the cute locals are all dead," says Amalia.
"If you want her, just take her with you," says Irawati.
Erna barks back, "I'm not a material. No one can just come and take me."
"Hey, maybe someone will want you," says Amalia. "You don't have to always be sad."
At mealtime, Erna's kitchen is the place to be: rendang [spicy beef], shrimp and vegetables, bean sprouts, and for desert, bananas, oranges, and rambutan, transparent, sweet and sour Chinese fruits with a hairy shell.
"It's quite better than ramen," Dr. Xavier says wryly.
I compliment Erna on a delicious meal, and Yani chimes in again, "If you like our food, marry an Acehnese. We are mostly widows. I'm still a virgin, you know?"
A rhetorical question, I assume.
After clean up, Erna heads to her tent, where she thinks "about those moments again. Last night was an aftershock. I woke up instantly and recited zikir [prayers]. I keep flashing back to that moment, when I heard the chopper and it felt like the water was rising again."
"Everyone says my kids were so beautiful and now I think if they are so beautiful, why were they taken away by the sea?"
For this sort of psychological pain, Aceh offers few resources. The psychological wounds are likely to endure for generations.
As a journalist, I'm drawn to Erna not only for her heroic tale. She's among the only Acehnese I encountered who reflected on her emotions and circumstance without attributing everything to "God's will."
Most Acehnese view the tsunami as a deserved punishment, part of Allah's test. This was especially evident in "Indonesia Weeps," a smash hit by pop-icon Sherina released just days after the tsunami and given prominence by national broadcasters:
God, are you mad at me?
Your wrath was heavily intense God, perhaps we ignored you?
I didn't hear your warning
I hurt you so deep, as deep as the earth's core
Please forgive us, my lord
You are the greatest, please don't be mad again
You're the merciful, please forgive our sin
These are indeed our faults.
Erna never mentioned God. So I did, and she responded with a clandestine scan before whispering, "I'm not angry but I'm disappointed. I'm not against Allah's test, but it's just too traumatic for me now."
Most Acehnese argue surviving mosques prove it's God's test. I went to several villages to confirm these bold claims. I found massive, surviving mosques made of reinforced concrete and more inherent structural integrity than the toppled flimsy homes of wood, brick and topped only with corrugated iron. I also found some surviving gargantuan homes of rich families, or the occasional smaller mosque reduced to rubble.
Back at Camp 85, most refugees linger in the rear of the deceptively expansive camp, sharing stories as tragic as Erna's. Rahmad, an 8-year-old boy with a gentle smile, is one of Aceh's 35,000 dazed orphans.
Due to fears of child trafficking, Jakarta promptly announced a law banning children under 18 from leaving Aceh without legal parents or guardians. This presents a hassle for tight-knit extended families that prefer to absorb distant family members instead of seeing them off to anonymous boarding schools or orphanages. But rules can be juggled in Indonesia and many "new" families are being born by the minute.
Rahmad, like most orphans, can fluidly recount his survival tale. Most outran their parents, or were swept up by passing motorcycles. When asked to ponder his future, he smiles aimlessly. His fellow orphans prod him to answer. When the question turns to them, they are equally silent. Plus, my digital camera appears more interesting. I surrender as a journalist, and become a playmate.
Later, I meet Rasyid, a middle-aged man with a worn face and sleepy eyes who's among the fortunate. His entire family and immediate neighbors scurried up to a mountainside lookout that towered the wave. Their homes and belongings were found in ruins 1.6 kilometers away.
"We haven't received donations for two days, so we're living sparingly on stashed goods," says Rasyid, wearing nylon Adidas pants that would cost $20 in a Brooklyn vintage shop.
At most camps, the men prohibit women from returning to the ruins. "They're too emotional," I'm told dozens of times.
On this 12th day after the waves, most main roads have been cleared and only a handful of dead bodies remain. But walk a bit inland, and there are dozens of indiscernible corpses. The other way to see bodies is to simply stand on any main road.
Within an hour you're sure to witness a passing truck carrying stacks of dead bodies wrapped in blue and black tarp on its way to the mass graves. It wasn't until the seventh day when local efforts shifted from searching for relatives to retrieving and burying corpses.
At the camp, while the women hold fort, the men, divided into groups of five, hike daily to the sight of their former village. The five kilometer journey takes nearly two hours because most roads are broken, forcing them to trek over soft debris. Each group is required to find two dead bodies per day. They pile the bodies on the side of the closest main road and the TNI retrieves them. There are 30 groups hunting bodies and none struggle to meet the quota.
"At first, I was shocked, sad, full of grief. Why did they have to die," asks Rasyid. "But now it's a routine job. We have no fear. We pick-up the flesh and bones and worms. Somehow they aren't human anymore."
Rasyid is remarkably coherent, probably because his trauma is less severe than most victims. But there's one question he can't answer. "It'll take a year to clean it up, if we keep getting help. If help stops, it'll be, agh, uh, ummm," he says stoically.
His hypothetical is now a reality. The Indonesian cabinet expelled foreign troops in the end of March, citing security fears. Foreign aid workers, meanwhile, must apply for a special visa.
The popular and well-organized PKS party initiated the push to expel foreign troops, tagging them as "a threat to Indonesia's sovereignty." PKS member Hidayat Nur Wahid worries foreigners may attempt to "Christianize" the region.
Indonesia's Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who dubs as the chairman of Indonesia's disaster coordination body, told the Indonesian press in January "foreigners should get out of Aceh as soon as possible — the sooner, the better." When asked about long-term relief efforts, he countered, "we don't need foreign troops.
It's a bold claim for a nation that's received 1,700 foreign troops and more than 2,500 foreign aid workers and volunteers from 199 different organizations. U.S. and Australian troops led the campaign to deliver medical supplies and food to refugees in far away areas like Meulaboh, accessible by a 30-minute helicopter ride or a 20-hour boat ride. In total, there are more than 50 helicopters and 20 cargo planes used by international relief efforts.
That arsenal trumps the five cargo airplanes and seven helicopters possessed by the TNI, TNI Chief General Endriartono Sutaro told Tempo magazine. "What can we do with these five Hercules and seven choppers? Do you think we could bring the cargo from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh by bicycles?"
The Aceh crisis has doubtlessly exposed the downfalls of a tardy culture that makes decisions more impulsively than rationally. Aceh officials didn't want to violate Islamic law by burning corpses, which would have been the safest and healthiest method. Instead, they decided to bury victims in unlabeled mass graves. Officials fear those hastily selected locations may contaminate agriculture and water wells. An obvious but so far ignored solution would be burning limestone, which kills germs from corpses.
I intend to spend my final night at Camp 85 with Erna, but at 10 p.m. my colleague, who is ill, suddenly realizes she left her medication in the town center. Travel is prohibited at night, but Dr. Xavier works his connections with the TNI officials.
It's time to bid Erna a final farewell. I ask a clich‚d question about her future. "I prefer to stay here with all my memories. But I'll go anywhere to be happy. I can have new kids, but not the same as my Ayu, Muliana, Muliyadi."
I enquire as to why she doesn't mention her Salmayeti, her eldest daughter from her first marriage. Erna casually reveals that Salmayeti has lived at a faraway pesantren (Islamic boarding school), since September, and she survived.
"You must be thrilled?" I ask.
"It's just the way it is," shrugs Erna, inexplicably blas‚.
There's no time for further inquiry. Our emotional goodbye ends at the arrival of a TNI jeep with our escorts: two teenage soldiers armed with SS1s (M16 equivalent). They spend the 30-minute journey making passes on my 21-year-old female colleague, who tactfully rejects them.
We arrive at Aceh's Pendopo, a wooden palace frequented by retreating elites during the feudalist era that dodged the tsunami by no more than a few blocks. Now, it houses hundreds of journalists who sleep in a swarm of mosquitoes. Its toilets are too clogged to use, and its cleanest shower is the afternoon monsoon, a scene that incites embarrassing giggles from local women. Meanwhile, a 10-year-old boy shamelessly sells bottled water four times the average price. Drivers offer their cars for $100 per day.
The next morning, at the complex's communication room, I meet Matt, a recent college graduate who works as a paramedic in his native Texas. Matt was vacationing in Australia when he heard about the tsunami. The next day he hopped to Aceh. "I just called my boss and said 'I wont be back soon.'" He arrived at the airport like a lost tourist, but hooked up with a relief agency within 24 hours. Before dashing off, he pauses to share his day's agenda. "One woman has an infected wound, so we must amputate her leg."
My return flight to Jakarta is delayed nearly four hours, but I'm more annoyed by several passengers who light-up in the terminal despite three "No Smoking" signs. My grumblings are interrupted when a scrappy 40-ish man curiously grabs my right hand and shakes it repeatedly, whispering, "Terima kasih, "the Indonesian words for "thank you." Yusif thought I was a relief worker, an assumption I never corrected.
Yusif, an Acehnese, left his homeland 10 years ago to find work in Jakarta, where he now enjoys a low-level job with a Japanese company that bought him a ticket and granted him a leave to search for his parents, whom he hadn't seen in 10 years.
"It's too expensive to return on my own," he says. He often asks to check my ticket to ensure he hasn't missed his flight. He's clearly a rookie flyer. Eventually, Yusif explains how his parents survived the tsunami, and then excuses himself to thank other Westerners.
All eyes follow Yusril until a destitute Acehnese villager takes center stage. The woman, holding a plastic grocery bag, enters the waiting area and is immediately restrained by security. "I want to leave," she wails. "I dont want to be here anymore." The guards explain she cannot enter without a ticket, a concept she cannot comprehend. The airport, she thinks, is like Banda Aceh's now-destroyed bus system: board the bus, pay when you exit. She half-heartedly tries to elude security guards, who slide horizontally to cut her off.
For the next half hour, she moans, "I want to leave!" Other passengers watch sympathetically. At this moment I'm consumed by a horrific realization. So many victims have uttered the clich‚ "I have nowhere to go." Now it hits me: these people literally have nowhere to go. Roads are cracked, bridges broken and airplanes far too expensive. This putrid place reeks of nothing but tragedy. I'm leaving in an hour, but for these people, the concept of home will always be relative, will forever smell of death. The woman eventually succumbs and helplessly exits the airport with nowhere to go. Where is she going, I wonder.