Gifts
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By JULIA HORTON
[Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in The Scotsman]
Like thousands of businesses in Aceh, the brick factories in Miruk Lam Reudeup have stood silent since the tsunami.
But in a few months’ time, they are expected to be churning out hundreds of thousands of bricks to meet the spiralling demand to rebuild homes and businesses in the region.
The centuries-old industry is expecting a major boom in trade, which is welcome news to village brick factory manager Yusri.
Today his factory still looks like a bomb site, with tree trunks, a mattress and a mangled bicycle strewn across it.
The building housing the kilns for firing the bricks is cracked after the earthquake shook its foundations and reduced the walls to rubble.
The two holes in the ground where his workers dump earth and stamp on it to compact it ready to be moulded into shape are still filled with murky water left behind from the massive wave which swamped the factory.
Thousands of bricks stacked neatly in rows under the low thatched roofs of the two simple buildings were ruined.
But Yusri, 30, has met staff from Edinburgh-based aid agency Mercy Corps to discuss how the charity could help him get his factory ready in time to take advantage of a boom which could keep him in business for years to come.
He says:
"All my 30 workers survived the tsunami. We normally make 4000 bricks per day. I met with Mercy Corps yesterday to talk about starting work again.
"I hope they can help me. I would like to start making bricks again in a week if I can clean up the factory.
"The buildings are not too badly damaged but the equipment is ruined. The ovens are damaged too."
Mercy Corps has already helped people in Yusri’s village near the provincial capital of Banda Aceh with cash-for-work schemes where locals have been paid to clean up places including some of the other brick factories in the area.
Daniel Curran, the charity’s chief of staff in Aceh, says: "The area of Miruk Lam Reudeup is known for brick-making. There are about 100 brick-making enterprises each employing about 30 people.
"The aim is to get these brick enterprises up and running.
"Almost everyone says that in a few months’ time demand will increase greatly. Traditionally these enterprises would not be making bricks until April in the dry season, which would coincide with the expected boom."
Sasha Muench, senior economic development specialist at Mercy Corps, adds: "Around 70 per cent of people in these villages worked in the brick factories. If they are up and running again in time to take advantage of the rebuilding, their trade will boom.
"They will probably have work from the reconstruction across Aceh for a couple of years."
In the meantime, Yusri, whose own house was half-destroyed in the disaster, is working as group leader for a pallet-making business set up in the village through Mercy Corps to help men left jobless by the disaster take advantage of another post-tsunami money-making opportunity.
The charity has helped around 23 villagers create a short-term business making pallets from the numerous wooden planks which still litter the streets and fields after the earthquake and tidal wave pulled houses and furniture to pieces.
Aid agencies including Mercy Corps need the pallets to move equipment and aid items around.
Under the initiative, which is expected to last up to two months, locals in villages like Miruk Lam Reudeup are loaned hammers and saws to build the pallets.
Villigers, who are free to find their own buyers too, are not paid to build the pallets. Instead, they share the profits from the sale of any pallets, which are bought for about 55000 rupiah (£2.50) each.
Chicken farmer Baihaq, 34, and his two younger brothers, are among the men building pallets.
Baihaq lost his farm in the tsunami, which killed his 2000 chickens and ruined his corn crop.
He estimates it will cost around £2000 just to replace the birds.
He says: "Mercy Corps told me about the pallets and I joined the group because I thought it was a good idea.
"I lost everything in the tsunami, all my chickens, the corn, all of it has gone.
"If I have money I can have my farm again."
Baihaq counts himself lucky because his two brothers, his wife and their two young sons all survived.
But his 15-year-old cousin lost his parents and his brothers and sisters. Baihaq has taken the boy in and he too is working on the pallets.
The pallet-making business is an idea Mercy Corps has encouraged throughout the area, although not everyone has been as enthusiastic as the men in Miruk Lam Reudeup.
In the village of Lamlhom, refugees living in tents because their homes in another village were destroyed complain they won’t get enough money from the venture.
Hamdan, 45, a civil servant whose wife and children all died in the disaster, joined the Lamlhom pallet-making group because his office was wrecked in the disaster.
He says: "I think the price [of each pallet for sale] is very cheap. I don’t want to make any more."
Mercy Corps is clear that the business initiative has a very limited lifespan.
Daniel says: "It is another opportunity for people in this situation to make some money. It is not a sustainable business, it will provide work for around six weeks to two months."
Meanwhile, the people of Aceh are already finding their own business opportunities in the aftermath of the disaster. A notice on the wall of a house in central Banda Aceh offers house cleaning for people who are unable or unwilling to clean up their own homes. And in the coastal town of Meulaboh, which was nearest the epicentre of the earthquake, men and women can be seen scavenging for scrap metal in the devastated streets.
The same thing is happening in Banda Aceh, where trucks drive through the city loaded with bits of recovered metal to be sold as scrap.
Markets are also springing up again in Meulaboh and Banda Aceh after the disaster wiped out untold numbers of stalls and stall-holders.
In Meulaboh, traders tell Sasha, who has spent the past few weeks assessing the business situation in Banda Aceh, that one of the main Indonesian banks is offering to write off all loans in Aceh - an estimated 400 billion rupiah.
Meanwhile Mercy Corps is looking into providing small loans or grants to help get new or existing businesses up and running.
It may take years for people to regain the standard of living they enjoyed before the tsunami, but the first stages of economic recovery seem to be well under way.
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