Reflection, Three Years Later

Photo: David Snyder for Mercy Corps

I got up early this morning and took a walk around the quiet streets of Meulaboh, here on the south coast of Indonesia's Aceh province. If you experienced the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, as I did working as a photographer for an international humanitarian agency, you cannot walk a stretch of this coastline without remembering what those days were like.

Those living here today will never forgot the horrible drama of that time, and the months of displacement and loss that followed.

In the three years since, news from Indonesia's devastated coastline has largely slipped from the headlines. Traveling with Mercy Corps staff over the past few days, I've had the chance to see again, firsthand, the place I last left in tatters. It is a different place today indeed.

There are the obvious physical differences: homes once torn from their foundations by the force of the sea have risen again along the narrow streets of Meulaboh. The roads, damaged by debris and undercut by the receding waves, have been largely repaved. Shops selling all manner of necessities again thrive among the coastal towns.

But the biggest change I've noticed most these past days has been more subtle. Having transitioned from emergency work to long term development in the years after the tsunami, Mercy Corps has been concentrating on helping those affected by the tsunami to regain their livelihoods — providing grants and guaranteeing loans for people who lost everything to earn their own living again.

In the last days I've met fish traders and coconut vendors, small farmers and bakery owners, fish farmers and midwives. And while they all share similar stories of loss — many lost family members to the tsunami, all lost their homes and livelihoods — they all share another connection as well: they are working again, earning their livelihoods, raising their families and seizing the opportunities presented to them when they needed it most.

It is a change less visible, but no less dramatic, along Indonesia's recovering coastline.