A Voice for Survivors

During the first critical weeks after the Indian Ocean tsunami, Debbie Tomasowa was on the ground at the disaster's ground zero: the decimated city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She worked long hours as part of Mercy Corps' emergency response team, while also fulfulling her role as a communications officer. Tomasowa's daily phonecalls to Mercy Corps headquarters kept staff informed and helped power the agency's biggest disaster response to date.

Now Senior Public Affairs Officer to Mercy Corps Indonesia, she is tasked with communications for the agency's media and public relations for its diverse range of programs, which stretch across several islands. Tomasowa has visited Aceh Province many times since the December 2004 tsunami, and has seen the progress of survivors firsthand.

She took time to talk with us near the third anniversary of the disaster.

Mercy Corps: Could you tell me a little about your work on the tsunami response?
Debbie Tomasowa: I am immensely proud of our tsunami response team, which arrived just two days after the disaster struck. I arrived five days after it happened and it was not something I could have ever imagined.

The trip that I took to Banda Aceh with two colleagues from our Maluku office was something I'll never forget. Many commercial flights were cancelled, as military personnel had the priority to be allowed into the disaster-struck area, so finding our way into Banda Aceh was very difficult. My two colleagues were suddenly reassigned to look for vehicles and generators in Medan, North Sumatra, and so I ended up continuing my journey to Banda Aceh alone.

I finally got to Banda Aceh after a 14 hour trip by commercial bus from Medan, carrying food and supplies for the team that was already on the ground at that time. I was the fourth Mercy Corps Indonesia staff to enter Banda Aceh.

I literally arrived in a town without any electricity, almost completely abandoned by its residents — and I had neither an idea of where the bus had dropped me off nor where my destination was from here. I hired a , a motorcycle with a side-car, to take me around to find them and on my ride began to witness the horrible damage the tsunami had caused days before. The becak driver himself wasn't from Banda Aceh, but from a nearby village; he had come into the city to see how he could help.

Military personnel were stationed everywhere around the city, and the pungent smell of trash and decay was unavoidable. Piles of debris from destroyed buildings and corpses looked like dark mountains in the middle of the mangled city.

After I found my colleagues, I was assigned to conduct live reports — mostly over satellite phone, because the tsunami had cut cell phones and land lines — and produce stories from the field, to let people know what had happened in Aceh. I was also assigned to go around and conduct outreach to media already on the ground in Aceh to let them know what assistance Mercy Corps provided.

Like I said, I'm extremely proud to be among the staff of one of the first humanitarian organizations on the scene. This was my first emergency-related assignment and I was amazed at the pace our team worked. Although hundreds of other relief groups and organizations arrived soon after, it was very clear that Mercy Corps was among the leaders for relief work in Aceh. Our cash-for-work approach got Acehnese tsunami survivors cleaning up effort of their city and environment, in addition to help the community deal with the grief of a tremendous loss by feeling that they were doing something with and for their neighbors.

The Mercy Corps program in Aceh has evolved through a few stages now, three years after tsunami: from emergency relief to recovery to development and long-term development. To date, Mercy Corps has completed infrastructure projects including building roads and community centers; provided funds for rebuilding small and medium community businesses to help communities return to self-sufficiency; in providing for themselves; conducted social and cultural events to bring people together and heal communities; and established a program that now help elementary school children fight malnutrition and preventable illnesses.

Community mobilization and some sort of training are always included in our programs; challenges definitely lay ahead, but I believe that Mercy Corps is taking the right direction in helping communities discover what they are able to do for themselves.

How have things changed for the better since the tsunami?
For the past few decades Aceh was a very isolated province — mostly for political reasons — and the humanitarian involvement of the national and international community after the tsunami really opened the province up to the world. Today, it's a more diverse and collaborative place. The local villages and cities have grown into stronger, more resilient communities that rely on each other and have taken charge of controlling their lives once again.

Do you have a recollection of a particular individual you met during those first few days in Aceh that you keep in mind?
When I first entered Banda Aceh, I met a mother who was heartbroken after losing both of her children in the tsunami. Darmini, a 33 year-old mother from Peukan Bada, lost both a son and a daughter that morning of the tsunami — they both slipped away from her hands while running away from the water. She nearly lost her husband, but was fortunately reunited with him in the woods on a nearby mountain after hanging onto a cow caught in the streams of the muddy water for about two hours.

When she found her husband, he was wearing nothing but a piece of tin he wrapped around himself as the powerful stream had stripped his clothes and sarong on that Sunday morning. The lady's eyes were just filled with so much pain, not knowing whether her children were dead or alive; it's truly indescribable… and she couldn't stop crying.

That was the first and the only time in Banda Aceh that I cried in front of someone we're helping. I've heard so many stories about how people lost their family members, but somehow the pain this lady felt was just too real and it struck something in me. I still often think of how she is doing now and where she ended up after leaving the school , which was a temporary shelter for her and other displaced families at that time.

I remember trying to find her children's name at a the Indonesian Red Cross center which had listed names of lost people that were found. I couldn't find the names of her children, even though I spent time going through many available lists at that time — I couldn't do more to help but just held her hand and watched her cry until her eyelids could hardly open as they were swollen.

I still often think of Darmini, her haunting sadness and her personal closure about her children. I wonder where she is now and if she has recovered at all.

What are three words - or a short phrase - to describe the three years of Mercy Corps work in Aceh?
Community driven, challenge and pride. Mercy Corps has always believed that its approach in all its work is community driven and, although challenging at times, our program in Aceh is proud of its work and its achievements.