Resilience and Hope

Boats washed ashore by the tsunami still litter Banda Aceh's neighborhoods. Photo: Anita Bekenstein for Mercy Corps

Editor's note: Anita Bekenstein is a Mercy Corps board member who in March joined a Mercy Corps delegation to Indonesia to assess the organization's community-led and economic development projects.

Three years ago last December 26, the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh was flattened by the tsunami. The force of skyscraper-tall waves destroyed everything in their path.

But when we drove around the hardest-hit areas, what we saw totally astounded us:

New houses filled with families going about their everyday activities. Beautiful new mosques anchoring neighborhoods. A mad chaos of cars, motorcycles rickshaws and pedestrians traveling new roads. An abundance of street markets filled with fresh produce and goods.

Banda Aceh's bustle had returned.

Anita Bekenstein

Of course, we saw many reminders of what happened there on December 26, 2004. The Ulee Lheae Mass graveyard is one of them. It's located where a popular sandy beach once attracted local residents to swim. Now it's home to the remains of more than 14,000 unidentified tsunami victims. Many people go there to pray for loved ones who disappeared that day but were never found.

Then there's the odd site of boats sitting in the middle of villages boats that rode in on the waves that day and are now relocated several kilometers inland. Some sit in people's backyards. One we saw now anchors one end of a family's clothesline.

We also saw a 4,000-ton floating power plant that's now in the middle of the Punge Blang Cut Village — four kilometers from any body of water. It still generates electrical power.

Everyone here has a story about that day, a day when half the population of the city disappeared.

Mercy Corps is helping those who remain build back better. It's focused on improving the local economy by getting businesses back on their feet.

We met a woman, a baker, who lost everything in the tsunami. With help from Mercy Corps' cash-for-work program, she was able to reestablish her business. She relaunched with six employees making 1,500 rolls a day. She now employees 30 people who bake 12,000 rolls daily.

Mercy Corps also helped restart a brick-making factory. There we saw women kneading large chunks of earth, molding it into rectangular frames, then drying the mud bricks in a stack before firing them in an enormous kiln. These bricks were destined for new homes to replace those swept away by the waves.

We saw newly build irrigation canals that bring fresh water to nourish rice crops. The tsunami had soaked rice fields in salty water, and those fields all had to be dug up and desalinated so the rice would grow again. Now the new canals enable farmers to harvest the rice three times a year like before.

We saw many gleaming new kindergartens and elementary schools, with brand-new latrines and washing areas where students learn and practice good personal hygiene. Some of the children receive fortified chocolate soy milk as part of Mercy Corps Healthy Schools Program. The soy milk, along with regular de-worming treatments and parental nutrition classes, is to fight chronic anemia and other diseases related to child malnutrition.

With hard work, perseverance and resilience, Banda Aceh is now largely rebuilt. And even though residents we talked to had suffered immeasurable loss, their words and deeds reflect their enormous resilience and optimism. The Mercy Corps staff we met were equally impressive — dedicated, passionate, brave and caring people doing difficult and challenging work. Together, they are helping Banda Aceh move forward.