Thoughts on the Aceh Coast

These pictures may be the best that I can to do to describe what it was like to go to the main area of destruction on the coastline of Banda Aceh. There have been so many pictures in the media, I am not sure if this is going to do any more to describe what it looks like to be on the coast, where the largest numbers of lives were lost. Try making the pictures big, and then imagine them as large as your entire field of vision, and all around.

The normal Indonesian middle-class residential street is packed. Yards are not really a part of Indonesian house. The homes are packed tightly together, prioritizing the importance of having it “rame”, or busy and crowded, rather keeping one’s affairs private. There may be fruit trees in front of the house, and a little bit of a yard. The chickens that are kept around wander out into the middle of the road, and are shooed out of the way by the guys who wander down the street with their food carts, selling soups or drinks or sweeties. The overly large jeeps honk at each other as they try to pass each other on the six foot wide lane. There are always people around, sitting around outside their houses, hanging up clothes to dry, taking care of kids.

Where the tsunami hit there is almost nothing. Nothing would be too complete, too clean. There are foundations, flat to the ground. There are tile floors, cleaned of mud by the rains and shiny clean. There are the shapes of houses that were, with the outlines of rooms outlined in concrete on the flat ground. And then, for almost ludicrous contrast, there are the houses that stayed. These are the strongest houses, the mosques, the concrete homes of the rich. They stand out from the rubble, perfect in comparison to the nothing around them. There are trees, 40 feet high, which stand in the middle of the flats. There are Indonesian flags that dot the emptiness, each marking where a body has been found. There are hundreds, and I am told that most of the flags there originally have been taken away, or have fallen over.

But the areas are not empty of people, either. There are people who are scavenging scrap metal, and selling it in the city. There are people cleaning up the remains of their houses, or shops. There are still crews of people picking up bodies, wearing all white plastic as they sift through the rubble. There are also people living. In the houses that have only been partially destroyed, people have set up their homes again. In complete, completely destroyed areas, where no buildings lasted, some people have cleared the land, down to sweeping the clear ground, and rebuilt. They have built small shacks, I suppose, but against the chaos of the destruction, they are incongruously perfect. They are built out of found boards and mats, scavenged from the destruction.

There are just so many images. Almost anything left standing in the worst areas has graffiti on it: “Remember! We all must die”, “What is past is past”, “The owner of this house is still alive!”, “crying”. And there are signs, standing alone, marking what villages used to live there. “This was such and such a village. Please do not take anything from here”. In the areas where some houses still stand, people piling their belongings outside their houses. A computer covered in mud, along with other mud-covered belongings in a small yard. Small stores have re-opened in the shells of mostly destroyed houses. Even in the worst areas, people have set up lean-tos where they are selling drinks to people who are clearing their land, and to tsunami-tourists. Because there are tsunami tourists. Some of the buildings that are still standing, primarily mosques, seem to have a small steady stream of local people coming to stare at the improbability.

The day was perfect. The sun was bright, with a cool breeze. The sea was so calm and blue. Small waves lapped at the beach where children used to bathe. And around it, the wreckage of hundreds of thousands of lives. I’m sorry that I can’t describe it better. I’m not sure it can be described.