Rahmatun is almost inaudible over the drone of the low-flying aid helicopter. Pointing upwards, the softly spoken 14-year-old eventually makes herself understood. ”That’s what I want to do when I grow up,” she says. Her smile implies she is aware that this is not the standard career choice of a devoutly Muslim teenage girl in Aceh. ”I want to be a pilot. It would be a great way to see the world.”
Rahmatun’s ambition and self-confidence are unusual in this largely conservative society, but they are extraordinary given that she became an orphan and lost two siblings on Boxing Day when the Indian Ocean tsunami wiped her village, Bubun, off the map.
Bubun used to be a thriving fishing hub north of Meulaboh on the west coast of Aceh province, but after the earthquake struck and sent 20m-high waves cascading towards the area, Meulaboh was reduced to a collection of 11 mosques. ”All the houses were destroyed,” Rahmatun, who likes to be called Fitri, says. ”I don’t know why the only buildings left standing are the mosques, but I am glad because I ran to the nearest one to escape the waves. I climbed up to the first floor as the first wave came through, then I went down again because I thought the danger had passed, but a second wave came, so we all had to rush upstairs again. We stayed there for several hours.” Of the 3 500 people living in Bubun, only 220 survived, Rahmatun says. And as with many of the regions that were blighted that fateful Sunday morning, a large proportion of the surviving children have lost one or both of their parents.
The United Nations’ children’s organisation, Unicef, estimates that up to 14 000 of the 350 000 people in Sumatra who were displaced by the tsunami are unaccompanied children. Tom Alcedo, the director of Save the Children in Indonesia, puts the high figure down to the exceptional nature of the disaster. ”In the chaos of the earthquake and tsunami it was quite natural for people to scatter, panic and become separated,” he says. ”Some were swept out to sea and dumped elsewhere and many others have just disappeared.” Around 70 000 bodies have been buried, but 130 000 additional people remain unaccounted for. There are genuine concerns that in the confusion, the young survivors might fall prey to child-trafficking gangs. The United Nations says it has proof of one case in Sumatra and local media, in the first week after the disaster, widely reported credible but unsubstantiated claims of further incidents.
With nowhere else to go and terrified that another tsunami would strike at any minute, Rahmatun spent the first night in the mosque with a crowd of strangers, united in their grief and fear. The following day, her group of several dozen moved a couple of kilometres inland and built a refugee camp with a gaggle of other survivors.
Among them were five other children who had also just become orphans and, it turned out, were Rahmatun’s extremely distant relatives. Ekayanti (10) with a lazy right eye; Yuli, eight, with a cheeky smile and barely old enough to understand the enormity of what happened; brothers Orizal (13) and Kasman, nine, who spent hours alone in the water, clinging for dear life to planks of debris before being unceremoniously deposited into the forest at the back of the village; and Rahmat (12). Rahmat tried to escape the wall of water by climbing a tree, but was ripped from the trunk and had his clothes shredded from his body as he spent hours in nature’s equivalent of a washing machine, before being dumped on a ruined house.
”We didn’t know what was going to happen to us,” Orizal says. ”We were sad, we were crying and we didn’t know what to do. We had lost our parents, many of our brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts and had nothing left.”
Then Indonesia’s almost magical bush telegraph kicked into gear. On the third day after the tsunami, two cars suddenly arrived from Meulaboh, a day’s drive away along roads that were barely passable in places, thanks to the shredded tarmac and mountains of strewn wreckage, with yet more distant relatives.
One of those cars — a Suzuki jeep that survived several hours in the water with the loss of only one back light, the air conditioning, the horn and the power to the electric windows — was driven by Adi. ”We had heard rumours that a lot of children might have survived in Bubun, but without their parents, so we thought we should go and have a look,” he says. ”I was surprised to find so many relatives alive. I thought more would have died. We decided there and then to take them home.” The children jumped into the cars and went off to Meulaboh.
Across Aceh, there have been many such acts of kindness as people whose houses survived the tempest ahve taken pity on their friends and relatives and made room in their already overflowing homes. The six Bubun orphans are now living in two groups of three: Eka, Fitri and Rahmat with Adi, and the others with Adi’s cousin Mulyadi, a few hundred metres away. As with most homes in the third of Meulaboh that survived intact, the conditions in Adi’s home are extremely cramped — 30 people sleep in a six-room wooden shack with electricity but no bathroom, the nearest fresh(ish) water 200m away across a muddy field, and the wallpaper made of newspaper.
”The house is small and crowded but it is our new home,” says Rahmat. ”I am happy here. It is better than being in the camp. Anyway, we don’t have any choice. We are lucky still to have family who want to help us.” Shortly after arriving, the six orphans decided to go for a tour of Meulaboh. ”I am glad we did it,” says Kasman. ”It was amazing to see so many destroyed houses. It was like what I imagine hell to be. But it made me sad. So we have not been back since and I don’t want to go again.”
Kasman, who idolises the footballer Michael Owen, can’t be blamed for not wanting to relive his tsunami memories: the smell of death still hangs over large parts of the town as the corpse-evacuation crews, made up of Indonesian soldiers and volunteers from the capital, Jakarta, struggle to clear the thousands of bloated bodies intertwined in the rubble, which are still lying there.
”We all still have nightmares,” Fitri says. ”I dream that another tsunami is coming.”
”I dream that my parents are still alive and then wake up to realise that they will never come back,” says Eka, who appears to be the most traumatised of the six. She rarely engages with the others, speaks infrequently unless directly addressed, and has a glazed stare.
The children, who are all Muslims, use their five daily prayer sessions for support. ”I know God cannot bring back my mummy and daddy, even though I would like him to,” says Kasman. ”So I pray that there will not be another tsunami. That is what we don’t want, more than anything.” The others all nod in agreement.
Now the children want three things: to return to school, to go back to Bubun and (with the exception of Fitri, who prefers volleyball, and Rahmat, who is a chess addict) to play football. Given the state of the infrastructure in this area, none of these wishes is going to be easy to fulfil. ”We have no idea how many orphans and other children have come to Meulaboh since the tsunami,” says Muhammed Zanussi, an official in the local government education office. ”There’s no data, so we don’t know where to allocate the children. This is probably going to take several weeks to organise.” The data that is available makes frightening reading: 48 primary schools and a couple of dozen secondary schools have been destroyed in the district and at least 150 teachers are missing, presumed dead. Each day the latter figure leaps by at least 20.
Even if they attend the nearest school, the children will have a six and a half kilometre walk in each direction as they cannot afford to take public transport. A football is proving equally elusive. ”There are no sports shops left,” said Adi. ”And we need to save our money for food. Life is all about survival at the moment. We have rice, noodles and some vegetables to eat. But no fish and meat, unlike before.”
Meanwhile, moving back to Bubun is clearly not going to be possible for years, if at all: 90% of people in the community have been killed and the rice fields are inundated with salt water. But that doesn’t stop the children wishing for it. ”It’s where we were born, it’s where we grew up and have lived all our lives,” says Orizal. ”That’s why I want to go back.”
Shannon Strother, of Unicef, says that until a long-term solution is reached, the orphans are likely to stay in their new homes. ”It’s not an easy yes-no answer,” says Strother. ”It’s going to take a long time to come up with the best short- and long-term alternatives. It’s important to get children back to school because it gives them some normality; they’re in a friendly environment which can help nurture them.”
It is also clear that the children just want to talk: about their horrible experiences, about their loss, and about the future. ”We need counselling,” says Kasman. ”But we have not got any help like that yet. I hope we get it soon.” – Guardian Unlimited Â