TSUNAMI VICTIMS HALTINGLY REBUILD

By John Donnelly, Boston Globe Staff | February 20, 2005

 

BANGTAO, Thailand -- At this small seaside community, where the monster
tsunami waves leveled nearly every house and business, volunteers and
residents have rebuilt homes and constructed a new playground. Kwandee
Kongtap, a grandmother, wept for joy as children jumped off a new gazebo.
About 250 miles south, on the northeast tip of Indonesia, Baharuddin, 49,
who had lost every other member of his family in the tsunami, within days
began returning every morning to his devastated village, using his bare
hands to clear debris. After a month, he and a few other men had cleaned
out a mosque, which marked a great accomplishment to them.

To the west across the vast Indian Ocean, in a coastal town in Sri Lanka,
Saman Kumara, 36, prepared for the third consecutive day to knock on the
doors of banks, pleading for a $50,000 loan. He once had 15 boats and
employed 40 people, but no banker so far is willing to take the chance on
him.

These three tsunami survivors are emblematic of the millions whose lives
were forever changed when tidal waves swept over their communities on Dec.
26. Nearly two months after the disaster, the first clear pictures are
emerging of the range of the rebuilding ahead. Already it is evident that
some regions will recover their old way of life years before others do.

But the future still spells great uncertainties for all. The Thai
grandmother who sees her village come back to life prays for tourists to
return and bring back jobs. The Indonesian father who yearns to see his
village reconstructed wonders whether he will ever stop mourning. The Sri
Lankan fisherman may eventually find a loan, but will he ever fully trust
the sea again?

All share a faith in the need to rebuild, even if they can't read the
future. The tasks ahead range from basic cleanup that will take just weeks
for many Thai resorts on Phuket Island to five-year projects in
communities in the Aceh Province of Indonesia, where all that remains of
homes are concrete slabs.

For Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, a major focus will be on
rebuilding infrastructure for tourism, the lifeblood of the economy.
Progress is great in some places, nonexistent in others. On Phuket Island,
more than 80 percent of the hotel rooms are open, and northern European
tourists have begun to return in small numbers to take advantage of the
miles of white sand beaches and stunning coral reefs.

In Sri Lanka, a tourism industry that was just taking root before the
tsunami remains mostly in ruins in the hard-hit southern areas. The nation
has started rebuilding both its damaged infrastructure and its image,
kicking off a $300 million tourism promotion campaign that includes free
trips for 100 travel writers from Europe and Asia.

But at the disaster's worst-hit sites -- places such as Banda Aceh,
Indonesia, a quarter of the coastline of Sri Lanka, and 39 of the
Maldives' 198 inhabited islands -- no one will be thinking of marketing
campaigns for years. Now the focus is on housing. Estimates of the
displaced are as high as 1.5 million people; there are 700,000 in Sri
Lanka alone.

Later, the effort will turn to the mind-boggling questions of how to
rebuild entire communities.

''That is the thing that stalks your thinking," said John Budd, a UNICEF
official in Indonesia. ''You sort of go, 'God, what is going to happen
there? Will a community ever rebuild?' "

Budd believes it will be at least five years before the hard-hit province
of Aceh is back on its feet.

''Generations of people have been wiped out, whole communities, whole
cultures, whole everything," he said.

A struggle for life in the ruins The scope of the rebuilding ahead is
still hard to comprehend. In the Maldives, with a population of 300,000,
replacing destroyed housing will cost $65 million, according to
preliminary figures. Officials also must consider how they will replace an
estimated 700,000 fruit trees damaged or destroyed in the deluge. Sri
Lanka must build 75,000 homes and repair another 50,000; the country in
previous years built fewer than 5,000 houses annually.

No governmental or private agency has a tsunami-wide estimate of what it
will cost to cover the entire rebuilding effort but it will easily top the
unprecedented $5.1 billion in donor pledges and an estimated $800 million
in private donations. Already disaster coordinators at the United Nations
are worried about the gap between donor pledges and money in the bank:
Hundreds of millions of dollars promised have not yet been transferred,
hampering the first stages of recovery.

Other challenges will include access to areas in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and
southern Thailand that have long histories of violence connected to
separatist movements; close watch over how money is spent, notably in
Indonesia, reputed to be one of the most corrupt nations in the world; and
coordination between governments, charities, and volunteer groups in
carrying out new mandates, including no-build zones near the sea and the
tricky determination of who receives help.

Harder still to quantify is the psychological damage endured by survivors
-- people such as Baharuddin, who is from the village of Lamteungoh,
Indonesia, just outside the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

''I am alone," said Baharuddin, standing inside a primary school that had
become his temporary shelter. (Like many Indonesians, he goes by one
name.) ''I lost my five children, my wife, my father, my mother, my three
little brothers, my big sister."

He is the leader of a village that lost 1,100 of its 1,350 residents.
Almost two months after the waves came, Baharuddin cannot stop remembering.

''I remember I somersaulted three times in the wave and then I was stuck
against the mountain, holding onto a piece of wood," he said. ''On that
mountain, I saw one of my daughters, my 14-year-old, holding onto a
coconut tree, and someone saved her. They brought my daughter to me, and
she said, 'Is this real or is this a dream?' I said to her, 'No, this is
real. It is only the two of us in the family.'

''After that, she kissed both my cheeks, she held me, and she died."
He has little idea how the villagers will be able to regain a semblance of
the life they once had. Most of the survivors are men, who were either
outside the village at the time the waves came or had the strength to
survive the onslaught of water. The men are almost all widowers, and many
fathers have no children now.

In such communities, it is hard to know who will determine the future.
Will the government decide where villagers will rebuild? Will anyone take
their feelings into consideration? Already, battles along these lines have
begun.

In Sri Lanka, the government has announced it will not allow construction
within 100 yards of the ocean along the western and southern coast, and
within 200 yards of the northern and eastern coast. But at a meeting of
local officials and private charity leaders in Trincomalee earlier this
month, a battle erupted over temporary housing in the city, which is 150
miles northeast of Colombo, the capital.

Inside an 18th-century room with a ceiling two stories high, a member of
parliament, Jayantha Wijesekara, said police had given him the OK to build
on the city's prized open space, a seafront property now used for cricket
and soccer matches.

A second parliamentarian, Rajavarothayam Sampanthan, shouted at him, ''I
am totally opposed! We must preserve the beauty of the town. It will not
happen!"

The first shouted louder, ''I will get presidential permission!"

The fight continued for several minutes. No one could stop them, until a
representative of the police calmly told the assembly, ''Sirs, both sides
must be considered before a decision can be made."

It was not surprising that stakes are high over placement and type of
temporary structures; with the notable exception of Kosovar refugees
setting up camp in Albania in 1999 and then returning en masse to their
homes seven weeks later, temporary housing that is put in place after
disasters or conflicts often becomes permanent.

In Aceh Province in Indonesia last week, the first batch of displaced
people moved from tents to army-built barracks. While aid groups worry
about water, sanitation, and privacy issues at the tent camps, most
believe the barracks are a poor solution because of overcrowding and
potential army control of people. Fewer than half of Indonesia's 412,000
registered displaced people will be moving into the barracks; the rest are
living with relatives and some are preparing to rebuild their homes.

'Booming economy' recalled ''These are not helpless victims," said Stephen
Gwynne-Vaughan, who is heading CARE's rebuilding programs in Indonesia.
''This was a booming economy. If I was to buy stock in something, I'd buy
it in a cement factory in Banda Aceh, or a zinc roofing company in Medan,"
the largest city on Sumatra island.

Lafarge, a French cement maker, late last month announced plans to build a
new cement plan in northern Sumatra that would nearly double the company's
pre-tsunami output. The tsunami severely damaged a cement plant outside
the city of Banda Aceh, in which Lafarge had an 80 percent stake, and the
company has pledged to rebuild that as well.

Fixing the plant will be only part of the job. An estimated 345 of the
company's 625 plant staff still are unaccounted for, and most are presumed
dead.

And all around the plant, in the village of Lhonga, virtually nothing is
left. Even the boundaries of the rice fields are no longer visible.
Patrick Johns, head of Catholic Relief Services' operations in Banda Aceh
until recently, said his organization is trying to help those who want to
rebuild.

''The more they rebuild, the more a sense of normalcy will come back,"
Johns said. ''So we give them wood, roofing materials, hammers, and nails,
and basically they will do the labor themselves. It's a much better
solution than putting people in barracks."

Aid groups are experienced at helping farmers after disasters, but they
have very little history with the fishing industry. After some initial
investigation, which shows that many areas are over-fished and that
mafia-like organizations control boats in many communities, some groups
are balking at simply replacing what was lost.

''We think people should take a closer look at fishing and see if they can
make it more sustainable and more equitable," said Scott Faiia, CARE's
director in Sri Lanka. He's not sure what that would entail, but he said
his group is hesitant about ''simply replacing boats that were lost."

Such decisions will have a huge impact on life along the Sri Lanka
coastline. The tsunami, which killed 7,500 fishermen in Sri Lanka,
destroyed an estimated 80 percent of the country's fishing boats.
Faiia and other aid specialists also said that they want to expand the
definition of who needs aid. ''Not all the resources can go to the narrow
community on the coastal strip," he said. ''We will create problems if we
build a new home for someone, while 200 meters away a person is living in
a grass hut."

Relief agencies, meanwhile, are increasingly concerned about keeping close
account of the money that poured in from around the world in the days
after the catastrophe.

Alwi Shihab, who is in charge of Indonesia's response to the tsunami,
pledged to openly record money received and spent. ''We don't want to
waste all this good will from around the world," Shihab said. ''Part of
our willingness to be as transparent as possible is to make sure we do not
get accused of malpractice of any kind. This is a test case for the
government."

But even as national governments oversee the major projects, established
charities and volunteer groups have moved quickly to help fill in gaps.
One small example is the village of Bangtao, Thailand, where the
grandmother, Kwandee Kongtap, 58, was moved to tears.

A group of volunteers from around the world coalesced in Bangtao, thanks
to an organization headed by Michael Cegielski, 42, an American who was
helping to open a hotel in the village. After the tsunami, he quickly
shifted into helping the community rebuild. Standing next to Cegielski at
a ceremonial ribbon-cutting of the opening of a playground, Kongtap said
the outpouring of help overwhelmed her.

''I'm really happy that every religion, and people from every country,
came to help us," she said. Bangtao is predominantly Muslim. ''We needed
everything -- money, homes, all our possessions. Our lives are starting to
get in order. Now we need tourists to come back. Without them, we will
suffer."

Turning to the sea Across the Indian Ocean, in the Sri Lankan town of
Trincomalee, the needs of Saman Kumara, who before the tsunami owned 15
fishing boats, are quite different, although his livelihood, too, is at
stake.

Now he has three boats and six workers. He has approached four banks, but
none would give him a loan unless he posted $50,000 in collateral. All he
had, he said, was a house worth $13,000.

At Hatton National Bank, one of those who turned down Kumara, manager
Genesharetnam Sakthibhavan said that banks were holding thousands of loans
of people who perished in the tsunami or now had no money to repay. He
said he wants to underwrite new loans for fishermen, but of 250
applications since the tsunami, he had approved just 15.

''I know, I know, that's not good," he said, slumping in his chair just
after the bank closed one day earlier this month. ''Nothing's happening."
Kumara said he wished the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank would
create a revolving loan fund for fishermen and farmers throughout the
tsunami-affected areas.

''I'm not asking for a handout," he said.

Even with no loan, he said he would push ahead. ''Fishermen are strong
men. We don't back down very easily," Kumara said. ''So since we are
strong people, we will try to lift our heads up with whatever we have.
It's just that lifting our heads will be harder, and take longer, if we
don't receive help along the way."

John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.