Photo Credit: Reuters/Yuriko Nakao, courtesy of www.alertnet.org
01/14/2005

Despite the huge loss and damage caused by the Dec. 26 tsunami, residents of hard-hit areas on Indonesia and elsewhere are showing amazing resilience as people try to move quickly to rebuild their houses, their communities and their lives.  An RI team comprised of Joel Charny, James McNaughton, and Ni Wayan Sri Siantari repeatedly saw this impressive spirit of self-help during a two-week humanitarian assessment mission to Indonesia.

Lost amid the images of the burly American soldiers cradling injured children and teams of doctors from around the world tending to badly wounded patients is the fact that in Aceh, Indonesia survivors of the devastating tsunami have been mobilizing their own community-level support. Refugees International visited a small community-managed temporary camp for persons displaced by the calamity at Kueh, a mukim (county) about six or seven miles down the Indian Ocean coast southeast of Banda Aceh. We were impressed and moved by the level of self-help action in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami.

The camp is located in a mosque compound, which is on high ground off the coast, and was thus spared the ferocity of the waves. The camp has 275 residents. In the neat office situated close by the mosque, the volunteer manager, Sanusi Husein, told RI that the camp was initiated by the chiefs of the 12 villages that survived the tsunami. Three villages in this mukim were erased from the map with no known survivors. They sought and received medical care from the Indonesian Red Crescent and a military medical team. Food and other provisions were donated by individuals, political parties, private companies, and local government.

Sanusi Husein is a local merchant and is managing the camp on a purely volunteer basis. According to him, the most pressing needs for the immediate future are assuring a steady supply of food, clean water, and adequate shelter. Most people in the camp would like to be relocated temporarily, but are unsure about the future and where they would like to start their lives afresh.

When questioned about his motivation and the motivation of the other volunteers, Husein replied, "We do this out of a sense of humanity."

The Kueh camp demonstrates in microcosm the commitment and the capacity that exist within Aceh, and within damaged communities in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and other affected areas, to take responsibility for meeting immediate needs and starting the rebuilding process. Effective relief is about much more than supplying equipment and personnel from abroad, as critical as these interventions may be. Effective relief nurtures and builds on the resources within communities, and respecting and encouraging community management strengthens the survivors for the challenges ahead.

Read more about the tsunami on our regularly updated Tsunami Crisis Page.