West
Aceh – On this day of Ramadhan, there are a dozen boys
and one girl at the Suchi Hati orphanage. All of the other nearly
150 boys and girls with any extended family have gone to spend
the Muslim fasting month with them. These remaining children
have only each other and this tent orphanage in a west coast
town of Indonesia’s Aceh province.
Most of the boys are still asleep well past midday. It is not
that they are “typical” lazy teenagers. The boys
are tired from doing the late night and early morning prayers
of Ramadhan. And, the Spanish Red Cross can vouch that although
these boys have had every reason in life to lie down and give
up, they are anything but lazy.
Until several days ago, the orphanage (whose name in Indonesian
means “Pure Heart”) was a set of sagging, leaky
tents on the edge of a large camp full of other people displaced
by the tsunami. The boys and girls slept on thin straw mats
spread over plastic ground sheets. Their caretakers used a corner
of a tent for cooking. Everyone just made do.
“At first (after tsunami destroyed the orphanage buildings)
it was an emergency situation,” says headmaster Mr. Dahlianas,
“So, we were happy at least to sleep without getting wet.
It was good enough for us.”
In the months that the groundwork for the building of a new
orphanage was done, however, the rains fell and winds blew.
The tents, meant only for emergency shelter, began to sag and
leak. The ground beneath the children turned to mud.
On stormy nights when rainwater dripped through the roof or
overflowed the ring ditch and spread under the tent walls, some
of the children would pick up their straw mats and make their
way to a nearby mosque. There they would spread the mats on
the hard marble floor and try to sleep before morning prayers
and classes.
“They tried to keep running their lives as usual,”
says Dahlianas.
When the Spanish and Indonesian Red Cross learned of these conditions
a couple months ago, they convinced a local woman to lend them
a piece of land for the building of a new camp right next to
where the permanent orphanage was under construction. They also
got permission from a mosque to rebuild some destroyed outbuildings
as temporary dormitories for another all-girl orphanage in similar
circumstances.
The Spanish Red Cross had been providing drinking water and
sanitation facilities to tsunami survivors since the earliest
days of the disaster, and permanent shelter reconstruction has
been the next biggest concern. But, in recent months, the Spanish
Red Cross and the International Federation realized that issues
such as land ownership and material shortages were hampering
reconstruction projects for all relief agencies. People were
going to have to wait longer than anticipated to receive new
homes, and so something had to be done to make them more comfortable
and safe while they waited.
Spanish Red Cross and the International Federation began looking
for solutions to the widespread problem. “We considered
it an urgent situation,” says Spanish Red Cross coordinator
Miguel Urgia. The International Federation brought 27,000 new
and larger family tents into the country to replace those which
had been deteriorating or otherwise inadequate. The Federation
also convened a cross-agency Transitional Shelter task force
with the UN to plan the purchase, distribution and assembly
of at least 15,000 steel-framed temporary shelters (the first
will arrive in country by early November).
Spanish Red Cross had already begun its own local project to
provide up to 900 families living in tents with materials and
design plans for constructing multi-family temporary shelter
units on land borrowed from neighbouring villages or landlords.
Meanwhile, when the Spanish Red Cross learned about the living
conditions of the Suchi Hati orphanage, it acted immediately.
Spanish Red Cross began constructing latrines and showers, digging
a well, erecting water tanks and building a wooden camp kitchen
and meeting room. They set up large new tents for living quarters,
weather proofing them with raised wooden floors and over-roofs
made of plastic tarps stretched over wooden frames.
The goal was to get the children into a safe and comfortable
camp by the time school started in late September. Red Cross
delegates and staff were so enthusiastic and dedicated to the
project, one weekend Urquia discovered a dozen of them working
on the camp during their “free time.”
They weren’t the only ones excited about the move. Urquia
says the boys from the orphanage would ride their bicycles to
the new site every day to watch the builders.
“One day, the boys showed up at the worksite carrying
little hammers and saws,” he says. “They gathered
up the scraps of wood and sat down and started hammering and
sawing.”
Spanish Red Cross officer Marlina Cut says in a short time,
the boys built tables, wardrobes, chairs and benches to furnish
their new home.
“They are hard workers,” says Marlina. “They
even built laundry drying racks and their own room dividers
in the tents.”
“We needed to be organized,” says “Karim,”
an 17-year-old who wants to be a public servant one day.
“We needed desks for studying and cupboards for our clothes.”
The boys had lost all but the clothes they wore in the tsunami
and only by a chance drudgery did they avoid losing their lives.
On the morning of December 26th, the teachers had the boys and
girls outside cleaning the grounds of the orphanage. When the
earthquake struck, the teachers gathered the children together.
When he heard the approaching wave, he told all of the children
to run for the mosque.
Headmaster Dahlianas was in town at the time and was caught
by the wave but when it subsided, he swam to the orphanage to
help the children. All but one of the orphans had escaped the
wave, but Mr. Dahlianas lost three of his own four children
who had been in their home.
Mr. Dahlianas’ kindly face darkens when he mentions his
loss and his eyes break away. When he continues, he says he
has never considered leaving his work with the boys. “I
feel closer to these children (the orphans) now,” he says.
“They suffered before (tsunami), and they suffered more
after.”
Some had already lost one or both parents before tsunami, others
were placed in the orphanage by families too poor to feed them.
Some lost their families in the tsunami. Mr. Dahlianas says
the boys often tell the stories about how their parents died.
“Things are still tough now,” says Dahlianas. “Before,
the children had their own rooms and beds. Now they have to
live in tents.”
“But, the children now feel better,” says Dahlianas.
“They have good food. Good tents, wooden floors, better
sanitation and electricity, and activities to keep them busy.
The Spanish Red Cross arrived suddenly and with a good mission
to move us here.”
In this early evening of another day of Ramadhan, the boys of
Suchi Hati visit their new zinc-walled showers. Shortly after,
a siren calls and the boys break their fast with papaya water
and a kind of peanut butter pancake. They then hustle over to
one of the big new tents for evening prayers.
After prayers, the boys’ show off the furniture they made
by themselves out of scraps. It is well-built, some pieces even
have metal hinges and handles. The boys learned to build in
a workshop at the old orphanage. They say they will keep making
furniture so when they grow up, they will have something to
sell, a way to make a living.
In the large, new tents, the boys’ clothes are folded
on shelves or hung on racks in a way that almost seems unnaturally
neat. But a closer look also shows some of the furniture decorated
with bits of jagged cut tin foil, or scratched with electric
guitar scrawlings of names and logos of favourite rock bands.
It is, after all, the furniture of teenage boys.
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This
boy, the son of the headmaster of Suchi Hati orphanage,
lost his three siblings in the tsunami. His father swam
to the orphanage after tsunami to help rescue the children,
not knowing that they had already evacuated safely to
a nearby mosque while his own did not make it out of their
home before the wave struck. The headmaster says he feels
even closer to the children of the orphanage now because
they "They suffered before (tsunami), and they suffered
more after."
Photo: Virgil Grandfield/International Federation (p13422)
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Spanish
Red Cross delegate Miquel Urquia and project officer Cut
Lina visiting mosque compound where they will restore
some outbuildings to make living quarters for girls until
their orphanage can be rebuilt. The Spanish Red Cross
is working on projects to provide liveable temporary shelters
for two orphanages and over 800 families in this area
on the west coast of Aceh province.
Photo: Virgil Grandfield/International Federation (p13421)
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The
boys of Suchi Hati orphanage made furnitures out of scrap
wood left over from the new camp that Spanish Red Cross
built. The new camp has a new well, latrines, showers,
a kitchen and meeting room (background), and wooden floors
in four large tents with wood-and-tarp over roofs to keep
the children dry. The letters the boys painted on the
small table in the photo stand for Indonesian Red Cross
and Spanish Red Cross respectively.
Photo: Virgil Grandfield/International Federation (p13424)
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This
boy stayed at the Suchi Hati orphanage before the tsunami
because his parents could not afford to send him to school.
When the tsunami hit, he walked two days without food
or water to look for them in their village. He slept in
the jungle for many nights near the village while searching.
Their bodies and those of his siblings and all of his
extended family were never found. He will have to leave
the orphanage when he turns 18 next year.
Photo: Virgil Grandfield/International Federation (p13425)
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First
prayers of the night after breaking fast. During the month
of Ramadhan, schools are out and most children of the
orphanage have gone to stay with any relatives they might
have. These remaining boys and one girl are without any
family whatsoever. Spanish Red Cross made a special effort
beyond its usual long-term reconstruction programme to
improve temporary living conditions for these children
and those of another nearby orphanage. The children are
orphans of accidents, illnesses, the long-standing conflict
in Aceh, and some of the tsunami.
Photo: Olav A. Saltbones/International Federation (p-IDN0736)
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