Mennonite Central Committee

MCC assessment team in Indonesia stunned by enormity of tragedy

February 4, 2005

SALATIGA, Indonesia—In three days of touring in Indonesia’s tsunami-ravaged Aceh province, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) assessment team members found themselves stunned by the enormity of the devastation.

“It was square kilometer after square kilometer of churned-up rubble,” said Ed Martin, MCC’s director of Central and Southern Asia programs. “It’s not just broken buildings but the thrashing together of materials, everything of human existence all in a jumble. I’ve never seen anything that approaches this level of destruction.”

The team, which traveled Jan. 17 to 20 in Aceh, saw large boats, for example, that the tidal wave had deposited among the remains of tall city buildings, several miles from the ocean.

Three weeks after the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami, survivors remain stunned, the team reported. Jeanne Jantzi, MCC Indonesia co-representative, who had earlier visited Aceh from Jan. 6 to 9, saw little change in survivors 10 days later. “They are still dazed and shocked,” Jantzi said.

The mind-bending enormity of the tragedy lies beyond human understanding, especially as bodies are still being retrieved from the wreckage, and the death toll continues to mount. The latest figure is 216,000 for Aceh province. People are now greeting one another by saying, “How many do you have left?” Jantzi said.

Some are reliving the terror of their own narrow escapes. The team met a fisherman who was at sea when the tsunami struck. He described three waves, the third of which “looked like the head of a cobra before striking,” related Willie Reimer, MCC director of Food, Disaster and Material Resources. The fisherman on the boat survived with another man by clinging to boat remnants.

The team met one young Acehnese man, a lone figure slumped against a stool among the debris of his house. He sat in a daze, still not comprehending that his entire family — parents and four siblings — had been swept away in a matter of minutes. When asked how old he was, the man thought a bit and began to cry when he realized that the day was his 25th birthday.

“When we asked people what comes next, their faces clouded over and we could see they were not ready to think about that,” commented Ken Snyder, of Salem, Ore., who will serve as MCC’s tsunami-response consultant in Indonesia for the next two months.

As part of a more than $15 million Cdn./$12 million U.S. package, including more than $6 million Cdn./$5 million U.S. for Indonesia, MCC is providing trauma counseling in Aceh province and has provided medical and material aid, including food, to survivors. MCC is collecting toward a goal of 22,000 relief kits, worth some $960,000 Cdn./$800,000 U.S. by Feb. 28. Longer-term plans for Aceh are developing and will concentrate on village reconstruction, with affected residents helping to establish priorities among such needs as housing, water and sanitation, livelihood issues and schooling.

Some of the response will be through partner agencies of MCC Indonesia. These partner organizations are small, however, and have well-defined goals, such as medical assistance. Therefore, the team is recommending that MCC, working with the Indonesian Mennonite synods and possibly the Indonesian Mennonite business community, also administer a reconstruction effort of its own, staffed primarily by Acehnese.

Recognizing that MCC’s strength lies in intermediate to long-term disaster recovery, the assessment team recommends three to five years of involvement in Aceh province. Two North American Mennonites, experts in water, sanitation and housing, will arrive in Banda Aceh over the next month to assist Snyder in planning MCC’s long-term response. They are Steve Steiner, of Dalton, Ohio, and John Williamson, of Akron, Pa.

Members of the MCC tsunami-response assessment team included Allen Harder, who worked with MCC in Indonesia for many years; Dan and Jeanne Jantzi, MCC Indonesia country co-representatives; Dwi Listiyanti, representative of two Indonesian Mennonite synods, the Muria Mennonite and Javanese Mennonite synods; Ed Martin, MCC’s director of Central and Southern Asia programs; Willie Reimer, MCC director of Food, Disaster and Material Resources; and Ken Snyder, short-term MCC tsunami response consultant.