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On December 26, 2004 a massive tsunami caused devastation along the coasts of 10 countries on the Indian Ocean.
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Grieving the Losses
January 11, 2005 Jeanne and Dan Jantzi flew to Medan in North Sumatra on Jan. 5 for meetings with MCC partners and then on to Banda Aceh on Jan. 6. These are excerpts from an e-mail to family and friends that the Jantzis invited MCC to share more widely. Do you ever feel nervous going to calling hours of a funeral, knowing what it will be like to be with mourning people and wondering what you will say or should not say? Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands in Banda Aceh. One out of every four people in Banda Aceh has lost at least one family member. And reflect on how we usually deal with grief. We turn to our faith and we turn to the people around us for support. But what happens if everyone around you is also grieving the loss of multiple family members and lost their homes and trying to cope with an unbelievably traumatic event? In Aceh, people are not even saying the normal words of sympathy or condolence to each other. It is too much, and everyone is experiencing the same overwhelming losses. The thing that struck us was the utter desolation of the earth. Even six kilometers away from the ocean, every living thing that the salt water touched had turned to dusty brown. Nearer to the sparkling blue ocean, outside the main part of the city, the landscape which once was filled with houses was completely flattened. As far as we could see in all directions, there was destruction. We only saw two or three people picking through the rubble, silently looking for the bodies of their family members. Most people we talked to in the camps are just numb. They sit without any energy to rebuild or to do anything. You have probably been with people who have lost a family members in an unexpected accident. Imagine an entire bustling population in that state of shock. People are also paralyzed by fear. There are still several earthquakes a day. Each time, people run outside. Even the families who still have homes are afraid to sleep inside. They fear another tsunami. The fisherfolk are not returning to the sea for their livelihoods. They are afraid of what the sea can do. While I went to a U.N. meeting, Dan continued on to visit a mass grave. He saw one trench already filled with over 2,000 bodies. A new trench held about 200. Trucks were coming up piled with body bags. The Indonesian Red Cross volunteers had the horrendous task of unloading the bodies. Eleven days after the earthquake and tsunami, the smell was unbearable. By that point, identification was impossible. The bodies were bloated beyond recognition and most had the clothing ripped off by the wave. The volunteers kept having to jump off the truck to run behind a pile of dirt to vomit. As soon as one would jump down, another would jump onto the truck to take his place. Dan talked with the man keeping the tally of how many buried and how many of the bags were child-sized. He said he had been at it for two days. Very long days. The numbers of dead are overwhelming, but so are the numbers of the living who are homeless. Many are in camps. Thousands of others have moved in to stay with family members in unaffected areas. Still others have flown to Medan or Jakarta to get away from the scenes of destruction completely. A time will probably come when volunteers are needed for reconstruction, but right now, the focus is on attending to the immediate needs of the survivors. We stayed with the team of one of our MCC partners, the emergency unit of the association of Christian hospitals in Central Java (YEU). We were impressed by the commitment of these people to care for other people just because they are God's creation. The team arrived just two days after the earthquake. They set up in tarp tents near the airport, but had just moved a bit closer to the city in a public health clinic building. After the earthquake and tsunami, the clinic filled up with over 40 dead bodies. The YEU team hired people to carry away the bodies and spent their first day scrubbing up the place. Then they brought in their mats, and that's where they all are eating, planning, and sleeping on the floor. We stayed with them there, with eight to 10 of us sleeping on kapok mats on the floor. These folks were running on sheer adrenalin and cups of coffee. They would work until 2 or 3 a.m. and then drop to sleep just long enough to get the energy to work again. Acehnese student volunteers were up in the middle of the night making banners to help people find missing family members, medical doctors staying up to write reports, an accountant staying up to keep the books straight... YEU team members meet each evening by 8 or 9 o'clock to share what they have learned over the day and to make adjustments in what they are doing. They operate a mobile clinic in six refugee camps serving about 7,000 people. They became concerned about people still searching for family members, but who don't have transportation or money to pay for transportation to other camps around the city to check if someone might still be alive. So the team's new plan adjustment is to rent four taxi- trucks (labi-labi) to offer free transport for these searches. The team is also very concerned about the trauma of these people. The survivors are camped out in the hills overlooking the beaches where their homes once stood. To us, it was a humbling opportunity to go to the camps in Lamreh and Kreung Raya and to be able to sit with people under their tarp tents and listen to their stories of grief. Each person has a story and each person needs to talk so much to someone who has the time to sit and listen carefully. I met Ibu Efi, whose 3-year-old has a fever. Her home was washed away, but she and her husband and child survived. In the camp, she doesn't know anyone else to cry with her. She told me of the trauma of her experience. She was on her knees mopping up water that had spilled from her water dispenser during the earthquake when she heard people yelling, "Air naik!" (The water is rising!). She grabbed a cloth from the table to sling up her child and began running. She heard the roar of the water and ran up to a neighbor with a car and begged him to let her in. As she climbed in, she turned and saw an old neighbor woman trying to run to catch up to the car. The neighbor could not run fast because she wore the traditional sarong that does not allow big steps. Ibu Efi's trauma is remembering the sight of this older woman being swept away.
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