- The tsunami leaves behind astounding destruction. Areas closest to the water are wiped away, the debris shoved yards and even miles inland. In the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, 33-foot waves dump boats in city streets. A city’s possessions are strewn everywhere, wrapped around trees, piled into giant heaps. Debris entwines with corpses in a haunting tableau of apocalyptic destruction. Clean-up likely will take years.
Syaridan Mohammad wears a blue facemask strapped on his head as he walks down a street next to a waterlogged playground in ravaged Banda Aceh.
A child’s corpse, pulled from the playground, lies on the roadside, waiting for government workers to retrieve it. A white, plastic sheet covers half the body.
It’s the kind of gruesome scenes that Mohammad sees as part of his job on a clean-up crew in the worst-hit city of the worst natural disaster in history.
Mohammad, 22, leads a group of 35 men for the city’s Department of Pekerjaan Umum, which pays people $35,000 Rhupia a day — roughly $4 — to clean up.
They wear yellow, long-sleeved T-shirts shirts and white masks and carry brooms, shovels and wicker baskets for their 8 a.m.-to-5 p.m. jobs. It’s one of a number of programs to get people working again.
“Yeah, it’s hard,” says Mohammad through an interpreter. “But working here, I don’t think about the others. I just try to make myself busy.”
Mohammad’s brother died in the tsunami, and he lost his home. He lives in a camp with dozens of other homeless people. It’s the same with all his crew. They were fishermen who are now afraid of the sea.
Mohammad was on the boat docked in a Banda Aceh harbor when the wave hit. He scrambled off the boat and clung to a tree.
The deckhand says he’ll never return to the sea, even though it’s the only job he knows. He’s been a fisherman since he was 12 years old.
Few boats survived along the northern Sumatran coast. United Nations estimates say that 70 percent of northern Sumatra’s fishing industry is destroyed. There are other hurdles: People won’t eat seafood, believing the fish are feeding on eating the dead
Western aid groups are trying to get fishermen and others back to their professions. U.S.-based Mercy Corps started a cash-for-work program to pay fishermen in Meulaboh to retrieve and refurbish the Sumatran village’s few remaining boats.
The Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit is paying men to clean up their villages, restart brick-making businesses or begin other niche businesses. In one village, wooden debris found on the ground is being turned into pallets that are then sold to aid groups for their warehouses.
“This place will bounce back,” says Dan Curran of Littleton, one of Mercy Corps leaders in Banda Aceh. “Most people think the fishermen will go back. It’s just going to take time.”
But ask Mohammad whether he’ll return and he shakes his head, stares at the ground.
He prefers working on the mainland, clearing streets, shoveling muck, uncovering bodies.
“I’m just trying to help,” he says.
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