TWO YEARS LATER, THE TSUNAMI'S
DESTRUCTION STILL LINGERS....

With the second year Tsunami commemoration fast approaching, the vast reconstruction and rebuilding effort continues in the Indonesian province of Aceh. With a fully staffed field office established in Banda Aceh for the last twelve months, Operation USA has provided support and assistance to nine partner groups – both local and international. To date , approximately 15,447 men, women and children have benefited from our Tsunami Assistance Program in Aceh, through the implementation of sixteen individual projects that have been as varied and far-reaching as they have been life-changing and quite literally colorful.

 Bright pink-fenced playgrounds dot the recovering coastal neighborhoods of Banda Aceh while children’s singing and laughter can be heard from a nearby children’s recreation center. The center and the construction of twelve playgrounds are part of OpUSA’s child protection program where children are provided with a safe and secure environment to play in after school while their neighborhoods and homes are being rebuilt.

No less than twenty-five percent of Aceh’s population lost their livelihood on 26 December, 2004. Finding a way to assist tsunami survivors re-establish a source of income through vocational training has been an important component of OpUSA ’s livelihood regeneration projects. Elderly women in Banda Aceh left as the sole surviving guardians of their grandchildren have had no other means to generate an income but to roam the forests collecting rattan that they then sell to local handicraft manufacturers. OpUSA has helped replace this back-breaking work with an alternative way to make a living. Through the provision of training and start-up supplies, these grandmothers now make handicrafts that are sold to shops throughout Banda Aceh. OpUSA has also supported the creation of a vocational training center that offers sewing classes and English and computer literacy classes for girls and young adults.

 Over the last year, OpUSA has also continued to successfully support income regeneration and revitalization for men and women who were widowed in the disaster. Small business grants have been distributed to forty-eight men who lost their wives and children in the tragedy.

The tremendous challenge of recovery still remains two years later. With the attention of the majority of NGOs in Aceh focused on the physical reconstruction effort, there are those forgotten tsunami survivors who are struggling to get their basic needs met.  Earlier this month, a leading international agency warned that more than 25,000 people still remain homeless in Aceh living in squalid and unsanitary conditions in temporary barracks. These people are the poorest Acehnese - renters and women – who are still facing uncertainty over when and where they will receive new housing. At the end of November, OpUSA visited one of the temporary barracks along the west coast of  Aceh where close to 800 people were living in unhygienic and cramped conditions and who are dependent on rainwater as their only source of clean drinking water. Located considerable distance from the main town, the camp population’s only access to healthcare is OpUSA’s clinic that was established to serve the 120 households predominantly headed by women.

In addition to establishing temporary healthcare services for the displaced populations living in the barracks, the task of re-establishing permanent health care services in Aceh in the aftermath of the tsunami was and is a formidable one. Along Aceh’s west coast, OpUSA has supported the reconstruction of a rural maternity health post which will restore vital maternal child health care services to those more remote communities. In addition to supporting the reconstruction efforts to physically rebuild health facilities (7 of them to date), OpUSA has recognized the need to revitalize the maternal child health services in Aceh through training and capacity building of those midwives and community health workers who survived the tsunami as well as those newly placed health staff that may lack the capacity to deal with the tremendous challenges of recovery.