After the Wave

The first time I visited Aceh was in February 2005, just six weeks after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. I expected to see the devastation left by the great wave. Instead, what first struck me was the earthquake itself. 

Crumbled buildings stretched in every direction, silent reminders that one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history had struck before the sea came ashore. Today, it is difficult to imagine that anything so terrible ever happened in Banda Aceh.

At that time, Banda Aceh felt like a forgotten frontier. There wasn’t a single hotel with hot water. Roads were narrow, broken, and riddled with potholes. Rubble still lay in great heaps across the city. Beyond the physical destruction, however, the city seemed frozen in another era.

For thirty years Aceh had been the site of a bitter civil war that few people outside Indonesia even knew existed. Foreigners were barred from entering, and Indonesians from other parts of the country could scarcely travel there either. The tsunami changed all of that overnight.

Aid workers from around the world poured into Aceh, bringing an unprecedented outpouring of compassion and resources. One representative from a humanitarian organization told us that his agency alone had fifty million dollars to invest in recovery. Years later, many organizations still had funds remaining, in addition to the billions contributed by governments through international relief efforts.

The transformation was remarkable. Everyone we spoke with said life was better than before the disaster. The war had ended—an unexpected blessing born from unspeakable tragedy. Construction was everywhere. New homes, ports, roads, schools, and factories were rising across the province. My hotel was brand new, the staff were well trained, and they took genuine pride in serving their guests. The economy was recovering with surprising speed.

Just as important were the investments in people. Children were being vaccinated. Programs to improve the health of mothers and young children were underway throughout the province. Schools were reopening, and the government was investing heavily in education. Hope had returned alongside reconstruction.

Yet about one hundred kilometers from Banda Aceh, we visited a small village in the sub-district of Batee near Sigli, on the shore of the Indian Ocean. Before the tsunami, it was almost impossible to reach. Surrounded by a maze of shrimp and fish ponds, the village was effectively isolated from the rest of the province.

Life there had always been difficult. Families depended almost entirely on shrimp and fish ponds enclosed by earthen dikes. Using simple water gates, they managed the flow of fresh water from nearby rivers, stocked the ponds with shrimp or fish, and harvested them by draining the ponds. There was little access to inland markets, relentless heat, clouds of mosquitoes, and few opportunities beyond daily survival. These were among the poorest people in Aceh.

The ponds stretched for miles along the coast. When the tsunami arrived, the wave—nearly thirty meters high at this point—swept over everything with unimaginable force. The dikes collapsed, the ponds filled with mud, and entire families disappeared. Some were buried where they lived or worked; others were carried back to sea. The landscape was flattened, and with it, much of the community’s history.

World Relief built a three-kilometer road into the village, making access possible for the first time. They constructed a school, built forty-six homes there and another 170 in an even more isolated village nearby, and restored 160 hectares of fish and shrimp ponds. I was proud of the assessment team that found these forgotten communities and made sure they were not overlooked.

Yet despite all that had been accomplished, life remained hard. Poverty still marked every household. Before entering the village, we were asked not to speak with the residents because of local religious sensitivities. We could take photographs discreetly, but conversation was discouraged.

The women, dressed in long skirts and head coverings in keeping with their Islamic faith, stood neck-deep in the muddy river searching for shrimp and crabs with simple hand tools. The men watched us quietly from the shade of their homes. I wanted to speak with them.

Their hearts, too, must have been filled with mud—the buried memories of loved ones swept away, the terror of that terrible morning, and the lingering fear that every peaceful sea might one day turn violent again. It felt strangely incomplete to photograph their new homes and leave without exchanging even a few words.

As we drove away, I remembered a shopkeeper in Banda Aceh telling me that the water had reached the second floor of his store.

“How long did it stay that high?” I had asked.

“About fifteen minutes,” he replied. “Then it rushed back to the ocean.”

As we turned toward our hotel, we looked once more across the Indian Ocean. The water shimmered a brilliant blue beneath the afternoon sun. Palm trees swayed gently in the breeze. White surf rolled quietly onto the dark sand. Everything appeared peaceful, almost idyllic.

How could something so calm become such a monster?

Billions of dollars in aid testify to the extraordinary compassion people are capable of showing when tragedy strikes. I remain grateful for the small part I was privileged to play in that story.

My thoughts drifted to another journey several years earlier. In October 2001, only one month after the attacks of September 11, six of us visited three groups of pastors in the Republic of Congo. Before we could say a word, every group asked us exactly the same question:

“How are you Americans doing?”

Those words, spoken by people who themselves possessed so little, have stayed with me ever since. Their concern crossed every cultural and economic boundary. As we left Batee that day, I found myself wishing I could have asked its people the very same question.

“How are you doing?”