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For the displaced, only memories fill idle days

The 400 survivors of Ujong Muloh have few supplies and even fewer ways to pass the time. They spend days replaying the tsunami and worrying about what's next.

By VANESSA GEZARI
Published January 16, 2005

	[Times photos: John Pendygraft]
	Khairul Saleh, 3, is treated for severe dehydration Wednesday in Lamno, Indonesia, with his sister, Lilis Swarni, 4, by his side.
	Murtaza Hasan, 22, looks into a broken mirror while he trims his beard Wednesday. Hasan and other survivors from the destroyed Indonesian village of Ujong Muloh are staying at a camp in nearby Lamno.
	Akbar Azhar, 12, drinks his share of coconut milk Wednesday in the ruins of Ujong Muloh, Indonesia. Tsunami survivors in some remote areas depend on the coconut for sustenance.
	Retired fisherman Budiman Fakeh, 55, reads from the Koran on Wednesday during afternoon prayers at the survivor camp in Lamno, Indonesia.

UJONG MULOH, Indonesia - Not a single structure stands in this tiny seaside village.

Its people, who once savored a life of simple comforts, have fled to a schoolroom camp in a nearby town. There, for a few minutes at a time, the village women drift into light conversation. Then one abruptly begins to cry, reminding the others why they are there. A small boy, newly orphaned, crawls under a table and covers his eyes.

On Dec. 26, water roared through Ujong Muloh, on the west coast of the island of Sumatra. It sliced palm trees in half and swept away the schools and the outdoor market where the fishermen sold the day's catch. It washed away the mosque and the seaside prayer chapel and nine of the imam's relatives. It claimed 21 of the 25 players on the village's championship soccer team.

There used to be 1,100 villagers. About 400 are left.

The tsunami killed more than 100,000 people in Indonesia. In Ujong Muloh, the devastation is measured in ones and twos, dozens and scores.

Now, the villagers pray for patience. They struggle to understand what happened to Ujong Muloh, and why. Three weeks after the tsunami, they are paralyzed, caught between memories of an unimaginable event and the bleak reality it imposed.

The hours pass slowly in the camp. About 2,300 people from 10 ruined villages live here. They eat plain rice or noodles twice a day, provided by the Indonesian government and various aid groups. Sometimes they pool their money to buy a bit of dried fish or vegetables for soup. There is little milk for the children, and the eggs in the market cost more than they can afford.

"In the name of God, the most merciful and the most compassionate," they sing in Arabic, kneeling on the floor of a school that has been turned into a homeless camp in the inland town of Lamno.

They sleep side by side in this single large room, beneath shelves heavy with biology books and copies of the Koran.

"I am no longer the leader of a village," said Armia Sulaiman, the village chief, a soft-featured man with bloodshot eyes who shakes his head as he listens to the villagers' stories. "I am the leader of a camp now."

Some, like Sulaiman, go regularly to the village to look at what is left. It is about 2 miles away, down a road that slopes toward what used to be the harbor and winds between flattened settlements littered with debris.

Ujong Muloh was one of scores of villages strung along this sandy, green coastline. Most of its men fished for a living, and the people of Lamno drove to buy fish from its open-air dockside market.

Buses stopped there on the way up and down the coast. People got out to buy fruit and drink strong coffee in the outdoor cafe in the bazaar.

The village had a champion soccer team, the best in the district. In the schoolroom in Lamno, Wardani Abbas, a goalkeeper, still wears the team's blue and white jersey.

"This T-shirt is a memory of my team," said Abbas, a thin, sad-eyed man of 28 who lost his mother and son along with most of his teammates. "It makes me more powerful."

In the soccer field across the street from the camp, military helicopters from the United States, Malaysia and Singapore drop food and supplies. On a recent afternoon, some boys kicked a ball around. Abbas did not join them.

"We can't play football now," he said. "I have no time to think about sport."

He thinks instead about his house, his family, his future. He has no idea what to do next. Neither does anyone else.

At the camp, there is only one toilet, and it is broken. The tsunami poisoned the sweet seaside wells, and sewage is seeping into the clear mountain streams where people do their washing. The aid group Doctors Without Borders brings 70 cubic feet of mountain water to the camp every day, adding chlorine to stave off infection. But if the water is too heavily chlorinated, aid workers fear the villagers will drink polluted well water instead.

Some villagers have left the camp to visit relatives; some are staying with friends nearby. For those who remain, the days are a patchwork of tears and boredom.

Men lean listlessly against the walls or stretch out and fall asleep on the floor in the middle of the afternoon.

The villagers say they want to move back and start over. They don't mind the fresh graves scattered around or the way the salt poisoned the soil. Ilyas Ismail, a fisherman who lost all five of his children, believes the town is haunted. He says they have no choice.

"If the government moves us to another place, we won't know how to survive," he said. "We feel a connection through these graves to our family and to what happened."

They need everything: new fishing boats and rice paddies, new houses, shops, taxis and wells. The men need new wives, the widows need husbands. Parents must learn to live without their children. The villagers have little faith in the government. They hope the rest of the world will provide for them.

"All the families that have two or three people still living should gather together as one family, and maybe they will be able to start a new life," Sulaiman said. "Maybe they will forget what happened."

As the village chief, he bears the brunt of the trauma. He is a small, direct man of 50 in a pinstripe shirt and a black velvet fez who led most of his relatives to safety when the wave struck. But he couldn't save the rest of his people.

He walks around the camp purposefully, but there is little he can do. He has to wait for some of the money he keeps hearing about, raised through donations in rich countries far away, to reach his small village. Sometimes, he mutters the numbers to himself: There were 1,100 people; 400 are left.

Soon, the children of Lamno will return to their lessons, and the people living in the school will have to move. They don't know where, or whether the villages will hold together. The Indonesian government has talked about settling displaced people in specially built camps for at least a year and a half. Officials have not yet said whether they will rebuild ruined coastal villages in place or move them.

Ask Sulaiman if he would choose to return to Ujong Muloh, and he answers with a question.

"Will the tsunami come again?" he asks. "Do you know what the scientists say?"

Kneeling on a pale gold rug in the school room, he prays for guidance. Budiman Fakeh, a leathery retired fisherman of 55 who lost a daughter, two sons, his wife and four grandchildren, sits nearby, reading the Koran.

"When I saw what happened on that day, I remembered the day of judgment," Fakeh said. "Allah gave me a chance to correct my mistakes. We still have an opportunity."

Muhammad Ali still sees everything as it was that day: The men are still drinking sweet, strong coffee and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. The fishing boats are at sea and the prayer call rings from the white mosque at the foot of the hill. Ali's wife still stands in the lane with their newborn baby in her arms. Once more, the earth shakes. Once more, his son and daughter cry from the kitchen: "The water is coming!"

The water took Ali's whole family: his wife, three children and his mother- and father-in-law.

Ali walks carefully through the village, picking his way between downed trees and ruined houses. The people of Ujong Muloh buried the dead where they lay. The sea took most of the bodies.

"I am the only one left," said Ali, a muscular man with thick brown hair and harrowed eyes. "I am alone now."

After the water tore his infant daughter from his arms, after it spun him and washed him a half mile down the coast, Ali began to pray. In the hospital, he promised God he would never sin again. His sins before weren't big ones: He didn't commit adultery or gamble or steal. Maybe he forgot to say his prayers a few times.

"I always prayed to God, "Before you kill me, forgive all my guilt,"' Ali said.

Now, he pleads for forgiveness. If he is forgiven, he thinks, death can't be far off.

Vanessa Gezari can be reached at 727 893-8803 or vgezari@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 16, 2005, 00:34:19]