Returning to Banda Aceh, pastor sees ‘unbelievable’ destruction
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose Members of a United Methodist delegation pray during a visit to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, three weeks after the tsunami.
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United
Methodist Bishop Joel N. Martinez (second from right) prays with (from
left) the Rev. Henry Leono, pastor of St. Paul United Methodist Church
in Willingboro, N.J.; Kyung Za Yim, president of the Women�s Division;
and the Rev. R. Randy Day, top staff executive of the denomination�s
mission board. They are standing in front of the building that once
housed the first Methodist congregation, established by Leono�s brother,
in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, which was destroyed in the Dec. 26 tsunami. A
UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo #05-045. Accompanies UMNS story #035,
1/14/05, and #682, 12/7/05. |
Jan. 14, 2005 By Linda Bloom* BANDA
ACEH, Indonesia (UMNS) – As you drive along Tenku Umar, the road to
Loknga Beach, the piles of debris grow bigger and higher. Uprooted
palm trees and planks of wood, ripped from houses, are everywhere.
Mattresses, tangled metal, plastic bottles, woven baskets, pieces of
clothing and an odd assortment of household items are mired in water and
mud. The
debris – and the destruction – go on for miles. The houses left
standing, many of them uninhabitable, have varying degrees of damage.
Rice paddies, now brown and flooded with saltwater, are rendered
useless. All
this is the result of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami that, by
official count, has claimed more than 157,000 lives in the Indian Ocean
area — most of them in Indonesia. On Jan. 13, a delegation of United
Methodists and Methodists from Indonesia surveyed the damage in Banda
Aceh, one of the hardest-hit areas.
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose Two boys pick their way through debris-clogged streets in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
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Syntrudin
(right) and Ramadham pick their way through streets clogged with debris
following the Dec. 26 tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. A delegation of
mission and communications leaders of the United Methodist Church
visited areas of Sumatra, Indonesia, near the epicenter of the
earthquake that triggered the waves. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo
#05-047. Accompanies UMNS story #035, 1/14/05 |
One of the
delegation, the Rev. Henry Leono, pastor of St. Paul United Methodist
Church in Willingboro, N.J., knows the city well. A native of Kisaran,
Indonesia, he moved to Banda Aceh when he was 14 years old. His oldest
brother, Luther Leono, established the first Methodist congregation
there. Although Henry Leono left the city in 1965, he had visited it
again 10 years ago.It
is those memories – from childhood and from later visits – that make it
difficult for him to accept the devastation of Banda Aceh, even as he
sees it with his own eyes. "This is beyond my imagination," he says.
"The destruction is so unbelievable." Even
now, nearly three weeks after the tsunami, the bodies of the missing
are still being retrieved and identified. In the Blang Padang complex, a
neighborhood that includes the homes of the chief of police and the
chief of the military, three body bags lie at the side of the road while
workers pull on clean gloves and prepare new bags. A framed photograph
of a girl is tied to one of the three bags. Leono
explains that many people died in this section of town because they had
fled to one of several large fields there, seeking safety in open space
after the earthquake. "Aceh is crying tsunami," reads a sign spray-painted on a building.
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose Survivors of the Dec. 26 tsunami describe how their homes were destroyed by the waves.
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Survivors
of the Dec. 26 tsunami describe how their homes in Banda Aceh,
Indonesia, were destroyed by the massive waves. They are staying at a
center for displaced people in Medan, Indonesia. A delegation of mission
and communications leaders of the United Methodist Church visited areas
of Sumatra, Indonesia, near the epicenter of the earthquake that
triggered the waves. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo #05-053,
Accompanies UMNS story #035, 1/14/05 |
Twin-bedded rooms
stand open to the elements in a square full of hotels in the Peunayone
neighborhood. Carried by the wave, a ship has anchored itself in front
of Hotel Medan, as if its crew had checked in. The food court in the
center of the square has simply vanished.Off
the square, Leono finds the small building, now essentially destroyed,
where his brother established the first Methodist church in Banda Aceh. A
nearby bridge over the Krung Aceh River has survived, but boats are
tossed at random among the general debris along the riverbank. Leono
is thankful that his sister and brother-in-law, Ida and Yusnam Law, and
their two sons escaped the tsunami, even though their Banda Aceh home
is in ruins. They were able to drive to higher ground when they heard
the water was coming. The younger son, riding a motorcycle, abandoned it
as the water rose and sought shelter on the second floor of a home. On
Dec. 29, they flew to Medan on a military plane. Even
now, Leono says, his sister and her family are so traumatized they
cannot think of the future. "They are still very much controlled by this
event," he adds. The
Rev. Tahir Wijaya, current pastor of the Methodist Church in Banda
Aceh, is thinking of the future. His task, he says through a translator,
is to get his church building and attached school up and running as
soon as possible.
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose The Rev. Tahir Wijaya takes a break from cleanup duties at the church to recall how he survived the tsunami.
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The
Rev. Tahir Wijaya, pastor of the Methodist Church in Banda Aceh,
Indonesia, takes a break from cleanup duties at the church to recall how
he survived the Dec. 26 tsunami that devastated the area. A delegation
of mission and communications leaders of the United Methodist Church
visited areas of Sumatra, Indonesia, near the epicenter of the
earthquake that triggered the waves. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo number 05-051, Accompanies UMNS #035, 1/14/05 |
It will not be easy,
judging by the condition of the buildings and the mud-soaked,
debris-strewn yard in front, where church pews are stacked like
firewood.When
the earthquake occurred that Sunday morning, the children in the Sunday
school class ran out of the building. Wijaya made a trip around the
city, surveying the earthquake damage, while the chairman of the church
council decided that 10 a.m. worship could proceed as usual. Before
the pastor was able to return to his church, however, the tsunami came.
He survived by climbing a tree. The Sunday school students and his wife
and two-day-old daughter survived by running to the third floor of the
school building. His daughter, he says with a smile, is now named
Natalie Tsunami. Forty-five
church members, who were either in their homes or on the street, are
believed to have died, although only three of the bodies have been found
so far. Fifty church families have homes that were damaged or
destroyed. Church membership includes 150 adults, 130 Sunday school
children and 120 youth. The
wave washed a number of bodies onto the church grounds. After the water
receded, two corpses were found inside and another 27 found outside.
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose Shopkeepers salvage oil lamps from the wreckage of their store.
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Shopkeepers
salvage a few muddy oil lamps from the wreckage of their store in Banda
Aceh, Indonesia, following the Dec. 26 tsunami that devastated the
area. A delegation of mission and communications leaders of the United
Methodist Church visited areas of Sumatra, Indonesia, near the center of
the earthquake that triggered the waves. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
Photo #05-054. Accompanies UMNS story #035, 1/14/05
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Some of the 760
kindergarten through high school students who attend the Methodist
school live in that neighborhood. One positive outcome of the tsunami,
Wijaya says, is it "has enlarged our ministry to these families." He
wants the cleanup to proceed as quickly as possible "to show there is
new life."Leono
remembers this church, which was built by his brother, very well, too.
"We spent almost every night in the church as young people," he
explains. The damage bothers him almost as much as the knowledge that
some of the friends he grew up with here did not survive the tsunami. And
there is more evidence of death and destruction in other neighborhoods
around the city. In a well-to-do area near Kruncuk beach, only the
cement foundations remain where houses once stood. A local, who lost
both property and family, reports that only 200 of the 3,000 residents
in the neighborhood survived the tsunami. In
other parts of Banda Aceh, relief organizations and troops from foreign
governments have pitched tents alongside the camps for those displaced
by the tsunami. At a hangar for the Indonesian Air Force, boxes of
relief supplies are piled high as helicopters and supply planes come and
go. A few fields away, a line of men toss bags of supplies onto a U.S.
Navy helicopter that will fly to Melaboh, a city nearly destroyed by the
tsunami, as a USAID truck drives by. A
positive sign of life is the temporary relocation of the downtown
market to the outskirts of the city. Piles of fiery red chiles, long
beans, coconuts, silvery salted fish and other food essentials line the
edges of the street. And
– on this bright sunny morning after several days of rain – everyone,
from resident to relief worker, seems to be doing laundry. Drying
clothes are hung from lines stretched between trees or buildings, draped
over fences and tree branches or arranged carefully along the grassy
banks of a small stream. *Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York. News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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