For tsunami orphans, life goes on

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The 2004 tsunami obliterated Pipit's village, wiped out her family, and swept her through churning waters, cascading debris, and hurtling bodies.

On her first night as an orphan, at age 13, she slept next to a row of corpses.

Five years later, she still has moments of sadness, especially during holidays. But like many of Indonesia's more than 5,200 known tsunami orphans, she is making a life for herself. She has enrolled in college, plays the violin, and plans to tackle German.

"Most of the time, I don't think about the tsunami," said Pipit, who lives in a comfortable orphanage in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province and close to the epicenter of the earthquake that unleashed one of the worst natural disasters in history.

"I'm trying to be strong," said Pipit, who like many Indonesians uses one name.

The Dec. 26, 2004, quake registered at least 9.1 on the Richter scale and unleashed towering waves that leveled communities from Indonesia to Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. About 230,000 people died, more than half in Aceh on the island of Sumatra.

More than $13 billion in donations poured in from around the world, nearly half for Aceh. In some Indonesian communities, only the mosque was left standing. They have been rebuilt. Destroyed homes have been replaced by sturdier ones, new schools have gone up, and freshly paved roads crisscross the region.

Banda Aceh has few visible reminders of the tsunami today, with one glaring exception: a 5,000-ton ship that was hurled into a residential neighborhood roughly one mile inland. It has become a tourist attraction.

The emotional recovery of the orphans has not been as complete. Some struggle with loneliness and anger, and flounder in school.

Arif Munandar, 8, lives in a picturesque neighborhood, at the water's edge and ringed by mountains, that has been completely restored with help from international and Indonesian donors.

He lost his parents and two sisters in the tsunami and was adopted by his mother's sister, Jamilah. They live in a family compound teeming with aunts, uncles, and cousins who share three adjacent houses.

Arif has trouble concentrating at school and often gets into scuffles. Jamilah tries to teach him about the Quran, but he doesn't want to listen. "I don't know what to do," she said.

In the immediate aftermath, Arif cried all the time for his mother. It took his aunt a month to work up the courage to tell him that his parents were dead.

At his school, rebuilt by Plan International, a British-based nonprofit, 80 percent of the children lost a family member in the tsunami, and about a quarter lost a parent.

"Five years later, they've almost forgotten it happened," said Nurhayati, the vice principal. "They look cheerful again."

Only a handful, she said, are still clearly haunted by it, including Arif.

"He's a loner," Nurhayati said. "He daydreams a lot."

The count of 5,200 orphans may seem low, given that more than 100,000 people died in Aceh. That's partly because so many children died, and partly because many were taken in by family and left out of the official statistics.

Most seem to be coping well, said Justin Curry, psychosocial technical adviser for the American Red Cross tsunami-recovery program. "The great thing about kids is that they are resilient," he said. "They can handle a tremendous amount."

Many of Aceh's children already suffered emotional scars from the province's 30-year war of independence, which orphaned many before the two sides agreed to lay down their arms after the tsunami.

In some ways, coping with the fallout of war helped Aceh deal with the tsunami aftermath, said Peter La Raus, Save the Children's chief in Banda Aceh. People had already developed extensive family and social networks to help them deal with hardship, he said.

On the other hand, the tsunami was a new trauma layered over that of war, said Curry, of the Red Cross.

"You had a population that was living in a chronically stressful situation," he said, "and then another major stressor occurred."

On Dec. 26, 2004, a massive undersea quake off Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 in 14 Asian and African countries.

The quake:

The hardest-hit countries:

Indonesia

Sri Lanka

India

Thailand

SOURCES: United Nations; Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand governments.

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