Five Years After the Wave… What is recovery?

Do you remember the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami?

I have spent the past 10 days in Meulaboh, a small town in the Indonesian province of Aceh. Five years post-tsunami, I’ve come here to work on a multimedia project with my boyfriend, James, who came here as a photojournalist one week after the 2004 tsunami. Meulaboh was devastated by the tsunami — an estimated 40,000 people were killed, in a town with less than 150,000 (these numbers are rough, as it is difficult to find firm figures).

We’ve come here to visit a few people James met and photographed one week post-tsunami, and then again in late 2005. We have spent time speaking with them, interviewing them, and photographing them in the hopes of understanding how life moves forward after losing so much — family, friends, houses, jobs. What changes in daily life? What changes in your heart?

We’ve also documented Meulaboh as a town. I find that physically, the town seems to reflect the community’s progress in attempting to heal, or recover to a certain degree. The streets are alive with coffee shops, motorbikes, wandering goats, and kids riding bikes. Many small houses and shops have been rebuilt. But the skeletons of half-destroyed houses remain here and there, and much of the land near the ocean is no longer suitable for housing. The people are friendly and open, but the memories of the tsunami remain close to the surface.

There are scenes like this:

(Meulaboh fashion show)

…and scenes like this:

The contrasts are telling, but I think they are also inevitable.

I will let you all know when the audio-visual slideshow is completed, so you can hear and see the stories.

Tagged as: heal, Indonesia, interview, loss, Meulaboh, multimedia, photography, recovery, tsunami