ACT Dateline

Indonesia 09/06

Balm for the wounds of the tsunami

By Yudi Hartono, ACT International

Pamugaran, Indonesia, October 3, 2006--The massive waves that struck the southern coast of Indonesia's Java Island on July 17 stripped residents in the region of their homes, their belongings and their livelihoods. But it also exposed a deeper wound - the tenuous situation over their connection to the land.

Kang Bagol lost his home in the tsunami, which was triggered by an earthquake of magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter Scale. Since then, he has been living in Cikembulan, a camp for people forced from their homes, where YAKKUM Emergency Unit (YEU), a member of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, has been assisting people.

Kang accompanied me and another YEU volunteer recently as we conducted assessments in the area where the tsunami hit. On the scorching afternoon, Kang and Dina, who works with YEU's mental health activities, and I, part of YEU's community organizing program, walked from the internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp where Kang is living to Pamugaran, his home village. Along the way, he stepped on a board with a nail sticking out, lodging the nail in his foot. While Dina and I helped him and waited for medical assistance to come, our visit to Kang's village continued, and we heard the story about other wounds he and other residents of his village have endured and how they have coped.

Sitting approximately 100 meters from the shoreline, Kang's village was destroyed in the tsunami. Only a few strong buildings are still standing, and most are owned by foreigners. Before the tsunami, Kang and other 18 villagers worked for PT. Statras Pangandaran, a private company, on a nearby 5-hectare palm tree plantation as extractors (tappers) of sugar from the trees.

A tapper could work on about 40 coconut trees. Every month each worker gave approximately 2 kilograms of palm sugar to the company as payment for using the land.

Now, as Kang explained, this tract of land is in dispute. "This land by legal status is owned by the state. Sixteen households were allowed to settle on the land, counting my family. The village apparatus also gave authorization to the people to stay. Whenever there were troubles, the apparatus would be responsible to solve them."

Pointing toward another place on the side of the area where he used to live with his neighbors, Kang said, "The land on that side is also owned by the state. We once cleared the land because it looked uncultivated. Then people started planting crops like peanuts and others. When they obtained the first harvest, a man from city claimed the land and produced the certificate.

"We have the evidence that we always occupied the disputed land. Look at those coconut trees at the end," Kang said, motioning to several trees an average of two meters tall. "We had planted them before the man from the city claimed the land.

"We are confused with the land issue. We had applied for the land certificate claiming the area long before the man from the city arrived. We waited, and we didn't get the approval for a long time, while this man got the certificate approval immediately," he continued.

Kang and the other tappers began the process of obtaining a title to the land three years ago, even going up to higher levels of the government. But before the process could be completed, the tsunami hit, leaving the question of ownership unresolved.

One time another man wanting part of the land approached the tappers and offered them each one million Indonesian rupiah (US$108) for a half hectare. Everybody rejected the offer because the compensation wasn't sufficient for the land and their houses. According to Kang, the villagers were reluctant to leave the place where they carried out their daily routines and worked as tappers. And they relied on their sole income from the palm trees.

According to YEU, more than 67 percent of the families living in the Cikembulan IDP camp have no definite status on land ownership, and almost 69 percent of those living there have no certainty about their income.

These disputes over the land have left Kang disenchanted. During the chaotic political situation in the 1960s, his family had migrated from Kebumen in Central Java to this area to start a better life. With the additional physical devastation the tsunami wrought on the land where he lived, one would expect Kang to feel defeated. But he has tried to find the meaning in it. "This calamity was God's will. It could happen anywhere on earth. We should not be afraid of it. There must be a grand message behind it," he said.

A few months ago, IDPs in the camp where YEU has been working began to say that they were feeling bored from the lack of activities in the camp. Most of them had been tappers and had lost their livelihoods in the tsunami. In mid-August, YEU provided a group of tappers with 19 pans for cooking sugar palm so they could resume their work. This has allowed them to earn money again, to occupy themselves with productive activities and to forget the trauma of the tsunami for a while.

Kang's injury from the nail was obviously painful, but he showed toughness in dealing with the pain, a reflection of how he has dealt with the other challenges he has faced in recent years. And when he was taken to the nearby community health center to receive a tetanus injection for his foot, he joked, "This is the reality of a man living in misery."

On their way back to the camp, Kang continued joking. His tenacity and his humor, although sometimes dark, is his way of coping and a balm for the wounds he has received.

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Yudi Hartono volunteers for the community organizing program of YAKKUM Emergency Unit, a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.

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ACT is a global alliance of churches and related agencies working to save lives and support communities in emergencies worldwide. The ACT Coordinating Office is based with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Switzerland.