When the earthquake struck, the 106-year old Mbah Dullah was in her bathroom.

The quake, which measured 6.2 on the Richter scale, destroyed her house. She was trapped in the ruins of her bathroom, but that did not deter this determined elderly woman.

Mbah Dullah crawled through the wreckage, and luckily escaped the disaster without sustaining any major injuries. That was on May 27 of last year, and the quake devastated the city of Yogyakarta on the island of Java, killing more than 5,000 people.

Muslim Aid spent £100,000 on emergency relief for the survivors of the earthquake, which also left as many as 200,000 people homeless. Mbah Dullah was one of those people. Lucky for her, she did not sustain any major injuries, but spent many weeks sleeping under a tree.

That was when Muslim Aid came to her assistance, and Mbah now lives with her niece, Mbah Murah. Her favorite pastime is sitting in her armchair, watching the children of her neighborhood playing, something she notes wistfully that she never managed to enjoy herself when she was growing up.

Mbah Dullah survived the traumatic times of the Dutch colonial era, the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, and the Indonesian independence movement. Born in Pandak, Bantul, Yogakarta Province in 1900, she was sadly orphaned as a child.

And then she faced another challenge. Her eyesight started to fade. That was when Muslim Aid sent an optician to examine her eyes. Glasses were diagnosed, which were beyond Mbah Dullah's means. The international relief agency stepped in, and also bought her glasses.

"I am extremely grateful for the work that Muslim Aid has done for me," said Mbah Dullah. "I wish all the staff at Muslim Aid an eternal and joyful life, in abundance of Allah's mercy."

From a very early age, hard work was always the focal point to her survival. She was a harvest laborer in the rice fields at one time, and a batik painter at another time.

"Muslim Aid is committed to saving lives, bringing back hope and restoring livelihoods of those that were lost," said Fadlullah Wilmot, country director of Muslim Aid Indonesia. "At Muslim Aid, we strive to take away the tears and bring back the smiles in our fight to give everyone a fair chance to life. Here is a journey of a woman to whom Muslim Aid has worked with in an appeal for a better life, a woman of great strength and determination."

Mbah Dullah adopted a son who gave her three grandchildren, but since his death she sadly still knows nothing of their whereabouts. But she remains eternally optimistic that they survived the quake, and that she will meet them again one day.

(ENDS)

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