Tsunami Stories and Places Nine Years On

The tsunami that struck Banda Aceh on Sunday, December 26, 2004 devastated the city, destroying buildings, changing coastlines, and killing an estimated 60,000 people. Nine years on and its repercussions are very much palpable in the rhythms of the place, manifest in the physical landscape with stranded ships and mass graves scattered around the town. But in a city where many residents lost family, friends, and neighbors to the disasters, the trauma of the disaster is embedded in the psyche of the place. Today we visited some of the “Tsunami Tourism Track” sites, including the Tsunami Museum and the Ship on the Roof in Lampulo, but while the sites offer a visceral engagement with the aftermath (e.g. standing on the second floor of a house where the water level rose to one’s neck), it’s the personal stories that people have to share that dig so much deeper. And many people have a story to tell. A woman I met on a ferry had just moved to Weh, an island off the coast of Banda Aceh, just a month before the tsunami but she lost her parents and siblings. One of our drivers lost extended family. Our guide at the Ship on the Roof saved a 5-year old child, but lost his own 15-year old son.

It is not just the stories that people tell that interest me in the anthropology of disasters but also how they rationalize, internalize, and learn to live with the consequences of a given disaster. Arriving shortly after the 9-year anniversary, I’ve seen a number of billboards up around town marking the occasion. Some encourage disaster preparedness. Others suggest that the tsunami serves as a reminder of the supremacy of God or a medium to strengthen the Islamic community. When I asked the guide why such sites were maintained, why the ship had not been removed, he stated that the sites are kept as a reminder of the omnipresence and strength of God. He believed that in return for helping a young child to safety his own wife and two of his children were spared, that buildings were spared if they offered refuge to people. And while things ultimately remain in the hands of God, after the 2004 tsunami people are thinking about disaster preparedness in a new way. School children now visit the Tsunami Museum and learn the tell tale signs in school. But what the guide and government officials hope is that people wait for the tell tale signs that come from nature—the shrinking sea along with birds and livestock heading inland to the mountains—before they panic and might get hurt in the rush to get out of town. But I imagine it would be hard not to panic having lived through the trauma of one tsunami.