Music, Islam, and Disasters in Indonesia, Winter Term 2014: The Boat that Fell from the Sky

Alex Frank, Tsunami learning, 12.01.14

It sometimes is hard to tell exactly when a miracle has occurred. I think when I looked up at a 50-foot boat perched on top of a rundown two-story house that I began to get a feeling.

The 2004 Tsunami never really felt real to me until I walked through the dripping dark hallway of the Tsunami Museum in Banda Aceh. The sleek black walls represented the actual height of the wave, and the darkness gave me an eerie and uncomfortable feeling as I descended further into the exhibit. Truly the wave must have been a terrifying sight.

For many in Indonesia, the Tsunami was an act of God - a truly powerful force which reminded those who survived it that life was always held in Allah's hand and that it could be taken at any moment. We had a guide when we went to see that boat on top of the house, which landed miles from shore. The guide spoke in Indonesian and so I heard the translated tale from Mbak Jeni of this particular corner of the disaster. The town he lived in had 75% of its population lost in the tsunami, changing from 6000 to 1500 people. He told his personal account of his lost son and how 59 people had been saved in one particular room in a small two-story building. He described this house, along with the few others that survived the Tsunami, as "spared."

Next door to this house the 50-foot boat commanded a lot of attention. The boat, after it landed, had saved over 30 people from the disaster. At this moment I began to piece together a perspective of how I thought our guide had seen this disaster. In the midsts of water levels rising well above the first floor of any building left standing, a boat coming and getting stranded safely right across the street from your house could hardly be seen as anything less than entirely incredible. Out of any of the debris that wave could have carried onto that building it carried a boat, the one vessel that humans have used for thousands of years to brave the water. Maybe this is just a romanticized viewpoint that stemmed from a rather jarring day learning about the Tsunami, but I like to think I glimpsed a small window into how people can cope with such devastating phenomenons.