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April 9, 2007 • VOL. 45, NO. 7 • Oakland, CA
CRS is key builder of homes in Aceh
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| Fajrin and Jefrin plant mangrove seedlings
in the tidal zone on the west coast of the Indonesian island of Nias
March 11. CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey |
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| Two young boys help Caritas
Indonesia build a home on the Indonesian island of Nias. Catholic
Relief Services is assisting with the construction for survivors of
the 2004 tsunami and 2005 earthquake. CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey |
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| A woman sweeps the porch
of a home built for her family by Catholic Relief Services near the
tsunami-ravaged city of Meulaboh on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey |
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| A woman in Kampung Kramat lays
out cement blocks to dry for use in building homes in the Aceh region
for tens of thousands of tsunami survivors. The blocks are used
to preserve wood. |
BANDA ACEH,
Indonesia (CNS) -- Ever since the tsunami took away her house and 4-year
old son, Suharni has felt that her whole life was washed away. Yet now
she says she is counting the days until she moves into a new home being
built by a U.S. Catholic agency.
In May she’ll abandon the cramped temporary barracks where she has
lived for two years and, clutching a baby born since the giant waves swept
over the low-lying shores of Indonesia’s Aceh province in December
2004, she will return to her seaside village of Suak Sevmaseh.
“Even though my new house will be exactly where my old house sat,
it feels like a completely new place, a new start for our family, a new
life for all of us,” she said.
Suharni, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, will be going home
not just to a new house -- built by the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief
Services -- but also to a political landscape that has changed just as
radically. Before the tsunami, a three-decade civil war raged throughout
the province, pitting separatist insurgents against a central government
that wanted at whatever cost to retain control of the resource-rich Aceh
region.
No end to the intractable conflict was in sight until the tsunami washed
away old tensions and pushed Aceh into a new opportunity to end the war
and rebuild at the same time.
According to Church relief officials in Aceh, people cannot rebuild without
peace.
“The only way Aceh is going to advance is if it’s reconstructed,
but that can only happen if there’s peace. If peace unravels, then
there goes reconstruction, there goes the future of Aceh,” said
Scott Campbell, director of CRS activities in Aceh.
The tsunami pushed the warring sides together in talks that led to an
August 2005 peace agreement in Helsinki, Finland.
Elections, finally held in December, were the first major test of the
tentative peace process. The surprise victor in the governor’s race
was separatist leader Irwandi Yusuf, who had been held in a Banda Aceh
prison until the tsunami literally broke down its walls, setting him free
and unleashing a political transformation in the months that followed.
Campbell worked in Angola before coming to Aceh in 2005, and he believes
relief organizations like CRS play a critical role in constructing a culture
of tolerance and peace in postwar contexts.
“We’re not just rebuilding structures, but helping re-establish
livelihoods and rebuild communities. Whether it was a war or a tsunami
or some mixture of the two, our task is to bring together people from
different social sectors, including youth and women, to help them find
their voice and incorporate themselves into the process of rebuilding
communities,” Campbell told Catholic News Service.
“Before the peace treaty people had to be in their homes before
the sun went down. Now the shops are open till midnight. They’re
really celebrating living politically in peace, and that contributes to
a psychosocial peace,” he said.
Many international organizations that came to Aceh following the tsunami
are in the process of leaving Indonesia today. But CRS, which has worked
in Indonesia since 1957, has a five-year, $117 million program to assist
with reconstruction in Aceh and the neighboring island of Nias, which
was hit by the tsunami and a major earthquake several months later.
Besides rehabilitating wells and city parks, building clinics and schools,
CRS plans to build more than 2,000 homes around the region, and after
months of planning and organizing Campbell says the agency is currently
completing more than 200 houses a month.
It took months to be able to begin the actual reconstruction of housing,
a delay Campbell blamed on the unique nature of the tsunami.
“It’s difficult to understand the sheer size of the tasks
we faced. And to have hundreds of agencies simultaneously trying to build
on a little piece of land automatically generated resource issues. You
simply couldn’t get enough wood and cement and labor to accommodate
all of this at once,” he said.
“In other emergencies, it usually takes 5-10 years or more to really
talk about rebuilding. Rebuilding after the Kobe earthquake in Japan took
10 years, and that’s in a fully developed country with a functioning
infrastructure,” he said.
Several relief organizations operating in Aceh have been criticized for
poor financial management in a country renowned for its corruption. Indonesia
was the most corrupt country in Asia in 2006, according to an annual survey
by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.
“We have to watch everything,” Campbell said. “We have
to monitor, monitor, monitor all the time. ... We now work with a group
of contractors that we can rely on, who are fair; they know our game now,
they know that we’re not going to put up with just anything, that
we’re here for quality work at a fair price.”
Relief groups also have been criticized for contributing to the island’s
deforestation, so Campbell says CRS decided to work with the World Wildlife
Fund and purchase only wood from certified sources. He said the agency
also decided to use metal roof-truss systems and PVC window frames as
a way of minimizing wood consumption.
Campbell said women are playing a key role in the reconstruction process.
“In the meetings we hold with people to design their houses, women
are an active part of the conversation, especially when we’re discussing
the floor plans and the design of the house,” he said.
