I wanted to share some experiences from the first trip before they become ancient memories. Once we came home there were a few things it was clear people were interested in hearing about. One is the food! I will write more about that in future posts because I know we are going to have some great meals and market trips this time. We will be sharing the house again with another team and we are all bringing along things to make preparing food a bit more feasible. I also to tell about the tsunami sights that we visited.
There are two main places that really demonstrate the power of the tsunami that hit Banda Aceh. It was at the epicenter of the tsunami on December 26, 2004. We saw a huge oil tanker that was carried 5 kms inland. It rests right in the middle of this small community and people are now living around it. They get power from its generator. It is so big that it will likely not get moved and we heard that it might be made into a museum for the tsunami. It was a chilling marker of the disaster.
The second place we were taken to was a house that had a boat resting on its roof. She no long er lives there, but the homeowner will not have the boat removed and still comes to pray at her home everyday. There were many waves to the tsunami and the people who talk of it will tell you what they remember from each wave. The woman that lived in the house with the boat was on the first floor of her home for the first wave and the water came up to the ceiling. She managed to get to the second floor and then the second wave came. She went to the window and saw a boat, the people on it threw out a rope and she grabbed on. The boat became lodged on her rooftop. They managed to save 57 people on the boat. They stayed there and watched the subsequent waves take everything else away.
We were all humbled by these sights. It really is impossible to imagine the scale of loss. Words pale.
I look forward to blogging again.
More later,
Dawna,
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