One morning, at 6:00 A.M., Ibu Sumiyati, a woman in her mid-forties, moved one Etawa goat (also known as Jamnapari goat) from a barn to a small enclosure to start the milking process. For past three years, this has been a routine for her and about 20 other villagers who joined the Lamtui Goat Milk Breeders in Lamtui village, about 70 km south of Banda Aceh on the west coast of Sumatra.
The groom and bride in front of guests in a wedding party in Lhoong (56 km south of Banda Aceh)
It was 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning in Lamno, a small town 80 km south of Banda Aceh. An excited and restless Teguh had awoken before 5:00 AM and was nicely dressed and well-groomed. This was his special day to say goodbye to bachelorhood and start a married life.
Children praying and chanting praise upon Prophet Mohammed
A dark cloud covered the sun, but the people in the Gle Mah village (76 km south of Banda Aceh), were busy preparing for Maulid celebration.
Maulid is a traditional ceremony to commemorate Prophet Mohammed’s birthday. On that day people in Aceh visit their families and a ceremony is conducted by each village that includes praying and chanting the praise upon Prophet Mohammed by both kids and elders. People from other villages are welcome to participate in this special day of celebration.
On any given morning, the new paved road on the western outskirts of Banda Aceh will be bustling with commuters traveling back and forth to their activity places. Students will be rushing to schools, workers hurrying to offices and housewives to the market. The street will be even more congested with traders and salesmen who travel and sell goods along the Aceh’s west coast. Driving along the street, one feels the familiar morning street atmosphere: chaotic traffic, honking horns and car smoke.
BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA
— It may be a testament to the reconstruction effort that, at first glance, the
only clear evidence of the tsunami that obliterated much of the north
Indonesian province of Aceh five years ago is a smattering of decapitated palm
trees, the occasional foundation where a house once stood, and the ubiquitous
initials of U.N.
agencies, stenciled on everything from warehouses to food carts.
A first-time visitor might not guess that huge swaths of
this nearly empty landscape, stretching 800 kilometers, almost 500 miles, down
western Aceh’s coast, were once crowded with thousands of homes — all swept
away in minutes by a wave.
The Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami, caused by a 9.1-magnitude
undersea earthquake, slammed 13 countries, killing about 226,000 people.But it
was the Acehnese who bore the brunt of the catastrophe. The provincial capital,
Banda Aceh, was devastated. An estimated 170,000 people here were killed,
including 35,000 whose bodies were never found.
In the five years since, more than 800 nongovernmental organizations,
multilateral agencies and donor countries have combined to spend $6.7 billion,
nearly all the amount pledged from around the world to rebuild Aceh. Although
by most accounts it has been a success, the process, still incomplete, has not
been without challenges.No functioning government existed here in the early
days to coordinate the arriving international aid agencies. While Indonesia’s
central government mobilized during the emergency phase, it would be four
months before it set up an agency to manage the reconstruction.Questions of
land ownership, obscured by the destruction of property and records, also
delayed rebuilding. Perhaps the greatest complication was the three-decade-old
separatist conflict in Aceh, which ended in a peace deal between the rebels and
the government six months after the tsunami.
It was in this climate that the United States won the right
to build its signature project — a $250 million highway running 150 kilometers
down Aceh’s western coast, from Banda Aceh to Calang, to reconnect displaced
communities to the outside world.
Human Interest 
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