Imagining the Tsunami

I went down to the beach the other day. It’s about a stone’s throw away from the place I am staying. The sea was really angry. Cement blocks designed to stop the creeping, eroding coastline, stand blockading this portion of the beach. The water was crazy. These thick, tall, and angry waves were crashing against each other, and then smashinto into the rocks.

A friend of mine told me the other day that she used to love the beach. Then one morning, over two years ago, she saw a big black wall in the distance.

“I thought it was the end of the world. People were panicked and running in every direction. It looked like a giant snake standing tall and coming towards us, like a cobra its head spread and ready to strike. It slithered, gained volume and strength emerging like an oncoming dark cloud. The next thing I knew it was crashing through us. We were suddenly flooded. I was dragged by the water. My three children, all in primary school were washed away. I never saw them again. I got stuck in a satellite dish, barely hanging on. After several minutes I heard someone calling my name. Up in a tree behind me, I saw my husband. People were dragged several kilometers. It was hours before the water subsided. The coastline was completely changed. The entire infrastructure was gone. Our town was missing and so were much of our families. All that was left was a mess of debris covered thick in black mud. I don’t go to the beach anymore. I don’t like the ocean either. I can’t even look at it.”

As another wave crashed down onto the rocks I thought this might be a fraction of what those three crazy, successive waves during the tsunami looked like. The mass and power of the big waves I was looking at were hypnotizing. I can’t imagine the overwhelming sense of Armageddon the waves two years ago must have felt like. Ten minutes after the quake, water was initially sucked out. Some ran out to collect fish flapping around in the suddenly dry land. Then the waves came. The third, and most powerful, was said to reach up to 100 feet massive in some areas.

The sun was going down; I could hear several mosques sounding off for maghrib, the evening prayer. Both sides of the path back to the house I could see construction all along the beach. The rebuilt house I’m staying at, stands next to half a house and across the street all that remains is a staircase.

I thought back to my drive along the coastline from the northern tip of Sumatra, the capital Banda Aceh, down to my current home, Meulaboh. The drive covers over some 200 kilometers of stunning beauty, but also the fresh history of an unimaginable disaster.

As our vehicle traded between climbing up and down cliffsides and flanking beach straightaways, I witnessed a landscape I had never seen before—the contrast of natural beauty with the imprint of natural disaster. Through the forests, I saw monkeys and truly unique wildlife, and along the beaches were picture perfect cliffs, islands nestled among coconut trees. Some of these rural communities have rebuilt, evidenced by the regeneration of agriculture and a semblance of the previous fishing industry.

At one point the road split. One section was being rebuilt but the other half strangely led directly into the ocean. I asked the person next to me about the road. She pointed out to the ocean. “That's the old road. See that structure out there. That used to be a bridge. The village used to be there." She pointed out to the ocean. Sure enough I saw the ruins of what possibly was a town. There were still some coconut trees growing far out at sea. I tried to reconstruct what this might have looked like. The tsunami completely changed the landscape. In some areas there are bays further inland from deposited sea water that became land-locked after the tsunami. Some have gone so far as to say weather patterns have also changed.


My neighbor in the van went on… “The earthquake was unbelievable. You fell on your knees; you held on to the ground.” Before the waves even struck, one of the highest recorded earthquakes in history (measuring 9.1 on the Richter Scale--one of the highest ever recorded) thrashed these areas. “I saw cars being flipped upside down, rolling, somersaulting down the street. After several minutes of violent shaking, I thought I was safe. But I could sense the panic. Then the waves came and dragged me several kilometers. I lost about half of my family. I was saved by a floating log that I grabbed on to. I still have scars from tumbling through the mayhem; see...” I saw the scrapes. “You can’t imagine the panic. I never believed how I made it. I still ask myself why. I lost my wife and child. But, I just got remarried and my wife is six months pregnant.”



Through so much loss there is incredible trauma and the psychological and physical damages will take a long time to heal. Almost everyone has a powerful story connected to the tsunami. They speak about the experience with such frankness. I still have a hard time reacting to such tragedies. The tsunami is embedded as a part of everyone's lives here. It is a piece of them.