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Looking for love
21/06/2005 13:03 - (SA)
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| Johan Ishak sits with his new bride Mulliani and her daughter Yusnawati in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. (Binsar Bakkara, AP) |
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Cot Lamkuweuh Village - As Suwardi Johan drags a hoe through the soil in what's left of his Indonesian village, he's literally digging for gold.
The 35-year-old lost his wife of 12 years along with his young son and daughter six months ago when the earth rumbled and the sea heaved up and chased them, ripping his family from his arms. Now, he sifts the dirt, hoping to find a nugget of gold buried by those same waves to help pay his new bride's dowry. Like many here, he longs to start life over.
"We will try to make our village more alive, just like in the past," he said, leaning on the hoe handle while looking across the flattened neighbourhood where he was born, about 2km from the coast. "Remarriage is a kind of programme to help us rebuild."
Like Suwardi, many widowers and bachelors in the worst-hit areas of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital on the northern tip of Sumatra island, huddle in tents or barracks at night hatching plans to woo women who survived the December 26 tsunami.
Alone for the first time
In a place where women typically care for their husbands and children, these men are all alone for the first time and they're up against some tough odds. A recent report shows that in some villages the waves claimed three times more women than men, forcing some would-be husbands to search for love in areas outside the tsunami zone.
Suwardi, 35, met his new, previously unmarried wife, Mursidah, two months ago during a friend's wedding reception in Sigli, about 125km south of his village in an area untouched by the surging water.
The two were instantly spellbound and quickly married unceremoniously, but they continue to keep their story hushed in Cot Lamkuweuh village to hide Suwardi's shame - he still cannot afford a traditional Acehnese wedding or pay the 100g of gold, about $1 400, required for Mursidah's hand.
So far, he's saved 2 million rupiah ($208) paid by an aid organisation for clearing mud, piles of splintered lumber and rusty shards of metal from the land where his three-room house once stood. He makes 35 000 rupiah ($3.60) a day and with loans from friends and family, he hopes to move Mursidah, 30, into his newly donated one-room house sometime around the holy month of Ramadan in October.
His next-door neighbour, Johan Ishak, 53, didn't let the lack of a dowry stop him. He lost his wife and six children to the tsunami and met his new bride, Mulliani, in a refugee camp days after the disaster. She was a widow before the tragedy and lost one of her three daughters to the waves. After Johan asked for her hand, they returned to his village where they share a tiny bedroom behind a thin green curtain in a temporary house Mulliani, 40, quickly became pregnant two-and-a-half months ago. But their hopes of bringing new life to the village, where nearly 80% died, were dashed when she miscarried last month after falling over debris still littering the pitted ground.
Johan said they will keep trying for a baby, but he feels blessed regardless to have Mulliani by his side along with his two new daughters.
"We should try," he said, sitting bare-chested on the blue linoleum flooring of his new house. "If it's permitted by God, then we will have them. If not, then it's OK."
Mourned their losses
Johan and Suwardi say they've mourned their losses and are eager to return some normalcy to their village, which sits along a main roadway across from the crumbled shell of a junior high school.
Everything familiar is now gone from the place where they grew up. Only 276 of 1 350 villagers survived. A hole filled with black, brackish water is all that's left of Johan's house, while Suwardi has only a cracked cement foundation and a concrete well to remind him of his past life.
Six months since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, mounds of broken concrete, snapped boards and twisted metal have been cleared and the ground is visible again. Tents and temporary shelters dot land that was empty just three months ago. A makeshift mosque made of rough lumber now serves as the central meeting point in the village, and five women run a public kitchen that serves up 100 meals a day for those working to rebuild new lives.
But men are the majority being served in a village where only 85 women survived.
More women died
In four villages surveyed in the Aceh Besar district, aid agency Oxfam International found only 189 of 676 survivors were women. It concluded that many mothers died trying to save their children or were unable to swim, climb trees or simply hang on as well as men. The disaster struck early on a Sunday morning, when many women and children were at home while the men were at sea fishing or working away from the tsunami's reach. The waves killed more than 128 000 people and left a half million homeless in northern Sumatra.
The United Nations Population Fund also canvassed four refugee camps soon after the calamity and said at first glimpse, it appears that women did suffer more losses, said Melania Hidayat, a reproductive health expert in the Jakarta office. A full census is expected in November.
Unlike many men who are eager to remarry and repopulate devastated villages, the widows remain divided.
Inside a tent in Weu Raya village, Hayani, 45, threw up her hands and said she's done with men. She and her four children survived the tsunami, but she lost her husband. Since then, she's had several proposals, mostly from her late husband's friends, but she's rejected them all.
"There are many widowers, even grandfathers who are widowers, and they try to approach us here," said Hayani, who has walked with a crutch since her left leg was crushed by debris in the tsunami. "I don't want to be busy again with cooking. I don't want to work in the rice field again. Now I'm free, but I have to think a lot about raising my kids."
Fitriyah, 44, is more open and says with time, she wants to find a new husband and father for her three surviving children. Cutting fish for a cauldron of curry over a wood fire, she giggled and shielded her face with her hands as she talked about the bachelor government worker who is courting her.
"If God wants me to marry him tomorrow, then I will marry him tomorrow," she said. "But I hope we're going to marry before the fasting month."
Wait one year
Others like Fachrul Razi, 40, said he will wait one year for his wife to return before searching for new love. A wealthy businessman before the tsunami, he said only 11 of his extended family of 700 in three villages survived the disaster. He said it's up to him to remarry and have more children to keep the family's vast property from being sold to outsiders.
"We have to have lineage in order to continue our big family," he said. "My life has now returned to zero. I have to restart my life."
And that's just what Suwardi plans to do, whether he strikes gold or not.
Back at his house, Mursidah has come for a visit. She's set up two small propane stoves on the floor and placed a bouquet of silk flowers in the corner on a colourful scarf. Soon, he hopes she'll be here permanently, raising their children and growing old with him.
"I would like to have a new life," he said. "I remember our nice life in the past, but I'm trying to forget about the disaster. Maybe if I raise kids again, I'll forget about it."
- AP
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