|
Survivors face lonely future
24/01/2005 15:18 - (SA)
Banda Aceh, Indonesia - "The wave was only 50 metres away when father saw it coming. The only thing in my mind at that moment was to run for my life."
One month on, Heri Syahputra finds it hard to recall when the seas rose up and stole his family, home and the woman who had just agreed to marry him - the nightmare was lost in a blur as he fled.
Initially, after a huge earthquake shook the region, there was a brief calm as he and his neighbours in Lampulo, a suburb of Indonesia's Banda Aceh city, gathered with others outside their houses to check for casualties and damage.
A woman passing on a motorcycle told them "the water has risen".
"But the way she said it was a mere statement, there was no sense of urgency or warning for us to flee," Syahputra said.
The waves hit Lampulo from three sides, crushing everything and leaving only one path of escape. With little time to think, the 27-year-old took off, with one last glance over his shoulder.
"A picture that still haunts me is that of my neighbour's two young children standing still, mesmerised by the incoming waves that later engulfed them. I still regret I did nothing to save them."
As the waters surged up around his legs, he saw others, their faces frozen with panic. "They all had the same expression - extreme fear," he said.
The worst was yet to come. Returning to his house a day later, he found only ruin and death.
"That day, and the three following days, I checked all the corpses I encountered, hoping to find someone I knew," he said.
His hunt was in vain. Syahputra lost his father, his sister and eight other close relatives.
There was also no sign of his high school sweetheart, 22-year-old Juwita Nandayani, to whom he had been due to become formally engaged within a month, despite opposition from her mother.
"I had told her that if there was someone who could make her happier, she was free to leave me. But she said she only loved me and we agreed to go ahead and get married, whatever the obstacles."
Nandayani's body was never found. All Syahputra has is one water-damaged photograph found in the rubble and her last telephone text message saying she loved him.
Syahputra's says his life had been perfect just hours before the disaster, his small printing business was about to get off the ground and he would marry the woman he loved.
His business survived the disaster, but now he has no one to build a future for.
"What is saddening is that I do not even have a grave I can cry over."
- AFP
|
News
