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mundensTime for a serious post.
Aceh (Ay-chay) Province in Sumatra, Indonesia bore the brunt of Sunday's earthquake-created tsunamis, as the epicenter was mere 160Km north of Banda Aceh, the proviincial capital which is 5km inland from the northern tip of Sumatra.
Our family has a personal connection to this area, because my wife's grandfather (my son's great-grandfather) was the assitant provincial governor of Aceh under Dutch rule in the 1930s.
Ele's father, Willem van der Reyden, grew up in Banda Aceh, the son of an assitant provincial administrator, with all that entails, servants, monkeys, horses, and a Duesenburg imported frm Europe for official use that was not that useful as the roads in the area weren't designed for cars back then. They made state visits round the island by boat. We have ancient photos and film of these visits in our family archives.
The dominant racial group in Aceh is actually Levantine in origin, descended from a group of people from the area that would become known as Saudi Arabia, who settled the northern tip of Sumatra in the 6th Century.
Willem (or Bill, as he is usually known in New Zealand) remembers the Aceh people as a proud and fiercely Moslem race, but not extremist. While they insisted their own women wear the burkah, they never expected infidels or even different Islamic sects to do the same. They were even tolerant of the Catholic nuns running the local school.
After all, they would say, Jesus was a prophet of Allah just as Mohammed was and all prophets should be revered. There are those within Islam who believe that all men nust have facial hair or must cover their heads, and who is to say they are wrong? Allah may truly want some of his people to live in one way and others to live in another. We all worship Allah in our own way.
Bill especially remembers that one of the tribes named him argum pita, which reportedly means "white friend" after he engaged in kite-fighting with the locals.
Kite-fighting involves taking a kite string, soaking it in glue and running the string through crushed glass or quartz, making a string that has sharp edges, and then using this string to cut the strings of other people's kites, while they try to do the same to yours. The winner is obviously the last one who is left with their kite still under their own control
He got this nickname not because he was European in a hot, humid, equatorial country full of darker races, but because the sun at this latitude had bleached his hair snow white. He felt honoured at being called a friend by these people.
It was probably because unlike his father and the rest of the entourage who had official jobs to do and business to carry out and who felt they had to maintain their dignity, as befitting elders, he, as an athletic teeenage boy, was able to go off and play with the young men of the tribe, in their games of skill that demontsrated manliness to the rest of the tribe.
In many ways, Bill was an unaware cultural ambassadlor, and it is likely that his immersion in the recreational activities of the tribes immensely assisted his father.
Some of Bill's friends there died during the Japanese occupation of WWII. His father narrowly survivied interrment in a Japanese labour camp, but was able to survive partially because of smuggled food and information brought in by the Aceh people. Bill's father never fully recovered from that. Bill himself had been sent back to Holland to attend technical school, and ended up in the Resistance against the German occupation in the Hague.
Now the area is devastated, and thousands are dead. Likely more of those Bill knew have now died as they would be old and vulnerable as he is now. Bill needs a walker, sometimes known as a "Zimmer-frame" to move around easily now. He would not have been able to escape the tsunami.
But in all the death and destruction, one of the more obvious improvements in the world to those who remember World War II is the way in which German and Japanese tourists (among others) volunteered, and were working alongside the Aceh and others to help the injured and clear the rubble.
Aceh (Ay-chay) Province in Sumatra, Indonesia bore the brunt of Sunday's earthquake-created tsunamis, as the epicenter was mere 160Km north of Banda Aceh, the proviincial capital which is 5km inland from the northern tip of Sumatra.
Our family has a personal connection to this area, because my wife's grandfather (my son's great-grandfather) was the assitant provincial governor of Aceh under Dutch rule in the 1930s.
Ele's father, Willem van der Reyden, grew up in Banda Aceh, the son of an assitant provincial administrator, with all that entails, servants, monkeys, horses, and a Duesenburg imported frm Europe for official use that was not that useful as the roads in the area weren't designed for cars back then. They made state visits round the island by boat. We have ancient photos and film of these visits in our family archives.
The dominant racial group in Aceh is actually Levantine in origin, descended from a group of people from the area that would become known as Saudi Arabia, who settled the northern tip of Sumatra in the 6th Century.
Willem (or Bill, as he is usually known in New Zealand) remembers the Aceh people as a proud and fiercely Moslem race, but not extremist. While they insisted their own women wear the burkah, they never expected infidels or even different Islamic sects to do the same. They were even tolerant of the Catholic nuns running the local school.
After all, they would say, Jesus was a prophet of Allah just as Mohammed was and all prophets should be revered. There are those within Islam who believe that all men nust have facial hair or must cover their heads, and who is to say they are wrong? Allah may truly want some of his people to live in one way and others to live in another. We all worship Allah in our own way.
Bill especially remembers that one of the tribes named him argum pita, which reportedly means "white friend" after he engaged in kite-fighting with the locals.
Kite-fighting involves taking a kite string, soaking it in glue and running the string through crushed glass or quartz, making a string that has sharp edges, and then using this string to cut the strings of other people's kites, while they try to do the same to yours. The winner is obviously the last one who is left with their kite still under their own control
He got this nickname not because he was European in a hot, humid, equatorial country full of darker races, but because the sun at this latitude had bleached his hair snow white. He felt honoured at being called a friend by these people.
It was probably because unlike his father and the rest of the entourage who had official jobs to do and business to carry out and who felt they had to maintain their dignity, as befitting elders, he, as an athletic teeenage boy, was able to go off and play with the young men of the tribe, in their games of skill that demontsrated manliness to the rest of the tribe.
In many ways, Bill was an unaware cultural ambassadlor, and it is likely that his immersion in the recreational activities of the tribes immensely assisted his father.
Some of Bill's friends there died during the Japanese occupation of WWII. His father narrowly survivied interrment in a Japanese labour camp, but was able to survive partially because of smuggled food and information brought in by the Aceh people. Bill's father never fully recovered from that. Bill himself had been sent back to Holland to attend technical school, and ended up in the Resistance against the German occupation in the Hague.
Now the area is devastated, and thousands are dead. Likely more of those Bill knew have now died as they would be old and vulnerable as he is now. Bill needs a walker, sometimes known as a "Zimmer-frame" to move around easily now. He would not have been able to escape the tsunami.
But in all the death and destruction, one of the more obvious improvements in the world to those who remember World War II is the way in which German and Japanese tourists (among others) volunteered, and were working alongside the Aceh and others to help the injured and clear the rubble.
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It's hard to comprehend
Date: 2004-12-29 06:14 am (UTC)The family of one of the girls I teach lives in Phuket. We still haven't heard from them.
One of the short term staff here had her heart set on Christmas in the Andeman islands but couldn't get the right tickets and so didn't go. She would have been there on sunday.
One of the worst stories I have heard so far comes from Madras. After the inital wave the police closed off all access to the beaches but people came in their hundreds to see what had happened. The police had to beat them of with "lashies" (bamboo sticks) and yet when the aftershock Tsunami came hundreds more were killed. becasue they went to have a look. Many were carrying their children in their arms as they did so.
India is still recoiling over the shock of this and it's not nearly as badly hit as Sri Lanka or Sumatra.
People are now predicting death tolls in of more that 100,000; especially once disease is taken into account.
Re: It's hard to comprehend
Date: 2004-12-29 06:57 am (UTC)Was a bit worried, I know you weren't in the area specifically, but you could have "gone to the beach" or something, like the baker you mention.
I'm expecting several of my co-workers will be away when I get back, one girl, Smita, has her family in Madras, she went back there just this year for the funeral of her father. It sounds like there's a pretty good chance that she'll have more bad news.
We have many people from the Chennai software development area too.
In terms of numbers, yes, now the total has hit 68,000 without disease, I would be surprised if the final toll was under 100,000
Recently heard that at least 5% of the population of the Aceh provincial capital had died. As that's 5km inland it's likely a lot of that is from the direct affects of the earthquake itself.
New Zealand narrowly missed a similar level of disaster with the 8.4 earthquake centered near the McQuarrie islands.