Banda Aceh

The day dawns bright, the first rays of sunlight tainting the mountains a deep orange. A night bus trip is in its final stages, and I for one am glad – each trip like this weakens my resolve to take another. We’re heading north towards Banda Aceh and Pulau Weh, a small island off the northern tip of Sumatra. As we arrive at the bus station and take a taxi into town, I can’t see any remnants of the tsunami which hit Banda Aceh particularly hard in December of 2004. In the hotel we stay in, photos cover the walls which defy belief – mounds of rubble and bodies by the dozen. In the South East Asia this week, a tsunami decimated parts of Samoa and Tonga, a hurricane brought floodwaters to many areas in the Philippines, and an earthquake destroyed the city of Padang and many villages in North Sumatra, just a few hundred kilometres south from where we are right now.

I’m feeling really down about the whole situation. The news keeps playing the same stories and I’m conscious of the discrepancy of tourism in the midst of turmoil. In Banda Aceh, a lone mosque stood among the handful of buildings which survived the 2004 tsunami, standing in silent testament to the horrors which befell the area almost 5 years ago. The mosque gave inhabitants comfort in their time of tribulation, and now, seeing the mosque and the city of Banda Aceh 5 years on gives me comfort, knowing that human spirit in a million different manifestations rises to the challenges that life presents.