A little girl runs up the stairs to her house, yelling to her mother that she’s hungry. Just back from kindergarten, four-year-old Marlina has spent the morning playing with the other children, tsunami survivors like her who have moved with their families to a new home, safe from the sea.
Her mother frowns slightly as she remembers those early days after the tsunami destroyed their village; 22 months ago, they were living in a teeming tented camp that flooded when it rained, totally dependent on food distributions and help from abroad. Marlina, then painfully malnourished and weighing barely half what she should, was one of the first children treated by CARE’s emergency health team.
Today, the mischievous four-year-old sneaks past her mother into the kitchen and grabs a hard-boiled egg, cracking it against the wood floor of their new home.
“Marlina,” her mother scolds, then smiles. “I’m just happy to see her like this, and to have a new life. This is much, much better than before.”
Here in Jantho, about two hours’ drive from the coast, Nuraisyah and her husband, Ismail, live with 244 other families in a transitional village of wooden cottages while they wait for their new, permanent homes to be completed.
In Jantho, CARE is building an entire community from the ground up for families like Nuraisyah’s, whose villages were completely destroyed after the tsunami and the land left unusable – in some cases, still partially underwater. For the past 18 months, CARE has been working with the local government to find a suitable area for the new village, clearing land for houses, doing environmental assessments, and building.
Today, tidy rows of light-yellow houses are nestled into the rolling green hills, waiting for the final finishing touches and hook-up to the main water supply before their new owners can move in. Construction workers, sweating under the tropical sun, expertly stack bricks and mortar into place on the remaining homes still under construction.
A short walk from the transitional village, a new community of CARE permanent homes are nestled into the rolling hills of Jantho. Photo: CARE/Josh Estey
