Tsunami orphans
BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA--She smiles shyly as she talks about her mother, but 10-year-old Ina Wawan glances away uncomfortably when asked about returning to playing by the sea, which swept her parents and three younger siblings away so cruelly and suddenly.
When the tsunami hit on December 26, Ina was visiting her aunt's home, a mile or so from the ocean, and fled with her aunt's family to safety in nearby hills. Tragically, though, her father, a soldier with a house in the military barracks on the beach, her mother, and her 8-year-old brother, Riski, her 6-year-old sister, Dikka, and her baby brother, Daniel, all perished.
Now, wearing a T-shirt with a child's drawing and the words "Acehnese children are our children," Ina is one of thousands of newly orphaned youngsters--some 35,000 by early estimates. It appears that the actual figure is smaller, and many, like Ina, are being taken in by extended family, a tradition in Aceh's close-knit culture. "I'm happy to have another child, and now my daughter has a younger sister and a friend to study with," says Ina's aunt Sri Wahyuni.
Lost generation . Save the Children and UNICEF are still registering and tracking children in refugee camps around Aceh but estimate that there may be around 6,000 to 9,000 children without parents or close relatives. And if the orphan total is smaller than initially feared, the reason is hardly uplifting: The tsunami wiped out a generation of children, say experts such as Save the Children's Christine Knudsen, because younger children were generally with their parents and the waves moved too fast to save them. "You're going to see this weird demographic shift, because there are hardly any babies in the camps, which is very strange here," she says.
UNICEF officials say it's important not to classify children as orphans until all have been registered and it is confirmed that a child has no close surviving relatives. For now, the government has made it illegal for any Acehnese child under 16 to leave the province, unless with a parent, to avert child trafficking.
In almost every refugee camp, mosque, and hospital here, there are signs posted by distressed parents. "Wanted Nadhra Amelia, nine years old," says one poster, with a photo of a girl, outside the military hospital. In a cafe, Abdullah, one of many men vacantly whiling away the hours, says that he lost all his children. There is nothing, perhaps, quite as sad as a child's losing both parents, but parents' losing their children is a close second.
This story appears in the January 24, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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