Evacuees in Mangkaulu.
Temporary shelter in Mangkaulu's evacuation camp.
After several strong quakes, the physical parts of Mentawai islands have been severely damaged. However, these collateral damages are not as significant as the local people’s life. A lot of people are forced to leave their houses and evacuate to higher grounds, which are mostly in the thick rainforest jungle of Mentawai.
In Pagai Islands, the Southern Pagai Island in particular, most villagers have left their own houses and seek refuge in the deeper site of the island. In fact, based on Mr. Ray Mathias of Surfaid whom we met in the Disaster Command Post of Sikakap (Posko Bencana), there are 3 villages that have decided to stay put in the evacuation site. This means they are going to abandon their current houses and villages.
Exodus in Mangkaulu
During our visit to Mangkaulu, we realise that less than half of the houses have been damaged by the quake as the tidal wave did not manage to hit the houses. However, the whole village has been left almost empty. More than 75% of the villagers have taken refuge in the so-called “mountain” site.
Damaged house in Sikakap.
One of our members managed to visit the site guided by one of the locals who appears to be a local primary school teacher. Some rowing and short hiking were required to reach the location. It was an extremely challenging trip for our team member as the terrain was newly opened and very muddy.
Treacherous terrain to the evacuation camp.
Treacherous terrain to the evacuation camp.
Wooden boat for commuting between the evacuation camp and the village.
Boat parking bay at the evacuation camp.
Evacuation camp in the middle of dense jungle of Mangkaulu.
There were about 49 families staying in that location which was originally a dense rainforest. At the time of visit, they were living there for more than 2 weeks. Based on some short conversations with some locals, at that point of time they prefer to stay in that camp because they have a better access to clean water. Most of the wells back in the village were destroyed. However, there’s one main reason that kept them from moving back to the village, the fear of giant Tsunami. There’ve been many rumours spreading among the villagers. One of them was the forecasted 9.9 on-Richter-scale earthquake. The original forecast said that it would happen between 29-30 of September 2007 (about 3 days ago). This turns out to be a hoax as nothing happened during that period. However, the villagers still refuse to move back. They think it is safer for them to stay put in the location, despite the lack of hygiene and malaria infested environment. The whole condition is not really encouraging especially after we received some information from the villagers that there was one casualty during the exodus. This turned out to be the only casualty in Mangkaulu during that period.
A boy holding a freshly grilled rat.
Temporary Kitchen
In the temporary shelter camp, we managed to meet up with the village head, Pak Anjelo. Besides informing him about our free clinic in the village, we also mentioned that we hope that he could convince all the villagers in the camp to return and rebuild their homes. After that short conversation, we headed back to our base camp before it got dark.
On the next morning, most of the villagers from the evacuee camp came back to the village for free medical check up and treatments. With this opportunity, Pak Anjelo managed to gather them in the evening to discuss about moving back to the village and rebuilding all the damaged houses. The effort seemed fruitful however we could not get any confirmations due to our short stay in Mangkaulu.
Exodus in Mabolak, Sikakap
Unlike Mangkaulu, Sikakap appears to have less damaged houses. However, there were quite a number of villagers seeking refuge on higher grounds. Together with Romo Agus, the team leader of ERT (Emergency Relieve Team), Team 9 visited them and managed to have a dialogue with one of the most influential villagers. Romo Agus tried to persuade him to move back from his current plastic-roofed-hut to his 2-storey concrete house, where he used to stay prior the earthquake. He was hoping he would do it so other villagers would follow. However, just like the Mangkaulu, we could not confirm it as the dialogue happened on our last day.
Evacuation area in Mabolak, Sikakap.
Romo Agus, Johnny Utama and the villagers.
Exodus, Rumours and Scare, the Main Problems
After all the visits and dialogues with the locals and local authority, these 3 points seem to appear to be more serious than all the collateral damages. Deteriorating health – due to lack of hygiene, improper shelter, diseases (Malaria, worms, respiratory infections, Malaria, etc) and depression -caused by the rumours and other factors, are more damaging than the earthquake itself. We really hope local authorities, organisations and religious leaders would address the issue so Mentawaians could rebuild their lives, not just their houses.
