Houses damaged by the tsunami

Aceh Clam Chowdah

(continued)

By Freeman Anthony

My third day in Simeulue fell on a Sunday and was my first day off since my arrival in Indonesia. I was curious as to the local concept of organised recreation amongst the calls to Mecca. The first mission was to lead a hapless young goat down to the recently lengthened beach and slit its throat. The morning was sent chopping 95 percent of it up into tiny bits and making goat curry in a huge pot outside under a UNICEF tarp and pouring rain. The sun appeared as the curry was carted it off to the beach along a rough road that put a nice goat curry glazing on the inside of our Ute. After chowing down with our fingers, a derby match between Simeulue and Banda Aceh played out in front of textbook 2m swells. Afterwards we smoked cigarettes, took cell phone pictures and tried out the fishing. I was lazily observed by water buffalo cooling themselves in a new lake along the beach as I cruised the beach and checked out all manner of coral that had been thrown 50 meters back into the palm trees.

Access to Simeulue was a narrow tarmac strip carved in the equatorial jungle. The terminal was the one intact building out of three along the runway. The way back to Sumatra was straight up in a Russian Helicopter in UN Food Programme colours. A crew of solid Russian ex-military henchman ran us through the emergency procedures and then sealed themselves off in the front compartment. The heli-hippo was coaxed into the air, and I watched the islands and their decaying coral skirts disappear with my red earmuffs on. We lumbered to the mainland and refueled near Meulaboh before returning us to the dusty streets of Banda Aceh.

There are three main parts to these streets, each blurring into the next with pedestrian traffic. Defining the corridors are the multi-pack concrete buildings, usually two or three story structures with an open bottom floor that functions as either a shop, garage, warehouse or salon and upper floors hosting offices or living space. The more elaborate places have balconies with terra cotta accents, but most are simple boxes with the odd decorative masonry inlay. All colours and ages can be found, generally of a pastel nature and seeming to peel within one rainy season.

Between these concrete beehives staring each other down, are the streets and sidewalks. The mostly dirt streets are separated by a deep median that would be unmountable by most vehicles in Aceh and is rimmed by a concrete curb painted black and white. A tribute to the anarchists Grande Prix that occupies the streets and bleeds onto the sidewalks, which are really just big concrete access ramps to the businesses beyond. It is on these ramps and shoulders that fish markets and sunglass stalls pop up. Rough cut timber with a finish of years of fish oil and salt water display two or three kinds of fish and an assortment of squid, prawns and crustaceans. A couple of rough looking fisherman smoked cigarettes and insisted that the fish was fresh as of this morning. I was unsure of this.

Moving on down the strictly functional bazaar, hand carts with glassed in shelves and small metal trim offer up fried noodles and rice known respectively as mie gorang and mie naci. I found the mie gorang to be the tastiest dish around. given my addiction to noodles, especially when prepped in the Aceh way with hot chili and a bit of broth. I'd be happy to eat these noodles till the cows get off the road. There was also plenty of Aceh Fried Chicken and curried crab, but the reference to KFC and the effort in breaking the porcelain crab shells kept me on the noodle and rice diet. If you didn't get it from the carts, you got it from the stalls, where you could try to relax under fluorescent lights and listen to the yammering on of Islamic discussion and the blare of the evening news from a small television on the counter.

A rare pleasure that is illegal today in the United States is a good straight razor shave. It wasn't too hard to find a parlor open to the night with six black worn leather chairs and large mirrors. The full treatment includes a scalp rub-down with tonic and back-rub while you look up and count the geckos behind the whirling ceiling fan. Firing up a smoke without leaving your chair is a rare luxury to be enjoyed upon completion of your trim. These folks cutting your hair and keeping you company on these dusty busy streets were a mix of old and new of varying degrees of wealth and stature. Capped Muslim patriarchs chatted idly with young kids wearing Eminem T-shirts that straddled scooters of all colours. Some leaned on sooty buildings as if they were the only ones in town, while others scrambled to sell vegetables before clearing town with new cell phone prepaid cards and jugs of cooking oil.