Global generosity helps tsunami victims rebuild lives

MEULABOH, Indonesia — Surrounded by wood shavings, a 50-year-old Indonesian named Martunis is busy nailing sheets of tin and spreading tar onto the hull of a wooden fishing boat lying by the Indian Ocean.

All of the materials, down to the tools and the blue tarp shading him from the baking sun — were donated by Mercy Corps, a U.S.-based charity, which is paying him $3.50 a day to mend boats that were damaged by the earthquake and tsunami that struck on Dec. 26.

Martunis, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, is only vaguely aware where the aid is coming from; he can barely pronounce the words Mercy Corps and doesn't know it's headquartered in the United States and Scotland.

But as he cups an aromatic clove cigarette in his gnarled hands, Martunis says he's grateful.

"We don't know what would have happened if nobody had come to help us," he said.

From noodles and rice to shovels and ice, the unprecedented outpouring of money for disaster victims is being spent to keep survivors healthy and slowly breathe new life into their crippled economies.

UNICEF, the U.N. Children's Fund, has vaccinated more than 200,000 Indonesian children against measles and distributed a million sachets of oral rehydration salts to treat diarrhea sufferers.

It has given out nearly 33,000 family sanitation kits, each costing $15, of basics such as soap, toothbrushes and sanitary napkins.

And just as the emergency phase of their work was winding down in Aceh, the hardest-hit province of Sumatra island, UNICEF and others scrambled teams again on March 29, for another huge earthquake that shook northern Sumatra and a string of smaller Indonesian islands.

Aceh, where more than 126,000 people died, tens of thousands are missing and more than 400,000 are homeless, has had help from all over the globe.

A delegation from Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, funded by the city and Turkish citizens, is sweeping streets in the devastated city of Banda Aceh and has even shipped in a bakery that turns out 10,000 loaves of bread each day.

British-based Oxfam is employing thousands in cash-for-work programs in Aceh ranging from home-building to hat-weaving. It distributes women's underwear and teaches villagers to harvest rainwater.

Red Cross staff from Sweden, Austria and tiny Macedonia are helping provide clean drinking water.