Nias - Earthquake and tsunami to cargo cult

Nias had the misfortune of being struck by two massive natural disasters in the space of six months – it was hit by a 3 metre high tsunami wave on Boxing Day 2004, and then wacked again by an earthquake and another tsunami in March, 2005. Enough to make most people pack up there bags and move else where but Indonesians in general are a resiliant (and foolhardy) lot. I first visted Nias in 1995, and suprising not of the physical landscape has changed – which I guess in 12 years is fairly exceptional. Rebuilding after the disaters seemed to have occured at a fairly brisk pace. It seems the damage was so intense that most buildings were completely destroyed, so there isn't that much evidence of the destruction – other than a few buildings which appear twisted like mirages in the desert or Dr Seuss houses. Almost all of the losmens (small hotels) at Sorake Beach have been built – and no one seems to have learnt anything from building so proximate to the shore. I wonder if the builders ever paused to look at the foundations and ruins as they built the new places only metres away. The one big change I did notice was what appears to be the creation of a cargo cult by the descent of a proliferation of NGOs – the number and stripe were incredible – from UN agencies like UNICEF and UNHCR, to the Red Cross -from Spain, Belgium, Australia, UK etc etc, to private NGOs like HELP, LEAP, Save the Children, Oxfam etc etc. And they all have their own offices, there own shwanky Toyota Land Cruisers (which you can't normally get in Indo) and of course their own agendas. Whilst no doubt a lot of good work has been done, it does seems to have generated a mindset of what have you got for me ? So any foreinger faces a constant barrage of requests for everything, from money, to food to clothes to even surfboards. All in all it makes for a fairly unenjoyable time as there is no escape from the hassle – even in Bali they give you a break. The annoyance is amplified by the apparent unwilligness of any of the locals to actually do anything, most simply sat around waiting for the surf, and my UNICEF friend said they were struggling to find people to volunteer their labour for the community projects that they were funding. All of the tourists I met said they had experienced the same thing to the point that they didn't want to return to Nias.
And the wave... well the reef has lifted up a couple of metres, but it is still pretty much as perfect as a wave can be – even letting me get barreled a couple of times !!