Habitat World Online

Nurdin Salam and his wife, Rasydah, do not believe in sitting around.

Even after their house in Gampong Teungoh village, Samatiga subdistrict, Meulaboh, was destroyed by the tsunami, 48-year-old Nurdin started a cooked food stall outside the family’s temporary shelter. He had used wood that washed ashore to build the shelter next to his ruined brick house — of which only the foundation remained. To build the food stall, he borrowed 600,000 rupiah (US$65) from his friends. Nurdin sold cooked food to construction laborers who were working on a nearby Habitat project

After the family of five moved into their own Habitat house in July 2006, he then set up a grocery shop with the earnings he had saved from his food stall after repaying the loan from his friends. And a year ago, he used more savings to start a PlayStation rental business in the temporary shelter he and his family had once inhabited.

His wife Rasydah, 38, also refuses to be idle. She helps Nurdin run all the businesses and, in addition, sews table runners and decorative hangings. “I do not want to just wait for customers, so I sew,” she explains.

The work, she says, is for their three children: daughter Nunda Erliza, 18, and sons Rafid, 16, and Rais, 14. “We are doing all these businesses for our children’s education,” she says. “I would like to see my children going to college, especially the eldest.”

Like countless other families, the tsunami changed their lives forever. Nurdin used to own three fishing boats that he would rent to fishermen, receiving in return half of the profit from the sale of fish they caught. The tsunami destroyed two of the boats, and he decided to sell the remaining boat, using that money to buy a rice mill factory in Reusak village, where he and his family lived with his parents-in-law for a year after the tsunami. “Life is better now that I am settled in my businesses,” he says.

Businesses aside, it is her home that Rasydah is thankful for. “Before, we were living in a temporary shelter,” she says. “Our Habitat house is luxurious. If Habitat did not help, we would not be able to afford this house.”

By Hiew Peng Wong, an editor/writer in Habitat’s Asia/Pacific area office