Lucky twist reunites mother with son missing since tsunami
“Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God,” Hayatun cried, holding tightly onto her son, Iwan, and smelling his hair and hands. “Look at me, my child, my darling.”
The reunion was a rare bright spot in Indonesia’s Aceh province, where the December 26 earthquake and killer waves left more than 200,000 people dead or missing.
It followed weeks of effort by staffers at the United Nations’ child agency and Indonesia’s social affairs department, which are registering lost children in hopes of reuniting them with family members.
But the break that led to the reunion relied more on luck than anything else.
Iwan was staying with his grandparents when the tsunami struck. In the chaos that followed, unknown people took the boy to a refugee camp in nearby Indrapuri.
Iwan was deeply traumatised, and unable to describe his mother or father, or his address, said Osep, a social worker at the camp.
Earlier yesterday, Osep and other workers at the camp decided to take Iwan for a drive around Banda Aceh, more to entertain him than in any hope he might remember where he lived.
They ended up driving into his neighbourhood.
“Stop! Stop! That is the street that leads to my house,” he shouted.
Outside the house, the group met a neighbour who told them Iwan’s parents were staying at a relief camp in the city. UNICEF has already helped several children find their parents and has listed more than 160 others so far still separated from parents or being cared for by other relatives.
The actual number is believed to be much higher because the registration process has only recently begun. Iwan was unable to speak yesterday, and did not smile when he was reunited with his mother, a vegetable seller, and his stepfather.
Social affairs department officials said if his mother agreed, the boy could be given a psychiatric examination. The three planned to return to the refugee camp later. Hayatun’s happiness was tempered by the knowledge that two more of her children, a 13-year-old girl and her 11-year-old brother, were still missing since the tsunami.
She said she would keep looking for them. “I would do anything for them,” she said. “I pray they are safe.”
