Nani Afrida, Bener Meriah – The woman in the dirty clothes was once one of the wealthiest people in the village.
Now Nursinah Alamsyah returns to a mere hut after working in the fields planting coffee seeds. "I've just moved here in the last six months," she said, placing her sickle in a corner of the hut.
The 45-year old and her seven children are residents of Permata district in Bener Meriah regency, a main coffee producing region.
The Bakongan Baru hamlet once had 130 households, which prospered from generous coffee harvests. However its isolated location, some 12 kilometers off the main road, through hilly terrain and a river, made it a safe haven for rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
Resumed military operations against the rebels in 2001 destroyed everything the coffee growers had, trapped as they were between GAM and the Indonesian Military.
Yield from the Arabica crops, according to one estimate, dropped from an annual 900 to 1,000 kilograms per hectare to 700 kg to 800 kg per hectare. Up to 21,000 hectares of fields were abandoned in the neighboring regencies of Bener Meriah and Aceh Tengah, which both produced Acehnese coffee for the world market.
A manager with the Aceh Partnerships for Economic Development, M. Madya Akbar, was earlier quoted in the Serambi Indonesia daily as saying that both regencies had yields reaching an annual income of Rp 1 trillion. He said losses reached Rp 367 billion after the armed conflict.
Nursinah's home was razed to the ground and her crops destroyed. Her husband was killed and she moved her children out of the village.
"I came back to start over. If it wasn't for the children I would have gone mad," she said. Her children helped her build the hut, which has inner partitions of grass, an earth floor and a piece of zinc for a roof.
The memorandum of understanding signed in Helsinki on Aug. 15 2005 between GAM and the Indonesian government was insurance that life could go on. So Nursinah decided to resume coffee planting while waiting for the promise of assistance to victims of the conflict.
"We heard it was already peaceful, that there was no more shooting. And that we would get help," she said.
One neighbor, Kasmayani, has yet to make the same decision to move on. She said she was waiting for the promises of Kontras, a non government organization working on state violence, to help her ascertain whether the corpse in the grave in her coffee field was indeed that of her husband.
The village head of Bakongan Baru, Muhammad Amin, said locals had moved out by 2003 and had only begun to return last year. "It was too terrifying to stay, people moved to Medan (North Sumatra) or out of the regency," he said. The village head himself moved out and the once rich coffee plantation owner became a casual laborer at a terminal in Medan.
Muhammad said villagers were yet to gain the promised aid from the Aceh Reintegration Body, which faces demands from entire communities on both sides of the conflict, as well as tsunami victims. Only the world body for refugees, the UNHCR, has provided them with shovels and sickles, he said.
The village could use more help for education, Muhammad added. "Children still walk three kilometers to reach school. And many drop out because there's no money," he said.