Pasi – Furious tsunami survivors at this village in Indonesia's Aceh have told an international aid agency that they no longer want their help after waiting a year for them to build promised houses.
British-based Oxfam has since closed their office overseeing Pasi – and the rest of Aceh Besar and Banda Aceh districts – as they investigate what went wrong, but no matter the outcome, fed-up residents do not want Oxfam back.
The unprecedented rejection of promised aid by a community in devastated Aceh, where some 168,000 people were killed by the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, highlights mounting frustration among homeless tsunami survivors.
Some 127,000 houses are yet to be built, the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR) said last month. The cost of building a home has jumped from 28 to 50 million rupiah (about 3,100 to 5,500 dollars).
About 150 of those homes are in Pasi, says village chief Muhammad Hatta, and Oxfam workers first promised in April last year to build half of them. The laying of foundations for 11 houses is the only evidence of progress so far.
"Residents here have agreed to demand a divorce from Oxfam," says chief Hatta, a 40-year-old who lost his wife and three children to the tsunami, as he sits sipping Acehnese coffee at a roadside stall in the desolate area.
Some 315 survivors from both Pasi and nearby Meunasah Lhok – which together had a combined population of just over 1,000 before the tsunami – live here in makeshift tents and huts strung together from tarpaulins and whatever else they have got hold of.
"My people have all agreed they no longer want Oxfam in our village, although they did help us a lot in the past," a tired Hatta concedes.
Oxfam were among the earliest relief groups to provide desperately-needed aid to the area, providing clean water, sanitation facilities and helping residents in cash-for-work projects from February last year, he says.
But for the past few weeks, Hatta has been shuttling to and from Banda Aceh, the provincial capital 63 kilometers (39 miles) away, trying to get the BRR to supervise contractors to build the houses instead.
Sofyan, a 45-year-old villager who has lived in a tent since he came back to his flattened village in March 2005, says he is fed up waiting.
"We can no longer stand living in the temporary hut and tent shelters, even more so since the western winds are blowing. We are very worried that our huts will collapse or be blown away," he says.
Tempers exploded violently in February when a visiting Indonesian Oxfam officer was beaten up by angry villagers.
In a meeting soon afterwards, the residents told Oxfam that they wanted all work halted "so that we do not remain in the status quo and can seek other assistance", Hatta says.
Lilianne Fan, Oxfam's advocacy coordinator in Aceh, says that Oxfam only officially committed to building the houses in June 2005 "but on condition that the problem of land first be settled".
The district chief eventually bought land, former rice paddy about 500 metres (yards) to the rear of the old village, for the new houses on October 17, 2005, she says.
"Maybe residents are not aware that the process of getting the land takes a long time and is complex," she says.
Oxfam spokesman in Banda Aceh, Yon Thayrun, told AFP that it became impossible for Oxfam to use funds earmarked for 2005 to begin construction, due to budgetary procedures, so they had to wait until this year.
Procurement of materials then became difficult, he says, a problem many aid agencies have encountered across Aceh as the massive reconstruction effort gets underway. Still, Fan says it remains a mystery why so little has been done.
On March 13 and after similar difficulties in other parts of Aceh Besar and Banda Aceh districts, Oxfam took the most dramatic action an aid agency has done here since the tsunami and shuttered its office overseeing the area. The agency also uncovered irregularities in the disbursement of funds from the offices administrating the two districts.
"Our headquarters is now conducting an investigation so that hopefully everything will become clear... (about) where and what the problem was," Fan says.
In a press release at the time announcing the suspension in the two districts of its work – other than the provision of essential services – Oxfam apologised to the affected communities. "Oxfam will use every means at its disposal to recover any money found to be missing," it said.
Oxfam, Thayrun says, is prepared to continue its work in Pasi when the investigations are completed, "but if the people have already sought a divorce, what can we do?" In the meantime, Canadian-funded agency GenAssist has met with villagers and promised that it will build the villagers' houses – if they can secure their own funding.
If they cannot, the government's BRR is due at the end of April to release the names of contractors who will start building homes at the beginning of May.
"We don't care who builds the houses. The important thing is our houses be built immediately because we cannot stay any longer in this camp," says Mulyadi, the 28-year-old chief of Pasi's youth group.