Since then, Aceh has been struggling to rebuild – not only economically, but also culturally. Aceh’s rebel struggle for independence ended in the devastation of the tsunami. Indonesia now holds it firmly, but has granted it a special status within the country.

The attachment to certain cultural traditions reflects Aceh’s proud history as one of the earliest kingdoms in South East Asia to convert to Islam. There is a musical form reflecting its rich past known as body percussion.

Muhammad Imam Faudi drops to his knees, joining nine other men in a row on a tile floor. Their bodies sway together as they beat on their chests and snap their fingers. Each slap is accompanied by the rapa’i, a wooden framed Acehnese drum. The percussive sound is coordinated with energetic twists and turns.

Faudi dedicates his performances to the memory of his late brother, who was a senior member of this singing and dancing troupe, called Sanggar Seulaweut. Faudi’s brother drowned in the tsunami seven years ago.

“We make dance to improve our spirit,” says Faudi. “After tsunami, nobody can play this dance. We want play again to make our culture recover after tsunami.”

Members of Sanggar Seulaweut rehearse at the State Institute for Islamic Studies in Banda Aceh. (Photo: Niall Macaulay)

“We want to introduce our culture to people around the world,” explains Rifqi. “Acehnese culture is very unique, very very unique.”

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the music and dance performed by Sanggar Seulaweut is influenced by the region’s Islamic heritage. That is, the brand of Islam long practiced in Aceh, says 24-year-old Hermansyah, who goes by one name.

“Our dance and songs, in ancient times, it’s used to spread Islam in Aceh,” explains Hermansyah. “That is why in our dance or in our songs you can find some Arabic sentences, or even some Islamic thought the pillars of Islam, like some advice or Islamic education.”

Dr. Yusny Saby, a professor at the State Institute of Islamic Studies in Aceh, says, Islam has really helped soothe people after the tsunami to keep their minds off the tragedy. “Islam is a really kind of inclusive religion, I would say, accommodating all kinds of good behavior of human beings, including dancing and beating drums, of course with good purposes,” describes Saby.

Female dancers join in a Genta, or Creation, performance. (Photo: Niall Macaulay)

The performers may soon realize their goal of spreading Acehnese culture. Sanggar Seulaweut performed in Turkey earlier this year, and already has offers to tour elsewhere outside of Aceh in 2012.

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Perhaps one of the most iconic images of the tsunami’s wrath was a 30-foot fishing boat thrown a couple of miles inland and perched on top the ruins of a house.

Fifty-nine people clung to the boat until the surge passed; all of them survived. There’s now a viewing platform above the building, and tsunami-related pictures on display below.

Ponny, who goes by one name as is the custom here in Indonesia, had seen the pictures but still wasn’t prepared for the reality:

“I think this is awesome!” Ponny said. “The people in this ship, nobody die, so this is a miracle.”

Ponny is among the growing numbers of tourists who have come to Aceh some seven years after the tsunami to see the relics of destruction. Around the wreckage, facilities have sprung up, with viewing platforms, drink vendors, and snack shops.

Petriani and her sister have opened a popular noodle shop under the beached boat. Petriani said after the tsunami this place became very well-known.

“That’s why my sister and I took the place. And word of mouth spread quickly, so people know the place and it’s easy to find us here,” Petriani said.

Across the street, 51-year-old Abdul Wahab sells drinks, snacks and souvenirs. He came here after the tsunami looking to make some money helping with the cleanup.

Now, he sits in front of his small shop serving thirsty tourists. He smiles at his good fortune, but said he sometimes he feels embarrassed, since it is such a sad place.

“I see people crying before they go up the platform,” Wahab said. “They remember what it was like here the day before the tsunami.”

About a mile away, the Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency, or BRR, built a $6.7 million Tsunami Museum. It exhibits photographs of victims, stories of survivors and an electronic simulation of the undersea earthquake that triggered the wave.

Spiritual Tourism

Officials say more tourists come to see the aftermath of the tsunami than come for the area’s wide, sandy beaches. Yusny Saby, a professor at the State Institute of Islamic Studies in Aceh, said it may sound morbid, but it’s actually very healing.

“We call it spiritual tourism,” Saby said. “If it were not for the tsunami, we would have still been in war. So the tsunami is a sort of blessing in disguise. We lost a lot, but it speeded up the process of bringing peace.”

The peace came after a nearly 30-year civil war between Acehnese rebels and the government of Indonesia. And that’s become another draw for tourists.

Zulkifi once worked as a tour guide in Jakarta and Bali, but he now teaches English and German to classes of future tour guides. Some of those guides-in-training spent years fighting for the rebels.

Zulkifi said before the tsunami, rebels holed up in the jungle. Now they’re engaged in guerrilla or “terror tourism.”

In fact, many western embassies still issue travel warnings for Aceh. There have been sporadic attacks targeting foreigners in recent years. But still the tourists come.

“I didn’t expect it, actually, how it looked like,” said Erlbrich Elsenga, who’s here from the Netherlands, looking up at the fishing boat on the house. “It’s different from what I expected, it is a big boat. I thought it was maybe a small boat on top of a small house, but really big.”

The scars of the tsunami are still not completely healed but the Acehnese hope they can at least get some benefit from the natural disaster that nearly wiped them out.

Sunset at Guraidhoo, Maldives (Photo: Lily Jamali)

It’s not just a child’s imagination at work. The waves have entered his home many times before. Rizmee’s father, Khalid, says their island has always had erosion problems. But in recent years, he says, the tides have grown more extreme:

“It’s getting worse every year,” Khalid Adam says, sitting atop concrete blocks the family has stacked as protection against a flood. “The monsoon season gets stronger each year. The environmental scientists are talking about the sea levels rising, and we’re seeing the same thing.”

Sea level rise will be one of the most significant impacts of climate change, and the Maldives is among the most vulnerable countries. Its 1,200 islands average only about five feet above sea level, and the country’s president, Mohamed Nasheed, has been trying to bring his country’s plight to international attention. Two years ago, just before the big climate summit in Copenhagen, Nasheed staged a world-class publicity stunt by holding a meeting of his cabinet six feet underwater, to “let the world know what… will happen to the Maldives, if climate change is not checked.”

Nasheed said at the time that at best the Maldives had only fifty to seventy years before rising seas threatened the country’s existence. And the prospects have only gotten worse since then. Five years ago a UN climate report forecast a possible two feet of sea level rise by the year 2100. Now many scientists are predicting an even more dramatic rise.

But even in a country where citizens could end up among the world’s first big wave of climate refugees, many don’t share their president’s concern.

Mohamed Firushan, a Fisherman who lives not far from Khalid Adam on Guraidhoo, says he just doesn’t believe sea level is rising. Firushan says he read on an Islamic website that a scientist had recently visited the area and said that there has been no change to the sea level in the last forty years.

Islam is the official religion here in the Maldives, and some Muslims here say that if their country is inundated, it’s God’s will.

But even some who grasp the science aren’t all that concerned.

During a recent class at the Maldives National University in the capital Male, lecturer Ghaanim Mohamed asked his students if they think Maldivians are as worried as they should be. “When President Nasheed did that underwater cabinet meeting,” Mohamed queried his class, “do you think that we really got the message? Do we really believe that we are in danger?

“Personally I don’t feel that we are in danger” one of his students responded. “Because really, if we are sinking, we’ll find other alternatives. For example, reclaiming the islands to two meters or four meters. If it is not four meters we will reclaim to six meters. Maldivians are very creative.”

The student’s comments reflect the culture of a small island nation where people long ago got used to trying to save and even expand their land, and where reclamation—creating new land out of sediment dredged up from the ocean—is an ongoing project.

Seventy five miles from Male, for instance, residents of the island of Thulaadhoo saw their once-congested island grow by more than 40 acres last year. The new land may still be vulnerable to sea level rise this century, but many here view the danger of inundation as a thing of the past.

Zubair Ibrahim, who owns a workshop where he makes the lacquered crafts this island is famous for, has lived all of his 46 years on Thulaadhoo, and he remembers when islanders constantly wondered when Mother Nature would strike next…

“Back then, during high tide,” Ibrahim says, “the waves would just come in to the island. People’s homes would get flooded. There was nothing much we could do. We would maybe put a sand bag or something.“

Reclamation has changed that, at least for the time being.

“Now we have forgotten those days,” Ibrahim says. “Now it does not flood.”

In a sign of his hopefulness about the future here, Ibrahim is starting a museum of Thulaadhoo crafts.

Reclamation work is happening throughout the Maldives, and it’s led to a sense among many that man has conquered nature. But reclamation is very expensive, and it may well not be enough to stay ahead of the advancing tides.

Some Maldivians say the gap between the reality of the threat and perceptions isn’t just a matter of culture or religion. They say it’s also political.

Hussain Yaamin, an opposition party member and part of Guraidhoo’s island council, says President Nasheed hasn’t focused on the issue enough here at home.

“He didn’t talk about it with the people,” Yaamin says. “He talks about it in the international conferences. So in this island, many of these peoples don’t have that idea. They don’t know what he’s talking about even.”

President Nasheed says he agrees that his government needs to do more to make people aware of what’s happening. But environment minister Mohamed Aslam says even here, it can be hard to get people concerned about something as seemingly far off as climate change.

“Climate change, it’s a slow process if you put it into a human timescale,” Aslam says. “It’s a bit like a smoker who continues to smoke knowing that ultimately he’ll face the consequences of it.”

Aslam acknowledges, thought, that many Maldivians might not be aware of the global nature of the problem.

Back on Guraidhoo, Khalid Adam doesn’t use phrases like “global warming” or know the exact predictions for sea level rise. He just worries about his home.

“There is the fear that we won’t be able to live here one day,” Adam says. “But we won’t just passively watch while our home gets destroyed.

And so he’ll keep trying to protect his home, for as long as he can.

(flickr image: trokilinochchi)

So where is this jungle that was only recently a war zone?

Tamil Tigers loading a ship at Mullaitivu in 2003 (Photo:Isak Berntsen)

Human rights advocates say thousands of civilians were killed here in government shelling. Now, the Sri Lankan government wants to rehabilitate the one-time war zone. It says it will designate about 100,000 forested acres as a nature preserve.

The BBC’s Elettra Neysmith has details:

“The jungles of Mullaitivu were at the heart of the Tamil Tiger insurgency. For decades it was home to key rebel bases and was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the final stages of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war. But 18 months after government forces finally defeated the rebels, the area has been declared a wildlife sanctuary. A government statement said it would be used to help Sri Lanka’s elephant population which has dwindled over the last century from 15,000 in 1900, to just 4,000 today. As deforestation destroys their natural habitats, the elephants venture out in search of food. The government say more than 200 of them were killed last year — electrocuted or shot by villagers in an entirely different sort of conflict.”

The jungles of Mullaitivu were heavily mined during Sri Lanka’s civil war. The government estimates “hundreds of thousands of landmines” will need to be cleared. Officials hope the sanctuary will eventually attract much needed eco-tourism dollars.

So even though I try not to be Mr Need-to-Know, the pod this week pays tribute to him. We have a couple of stories in which it really would have been useful to know what was being said. First, we hear about Korean-Americans in Flushing, New York. A community group, MinKwon Center for Community Action, tried to persuade some of these Korean-speakers to vote in November’s midterms. They found that many of these potential voters didn’t speak much English. And they didn’t speak much American election-ese either. All of which made it difficult for them to choose candidates, or see any point in doing so. Check out Alex G’s photo-set here.

Then, one of those throwaway-funny stories that’s also quite sad. You may have seen the recent video of a wedding vow renewal ceremony in the Maldives. The couple in question were Swiss. The language of the ceremony was Dhivehi, not a word of which the couple understood. During the ceremony, things were said that shouldn’t have been said — curses, insults. The couple was oblivious until it was too late. They’re probably mortified. So is the tourism-dependent Maldivian government.

Also in this week’s pod, a master offers classes in Islamic calligraphy his Arlington, Virginia home. Mohamed Zakariya has been teaching calligraphy for more than 20 years, and practising it for more than 50 years. Zakariya grew up in California and was first turned on to Koranic calligraphy during a trip to Morocco. As well as teach, he has designed a stamp for the US Postal Service. He wrote an inscription that Barack Obama gave to the King of Saudi Arabia.

Finally, performing in a language that you don’t understand. I remember performing in a play at an art school in Denmark. At the time, my Danish was virtually non-existent. So my Danish friends were astonished to hear me utter complicated phrases perfectly. (Don’t knock memorization and repetition…) It so impressed them that they didn’t notice that I couldn’t act to save my life. Broadway star Amra-Faye Wright (pictured) went several steps further: first, she can act. She performed her role as Velma Kelly in the musical Chicago in Japanese, in Tokyo. Doing that got her interested in the language; she’s still taking classes in Japanese.
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• Which disappearing name would you like to bring back?
• Which place names would you like to see retired?

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Let’s go now to the answer to our Geo Quiz today about geographic names that have disappeared.  Did you find Tanganyika yet on the map?  Well, it once bordered the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria, but it’s vanished!  Harry Campbell has written a book about place names that history left behind, and Harry it’s called what, your book?

HARRY CAMPBELL:  It’s called “Whatever happened to Tanganyika?” which is actually something a friend of mine said to me once on the phone as we were discussing the subject.  I thought it had a good ring to it.

WERMAN:  Right, so whatever did happen to Tanganyika?  Let’s start off with that question?

CAMPBELL:  You want to spoil the surprise.  Okay.  It became independent, as so many African states did in the 1960s, in 1961.  But don’t forget that what we now call it is not quite the same thing, because it incorporated with Zanzibar three years later, and they simply took the “Tan” of Tanganyika and the “Zan” of Zanzibar and called it “Tanzania.”

WERMAN:  Now Harry, you’ve come up with about 50 examples in your book.  What’s the most recent name change to your mind?

CAMPBELL:  Well, there’s some which are very much kind of in progress, if you like.  There’s sort of an infamous one really, Derry, or Londonderry in Northern Ireland. That’s still very much bubbling under.  There’s some kind of procedure in progress at the moment to officially change the name from Londonderry, which is hated by the Republican community, to Derry, which is probably what most people call it, but that’s not an easy thing to do.  A lot of them seem recent to

me, even though actually they’re not when you add it up.  I still think of Yugoslavia as being recent, but unfortunately it isn’t. That’s just age, isn’t it?

WERMAN:  And what drives these name changes?  I mean, Londonderry and Derry, I mean, there’s a lot of political subtext there, isn’t there?

CAMPBELL:  A huge amount of political subtext.  Some of these things are very hot potatoes altogether and they’re to do with righting ancient injustices or the head on clash of two cultures, or changing from one language to another.  A lot of places in Eastern Europe we used to call by their Germanic name, and now we use the Slavic equivalent.  And of course the African ones often had European style names invented for them which have now been done away with.

WERMAN:  If you look at India, you’ve got the cities of Calcutta and Madras, now Kolkata and Chennai.  What’s driving that, do you think?

CAMPBELL:  Cynically, you might say that is the most overtly and really blatantly political of all, because you might ask, why did the Indian names change now, 50 years [MISSING AUDIO] very tangled web and I think many people in India would say they should just leave well alone.

WERMAN:  Are you one of those people who pines for Tanganyika as opposed to Tanzania?

CAMPBELL:  No.  By and large, I don’t have strong moral feelings about these different places, except of course to the extent that atrocities happened in them, and let me tell you, some of the stories would curl your hair.  The one feeling I do have sometimes is that nowadays, we’re possibly too quick to use a local name that just doesn’t work happily in English.

WERMAN:  For example?

CAMPBELL:  When there is a perfectly good– well, why do we have to call it Moldova as opposed to Moldavia?  It’s still the same place, you know.

WERMAN:  What drove that change?

CAMPBELL:  I think it’s just part of becoming a new nation, or throwing off the imperial shackles in the case of the Moldovans of the Soviet empire.  They want to sort of rebrand themselves and have a fresh identity.  I supposed, you know, one can sort of sympathize.  That is perfectly legitimate, but it makes people confused and uncertain.  I mean, what’s the adjective?  Are they Mold-O-vans or MOL-do-vans?  No one knows how to pronounce it.

WERMAN:  Now you call this a book of nostalgic geography, but implicit in that nostalgia is some pretty rough and tough histories.

CAMPBELL:  There are.

WERMAN:  For example, I wonder what the Congolese would say when asked, “Were times better when your capital was Leopoldville or now that it is Kinshasa?” and I think most would say, “Independence is far better than the alternative.”

CAMPBELL:  Yes, indeed, but then, of course, independence often goes awry when it’s hijacked by demagogues and tyrants and dictators, so the late and not at all lamented dictator who called Congo Zaire, at least, he called the Belgian Congo Zaire.

WERMAN:  Mobutu Sese Seko.

CAMPBELL:  Exactly.  Now he’s– that was only one of two Congos.  People don’t– people forget that there are in fact two.  There’s the People’s Republic and the Democratic Republic, or Congo Kinshasa, and Congo Brazzaville.

WERMAN:  Right.

CAMPBELL:  But yeah, Kinshasa has been through some pretty bad times.  It used to be “Kin La Belle” because it was thought to be beautiful.  It was one of the most elegant and modern African cities, but I don’t think that it still really could quite be called that.  It’s suffered quite badly over the years.

WERMAN:  Harry Campbell, are there any cases of voluntary name changes that didn’t involve colonial powers invading or conquesting an area?

CAMPBELL:  There’s a place in Montana that renamed itself Joe, so that it could be Joe, Montana.

WERMAN:  Right, I remember that, yeah.

CAMPBELL:  No, but how seriously people take these sorts of name changes, I’m not 100 percent sure.  It’s just a bit of fun, I guess.

WERMAN:  I’m wondering, you mentioned Moldova.  I’m wondering if there’s a place name that you think really should get changed.

CAMPBELL:  Well, I wonder what people think about those.  Presumably if they haven’t changed them, they’re not bothered by them.

WERMAN:  Well, that’s a great question we can share with our listeners.  What disappearing name would you like to bring back?  Which place names would you like to see retired?  So let us know.  Post your comments at The World dot org, and we can circle back with you Harry, and give you some of those answers, maybe for some further research.

CAMPBELL:  That would be great.

WERMAN:  Harry Campbell, that’s still your name, right?  You didn’t change it since this interview began?

CAMPBELL:  No, I’m sticking with it for now.  I’ll cross it out on the headed paper if I change my mind.

WERMAN:  All right, Harry Campbell, the author of “Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?” speaking to us from Glasgow, Scotland.  Thank you very much.

CAMPBELL:  You’re welcome.  Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

For today’s Geo Quiz we’re looking for strip of Australian coastline bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west and the Timor Sea to the north. The answer is the Kimberley Coast, where this week an undersea oil pipeline ruptured and is spewing crude oil and natural gas into the sea. Anchor Jeb Sharp finds out more from John Carey, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Kimberley Conservation Project.

It’s a strip of coastline bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west and the Timor Sea to the north. The region is home to coastal red rock canyons, tropical mangrove stands, even patches of rainforest. It’s also home to rare and endangered plants and animals, both on land and in the water.

What it doesn’t have much of is people. Barely 40,000 residents, in an area roughly the size of California. Much of the coast is unspoiled by development. But a big environmental threat emerged this week. It’s a leak from an offshore oil platform.

So, we head to northwestern Australia to get the answer to our Geo Quiz. It’s a remote stretch of coastline that even most Australians don’t know much about. It’s bathed by both the Indian Ocean to the west and the Timor Sea to the north.

It is the Kimberly Coast, where this week an undersea oil pipeline ruptured and is spewing crude oil and natural gas into the sea. Anchor Jeb Sharp finds out more from John Carey, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Kimberley Conservation Project.

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The Wild Australia Program

The shortest way is to cross an ocean — and that’s the ocean we want you to name. A direct flight from Perth in Western Australia to Mauritius covers more than 3,000 miles of water.

If you’re not in a hurry, you could hop a cruise ship. But imagine rowing….and rowing … and rowing …. to cross that stretch of ocean.

Sarah Outen has been doing that in a 20-foot rowboat for more than 4 months. She’s endured huge waves, sharks, and exhaustion. But she made it…. though she’s a little shaky.

“It’s crazy I’m not very good at walking have I can stand up but I have to hold on to things it’s as if I’ve been at the beers all night, I’m a bit wobbly.”

Sara Outen completed her crossing of the Indian Ocean this week. And the Indian Ocean is the answer to our quiz. The British rower is the first woman to accomplish the feat… She also did it in record time. Outen says coming ashore turned out to be one the trickiest parts of the trip:

“I capsized quite a few times into a very big sea and actually came to rest on the reef. So rather than paddling up to the jetty nice and sedately, I finished my crossing stuck on the reef! Which is all rather hairy I think. I’m very glad to just be back safe and dry land and see my family and friends again.”

Outen rowed about 12 hours a day, sometimes longer. She dodged storms and passing ships. She says there were plenty of perils to keep her awake and there was plenty of time to just reflect.

“You think about all sorts of things while you’re out there sometimes you’re not thinking about anything other than staying safe and surfing down waves safely quite often you’re just taking in the sea state and the clouds, the wildlife, home and what I might do next so you do a lot of thinking inside your head.”

Some of that thinking was about her father who died three years ago. He suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, and Outen undertook the journey to raise money for arthritis research. Along with sturdy oars and essential food and water, Outen equipped her boat with a few bottles of champagne:

“Those 3 bottles of champagne were for different landmarks in the trip, there was one was for my birthday, 24th birthday, another was for the anniversary of Dad’s death, and the third were for the half way mark so they’ve all been drunk and were very much enjoyed out there.”