Weh

Further than the northern headland of Sumatra, Weh is to be found, a small island which is still part of the Aceh Province but which doesn’t seem so. Women can swim wearing bikini, beer can be drunk without shame and the mood is very relaxing…

It’s possible to do some fishing also, and the only thing is to protect the skins against the Sun rays...

Oh Thai Thai Thai…

A break that came on time became for me the opportunity to go on the continent. I chose to make few steps in Thailand in order to change in seeing other things than Aceh Province!Well, so many discoveries! Girls do exchange the veil against the skirt, what tends to please me but could also struggle against my charia formatted spirit.One more thing is that the mosques have been replaced by buddhist temples and that a lot of bald heads people walk in the street, wearing their orange outfit.One week is far from being enough to get a precise idea of a country. Moreover, I didn’t visit many places, Bangkok where I landed and Chiang Mai, that I reached by train.

Bangkok seems to be a very interesting and astonishing city, which would certainly need time to be tamed. I didn’t succeed in so few days of course! However, I realized that this town is rich and sensual, polluted and noisy. The Tuk Tuk replace the Indonesian Becak with the same advantages and…defects also.
Going along its streets during the day and the night are two different things. One is to trade the goods, the other one to trade the souls.

Chiang Mai is a place huddled between hills not far from Myanmar’s boarder. Surrounded by elephants and villages inhabited by Karen people these opium growers exiled from Myanmar and converted into craftsmen, Chiang Mai is very attractive and therefore is developing its economy as well as the prostitution…

These were quick steps, but good ones also…a journey full of beautiful meetings and a new blow…the perfect thing to restart the activities on this good island of Sumatra!

Gunung Sinabung

In Sumatra inlands, some distance away from the busy Medan, there is a cool and relaxing place. Not far from a lake with fresh and limpid water, a huge rocky body called Gunung Sinabung is still raising its awesome sulfur fumes, as he’d play with the sky. After having lived in the “flat” and “hot” north-west part of Sumatra, it was a real pleasure to climb on this humid and slippery volcano surrounded by refreshing mist…

The clouds were so dense over there, that I couldn’t see a lot from this point, but I felt good, calm and peaceful.

Once upon a time, a tsunami…

Sometimes, words need some time to emerge from the thoughts…Several and contradictory feelings came over and caught me when I arrived on Sumatra. I dealt with them as well as I could and now I can get a better idea of the world which surrounds me.

Meulaboh is a town of the north-west Coast of Sumatra Island in Aceh Province…

The tsunami has been a hard time for all Aceh people. A large part of the population disappeared with the deadly wave. The giant water body not only destroyed houses and roads but took away thousands of tons of materials and trees on several kilometers inland.
Most of the survivors lost family members as well as their houses, their fields…

After the disaster they don’t have anything and have to rebuild their lives. I meet them and go along with them one an half year later and sometimes I have to make efforts to realize what happened to them. It’s harrowing to hear these evidences of people who show you the place where their house used to be, where there’s almost nothing remaining, excepted the emerged part of a well or some tiling of the old bathroom.

Meulaboh seems to be a normal place today. However, when the steps lead the visitor to Ujong Karang, Indrapuri or Gampong Belakang, quarters located on the headland of the town, then it can be imagined how Meulaboh has been affected.

All is razed, rubbishes remain on the ground and the place seems to be abandoned let to the history just like a sanctuary that human being can’t pretend reaching anymore.

First steps in Meulaboh

My stay here in Meulaboh surprises me day by day. I really enjoy the place; however it also revealed many interrogations as well as many frustrations.

Even if Indonesia is crowded by a majority of muslim people, it remains a laic country.
Only the Aceh Province in the northern part of Sumatra Island is controlled by the charia law, and that can lead to difficult situations especially for the women…

When I listen to the muezzin songs during prayer time, it sounds like they accord themselves to the beauty of the world. Then, all is surrounded by the vibrations and a mysterious wind almost mystical comes over. But when I think of people suffering from the charia law, these songs sounds different to me.

Before coming over, I heard that the charia here was not so strong and that it was part of a relatively “open minded” islam…
In the place, I realize that it was not that true…In the street, it can be seen that all women don’t wear the veil indeed, but if they leave their hometown, they don’t have choice but to wear it. Furthermore, the charia police can go out and look for these guilty people who don’t wear what they are supposed to, or are on the wrong place on the wrong time…
Then these guilty women can be lead to the mosque to be beaten....