Homes, lives buried in debris ...
Palu – Stepping gingerly through the pulverised remnants of her Indonesian village, Nonlis Kando spotted a familiar white shoebox imprinted with neon red lips among the ruins and burst into tears.
The 35-year-old office worker had found her home – or what was left of it after an earthquake and tsunami obliterated parts of Palu on Sulawesi island.
A week after the twin disaster killed more than 1 700 people, with a further 5 000 believed missing, Kando returned to her neighbourhood for the first time since running for her life as the world around her collapsed.
Petobo, a cluster of villages in Palu, was one of the worst-hit.
Much of it was sucked whole into the ground, as the vibrations from the quake turned soil to quicksand in a process known as liquefaction.
It is feared that beneath the crumbled rooftops and twisted rebar, many bodies remain entombed.
Aghast at the totality of devastation, barely a vertical structure remaining, Kando joined shellshocked neighbours as they staggered through their unrecognisable community.
But her mood quickly shifted from horror to grief as she spotted the empty shoebox, and realised the sickening mash of mud and concrete at her feet once housed her worldly possessions.
“Now, the house is here, behind me. But before it was right over there,” she said, staring in disbelief.
“That’s my home, down there,” she said, pointing at a soil-clad rug and some familiar tiles, a few things that hold memories on top of this giant stinking pile of mud.
She noticed a binder holding certificates and important personal documents, the reason she returned in the first place.
But the impact of her discovery – and realisation of everything that was lost – overwhelmed her.
The scale of the task ahead is enormous. For now she is living with her parents, many miles away.
But she struggles to imagine what life will now be like for her, her husband Michael and their two young daughters.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” she said.
For now, she will make do with the documents and the comfort of a few fragments of her old life salvaged from her home. –