It’s exactly 16 years since more than 140,000 lives were lost in Aceh from the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Spare a thought and say a prayer, but hear this story too.

It’s a tale of Aceh’s miraculous recovery, and how its economy were rebuilt piece by piece.

A thread:

1. Sanusi’s coffe shop was about 15 minutes from the shoreline in Banda Aceh. When the waves came, the water was as high as eight meters.

He lost his store, his house, his wife, and eldest son.

With a $500-dollar loan, he managed to rebuild his coffee shop within 5 months.

Sanusi did not lose hope. He had his family and customers to think about.

The coffee shop itself is a hub for other businesses in the area, and the entire community. Street vendors returned to sell their own food and wares.

“Rebuilding this place was not just for me”,he said.

2. In Aceh, gold is king, with its own measurement system. One ‘mayam’ is about 3.3 grams.

Western-style banks were relatively rare. People would buy gold after a bumper harvest and sell after lean ones.

It’s also key to Aceh’s post-tsunami recovery.

Gold traders in Banda Aceh were among the first businesses to reopen, within 3 months of the disaster.

The traders did not sell gold. They became bulk buyers of ingots and jewelry, which generated much-needed funds for customers to rebuild their lives.

Many lost everything they had, but were able to sell the gold they were wearing at the time of the disaster.

The gold traders did not lowball their customers. They bought at fair prices, which they then succeeded to sell back to jewellers in Jakarta.

Unlike banks, the gold traders were not predatory. They provided quick access to cash and contributed to the recovery efforts.

Most banks in Aceh were totally destroyed, and without the informal gold economy, customers would have struggled to get their capital ASAP.

3. Aceh’s Miracle

After the tsunami, its economy didn’t just recover. It improved by leaps and bounds.

Aside from the catastrophic human costs, the tsunami also brought economic benefits.

Thus we can view Aceh as an equivalent of a post-war economic boom.

First, here’s the economic and human toll:

- 140,000 lives lost

- 105,000 small businesses lost

- 14,000 fishing boasts and small vessels destroyed

- innumerable jobs lost from the wholesale destruction of sectors and industries

From 2005-2009, a total of $6.7 billion in global financial aid contributed to the rebuilding process.

Homes, shops, schools, roads, and sewerage systems were completely rebuilt from the ground up, and in most ways they were an improvement to what Aceh had before the tsunami.

As a temporary ‘aid economy’, the rush in cash and spending obviously drove up demand for brick, concrete, wood, cement, and all the materials needed for the rebuilding.

Aid agency cash supported jobs and wages, and in 2006 inflation surged by 35%.

These were the boom years.

When the aid agencies began to leave, the loss of income, production, and spending was expected to be catastrophic for the local economy.

From 2005-2008, Aceh’s GDP grew by 19%. Then the aid economy ended.

How did it perform from 2009-2013?

The GDP grew by 23% !

This is a story of the Acehnese desire to rebound from extreme loss, grief, and never losing hope in the face of unimaginable losses.

But Aceh itself was transformed by the reconstruction.

The infrastructure rebuild improved the economy into a self-sustaining one.

Villages lacking sewerage systems in the past now have houses with built-in bathrooms.

Bridges are bigger, and roads are wider, improving connectivity and the transport of goods.

Facilities and factories were rebuilt, retooled, and repurposed, improving output.

The temporary aid boom also generated extra cash for the purchase of goods.

Most families now own at least one motorbike, and the use of mobile phones became widespread.

Now it’s easier to get to work, and easier to communicate. Productivity improved by leaps and bounds.

4. Even when all physical assets are lost, people retained skills, knowledge, and ingenuity.

This ‘human capital’, added by no small amount of resilience, is why even the most extreme cases of disaster can lead to a sooner-than-expected recovery.

By meeting and improving basic needs, quality of life and productivity also improve in tandem.

When basic needs are met, there’s more time to learn, more time to work, and more time to improve one’s own economic situation.

To sum it up:

Do not pity the Acehnese for what happened.

Respect them, and learn from their experiences.

Work hard, survive, and thrive.

Our problems are probably petty and insignificant compared to what they had to go through on 26 December, 2004.

Spare a thought.

The stories here were reproduced from this book - highly recommended reading