In a remarkable turn of events, a couple who had lost their children amid devastation of the tsunami were reunited with them years later

Indian Ocean tsunami 2004: 'I really felt that both of my kids were still alive'

The last time Jamaliah saw her two children they were clinging to a thick plank of wood, being swept away by a tsunami wave that had descended upon Aceh, Indonesia. It was 26 December 2004.

For most of the next decade Jamaliah refused to believe that Raudhatul, her daughter, and son, Arif Pratama, had really gone – two of the thousands who died as a consequence of that day.



In August this year she was proved right.



In one of the most remarkable stories to emerge after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, Jamaliah and her husband were reunited with Raudhatul after a relative spotted a teenage girl in an Aceh village who bore a striking family resemblance.



“When I looked at her, I felt sure that she was my daughter,” Jamaliah says of the photo her brother sent from his phone. “I felt it inside, and also I felt pain in my stomach, like the pain when I gave birth to Raudhatul.”



Their subsequent reunion saw their family photo broadcast on television screens across the country and fortuitously into one home in West Sumatra, where a woman recognised Arif Pratama as the boy who occasionally slept outside her internet cafe.



Two miracles later, their father, Septi Rangkuti, 52, is counting his blessings but insists he always knew they were out there. “I really felt that both of my kids were still alive,” he says. “I knew someone must have saved them.”

The 2004 tsunami devastated Indonesia’s Aceh province, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands, flattening entire towns along the west coast.



Meulaboh, where Jamaliah and her family lived, was one of the worst hit. For days the town was cut off from help because the bridges to the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, had been washed away.

Those who survived – reportedly a quarter of the 40,000 people living there – went without water and food, forced to search for dirty rice among the corpses and debris.



In the hours after the tsunami, Jamaliah waited anxiously at the hospital for bodies to arrive, checking to see if her children were among the dead. As the days and weeks passed she scoured the refugee camps, but there was no trace of them.

The morning the tsunami struck they had all piled on to one motorbike to flee, but they barely had the chance. “The street was so jammed with cars and bikes and then the wave came, along with the debris and bits of houses and trash,” recalls Jamaliah.

In the chaos, her husband had groped for a floating piece of wood, an unhinged door, managing to place Raudhatul and Arif on top before the water swept them apart. Neither of the children could swim, but as they drifted out to sea they clung to that door before they were eventually rescued.

“All I can remember was being on that plank with my brother, I was only four and a half,” says Raudhatul, now 14. “I was on the plank and then suddenly we were on the island. Someone helped us, his name was Bustamir, but I don’t remember how we got there.”



Bustamir, a fisherman, and his wife, Sari, took the two children into their home on the Banyak Islands, some 155 miles from Meulaboh. But a frightening and unpredictable nine years ensued.



One day Sari threw boiling water at Arif’s face – he still has the scar on his forehead – and after that his sister recalls him being taken away.



Raudhatul, who was renamed Wenni, stayed with the couple for two years during which time she was occasionally beaten by the fisherman’s wife. “I remembered my mother and I missed her,” says Raudhatul of that time. “But I was too scared to tell them.”

Two years later the young girl was handed over to the fisherman’s sister. Then, age 10, she was passed on to their mother, Sarwani. Raudhatul spent her days collecting used water bottles to resell to make sure they had enough money for food, rarely going to school.

It was her uncle Zainuddin, who happened to live in the same town just 1km away, who first spotted her on the street in June.



I always felt, in my heart, that one day my prayers would be answered and we would be united again Jamaliah Rangkuti

“My brother has a picture of her when she was little, and he showed the picture to the people there,” says Jamaliah. “People were saying, ‘Yes, this is the kid, this is the kid.’”

After Zainuddin sent a photo of the teenage girl to his sister, Jamaliah and Septi travelled to Blangpidie, West Aceh.



“I knew it was her. When I saw her I hugged her and she cried with me,” says an emotional Jamaliah. “I always felt, in my heart, that one day my prayers would be answered and we would be united again.”



At first, Sarwani refused to give the 14-year-old up, claiming the teenager was the child of a divorced couple. Word spread around the village that Jamaliah wanted to have a DNA test and by the next day Sarwani had changed her story.

“They were just making excuses because they actually wanted money,” says Jamaliah.



This first miracle led the couple to find their missing son, who had been living on the streets in a neighbouring province. The family moved to Medan, north Sumatra, last month.

Jamaliah says she is lucky beyond belief but admits it is tough making up for lost time. Arif, a traumatised 17-year-old, can barely read and write after years of living on the street. Raudhatul, 14, is enrolled in year five at school, several years below her peers.

But their mother has not given up hope.



“Raudhatul, since she was a little girl, always said she wanted to be a teacher. Arif wanted to be in the armed forces,” says Jamaliah, “Hopefully, if God allows, I can help them achieve what they wanted.”