David Wallis is a retired manager who now lives in Medan, on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra. In the early 1990's he worked at a cement factory (the only European among 600 workers) on the beach in Aceh Province and lived about 1 km away on the same beach. Forced to move to Medan by the insurgency in Aceh, he maintained contact with his many Indonesian friends.
Since the catastrophic tsunami of 26 December 2004, he has visited his former home ground several times. He has become deeply involved in raising money and establishing schemes to bring aid to people living as refugees in the ruins of their own homes, many of them his friends of many years. David knows that they are likely to be in need for a long time to come. In his writing, he uses his wide experience of Indonesia to put the present problems into a deeply disturbing historical, cultural and economic context.
We met David over breakfast in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia in early March 2005. Since then, he has written to us and others of his experiences in a series of emails which are reproduced below:
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![normal_2kapal[1].jpg](images/stories/Indonesia:%20Aceh/normal_2kapal[1].jpg "normal_2kapal[1].jpg")
vid Wallis is a retired manager who now lives in Medan, on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra. In the early 1990's he worked at a cement factory (the only European among 600 workers) on the beach in Aceh Province and lived about 1 km away on the same beach. Forced to move to Medan by the insurgency in Aceh, he maintained contact with his many Indonesian friends.![tsunamia_aceh[1].jpg](images/stories/Indonesia:%20Aceh/tsunamia_aceh[1].jpg "tsunamia_aceh[1].jpg")
home ground several times. He has become deeply involved in raising money and establishing schemes to bring aid to people living as refugees in the ruins of their own homes, many of them his friends of many years. David knows that they are likely to be in need for a long time to come. In his writing, he uses his wide experience of Indonesia to put the present problems into a deeply disturbing historical, cultural and economic context.