WHEN the survivors of Lampuuk had picked themselves up out of the mud of the tsunami, several appalling facts became clear.

The first was that their town no longer existed. The second was that four out of five of its former inhabitants were dead. But it took a while to realise the strangest thing of all: that among those who made it to higher ground, or who kept their heads above the surging waters, so few were women.

Out of a population of about 6,000, only 950 residents of Lampuuk had been accounted for yesterday and fewer than 200 of those were female. In one of the town’s constituent villages only four women were left alive, three of those because they were out of town when the wave struck.

The disaster has left children without mothers and teachers, old people without carers, husbands without wives, and young men with little immediate prospect of finding a partner. This is the cruel twist for Aceh: apart from their homes and fields, the people of Lampuuk have lost the women at the core of their community.

The reasons for this demographic tragedy are heartbreaking. Lampuuk’s men, being fishermen, were the stronger swimmers. And because of the timing of the tsunami, early in the morning, it was women who had the burden of saving the other great victims of the disaster, Aceh’s children.

“Women are weaker than men, but also many women tried to bring with them their children,” says Basaria Binti Hassan, a teacher from the inland village of Lam Lhom, where the survivors of Lampuuk now live in the local school.

“The men were out at their boats, and they could run away, but a woman will do whatever she can to bring her children with her. It was a long distance to run to escape from the wave with little ones, and that is why so many women died.”

Based on the present headcount, and assuming an even division between the sexes, 25 per cent of Lampuuk’s men survived compared with just under 7 per cent of its women. In the village of Lambaro, only one made it out alive from the wave, a shy 33-year-old named Atiyah Binti Ali Hussein.

Atiyah lost her brothers and sisters, mother and father. Her husband Em Nur made it, but their three children, Dara Satriana, 11, Titin Muaira, 9, and Taisir, 2, all drowned somewhere between their house and that of Atiyah’s mother. Yesterday, she crouched on the floor at the school pounding tamarind for the lunchtime cooking pot and wept as she talked.

“I am still young, but I am afraid to have another baby because this may happen again,” she says. “Every night I dream of my children. I can’t bear to see other people’s children because it makes me remember my own. I don’t want children any more because I cannot protect them.”

More than in most communities, the role of women is central to society in Aceh. Female guerrillas with assault rifles and Islamic headscarves have their own units within the Free Aceh independence movement. It is women who are the custodians of traditional ceremonies. In Lampuuk, at least, all of this is at risk of being lost.

“I don’t understand all the ceremonies, because that is what the old women know,” says Atiyah. “But the old women have all died. In a marriage ceremony, for example, women have many rituals but perhaps we cannot hold those any more. I am afraid of losing our culture, but at the moment we have too much else to think of.”

A team of French doctors from the relief agency Médecins du Monde visits Lam Lhom every other day. Having treated wounds and respiratory infections, they are now seeing signs of the invisible injuries inflicted by the wave.

“First there is the individual loss,” says Dr Guy Caussé. “Then there is the guilt. People talk about how they could not grip a child’s hand tightly enough, and wonder why they were able to move more quickly than their dead brothers and sisters.”

Even after the houses are rebuilt, towns like Lampuuk all over Aceh will lie in psychological ruins.

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