Tsunami impact felt at NIU

by Tom Parisi

With its Center for Southeast Asian Studies and its international student population, NIU has ties to virtually all of the nations affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami. While faculty, staff and students who work or live in the affected countries appear to be safe, the university community didn’t escape unscathed.

Lensi Tweed and Elvi Handayani, who moved to DeKalb from Indonesia after marrying NIU students, have learned in recent weeks that about 50 members of their extended family were killed or remain missing. The sisters also lost more than 60 friends and former neighbors.

“Every day I call my mom and sister, and they add to the number,” said Tweed, who works as a server at the Blackhawk Food Court in Holmes Student Center. “It is very difficult. I can’t sleep at all at night. I’m thinking I should do something here for them.”

The tsunami devastated Tweed’s hometown of Banda Aceh, once a city of 400,000 people. It is situated fewer than 200 miles from the epicenter of the extraordinary earthquake that triggered the natural disaster. One government official in Banda Aceh told the Chicago Tribune that an estimated 60 percent of the city’s population is gone – either dead, missing or just staying away because of grief or fear.

Tweed’s parents and sister in Banda Aceh, fearing their home was no longer structurally sound and wanting to escape the death and destruction, moved in with a relative in another town. Tweed hopes to return to Indonesia next month to help with the recovery. Her father is president of a private university that serves large populations of low-income and orphaned students, said Lensi’s husband Mike, a graduate student in political science.

“I want to help my family, friends and neighbors,” Lensi Tweed said.

Toward that end, the Tweeds have established the Indonesia Tsunami Relief Fund at Associated Bank, 1325 Sycamore Road, DeKalb, IL, 60115. Donations in the form of checks can be made payable to the account name.

Deborah Pierce, executive director of NIU International Programs, said intensive efforts were made to contact faculty and students who might have visited Asia over the winter break. Pierce said political scientist Daniel Unger and Diane Jackman, associate dean in the College of Education, were in Thailand the day the tsunami struck, but neither was near the devastation. No students were formally studying abroad in the affected nations.

Many NIU students, however, have ties to the countries impacted by the disaster. The university has 326 students from India, 15 from Thailand, eight from Indonesia, six from Malaysia, three from Myanmar, two from Bangladesh and two from Sri Lanka.

“To the best of our knowledge, everyone is safe,” Pierce said last week. “When you think of the strength of our ties to the region, it’s astonishing that we came through with all of our faculty and students OK. In times like these, we realize that the world is indeed as small as we so frequently claim it to be. We at NIU join with those directly affected by the disaster in mourning their losses and looking toward recovery.”

Jaya Gajanayake of the NIU International Training Office is director of Project GROW, a 2-year-old NIU initiative that aims to foster the democratic leadership skills of women in Sri Lanka. She also is a native of the island nation, among those hardest hit by the tsunami.

“All our families, relatives and friends are safe and have not suffered any other damages except for emotional trauma,” Gajanayake said. She said there were no casualties among the two groups of visitors from Sri Lanka who have come to DeKalb since 2003 for leadership training as part of Project Grow.

“The whole nation is in mourning, and there is a critical need in dealing with trauma,” Gajanayake said. “But from what I hear, there also is a lot of community bonding. Sri Lankans mobilized just a few hours after the tragedy.”

As would be expected, Project Grow will experience some minor delays. Laurel Jeris, NIU project adviser for Project GROW, postponed a trip to Sri Lanka this month where she was to conduct a training program on leadership skills for local governance.

“Things will be delayed by a couple of months,” Gajanayake said. “Over time, however, we expect that our program there will help in the recovery. We will intensify our training efforts and add components on trauma counseling and disaster management. Leadership development is more important now than ever.”

Susan Russell, director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, said NIU students also will be involved in recovery efforts. “Our Indonesian, Thai and American students studying Southeast Asia are already planning a number of fund-raising efforts for this spring on campus to try and assist in the recovery process,” she said.

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