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LEUPUNG (Aceh, Indonesia): There are macaque monkeys in the hills and the occasional water buffalo. There are several durian trees and a few dozen coconut palms. But nobody lives in Leupung any more.
What was once the bustling home to more than 10,000 people on the Indonesian province of Aceh's west coast is now an eerily quiet rubble wasteland, decimated by the earthquake and towering waves that hit it ten days ago.
"There's nothing any more," said Achmad Zainuddin, who saw the town and his entire family washed away while collecting firewood on a hill above the town.
There are only a few hundred known survivors from what was once Leupung. The last of those who tried to hang on set off last Saturday on the long trek to Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, in search of food and medical care in what have become fast-expanding refugee camps.
Yet it is a scene that has been replicated over and over again on the west coast of Aceh, hit hardest by the Boxing Day disaster, and one that will take years to recover from.
Much of the attention of authorities has been focused in the past week-end more on the fate of Meulaboh, a city of more than 100,000 that was the population centre closest to the epicentre of the earthquake. The toll in Meulaboh remains unclear, although it is likely to be in the tens of thousands.
But what is clearer to anyone who visits Aceh's west coast is that an almost total devastation visited it the day after Christmas.
In the town of Calang farther to the south, authorities were helping the few survivors among what was once a population of 9,000, resigned to the fact it would be a year or two before it was fit again for human habitation, said Alwi Shihab, the minister supervising Indonesia's efforts to recover from the disaster.
"This is going to be an abandoned city. It's not going to be a living area any more," he said.
That is also likely to be the fate in Leupung where the only people visible were refugees streaming north to Banda Aceh and what they hope will be help or family members coming to see the scene for themselves.
Ridwan Jafar, a motor cycle repairman, was looking for what was once his sister's house. He had travelled by bus overnight with his brother and a neighbour from his home in east Aceh before undertaking the long walk into Leupung.
"I don't know whether they are still alive or not," he said soon after he arrived. "We hoped there would be people here."
But it took only half an hour for him to survey scene and determine likely fate of his sister, husband and their three children and to begin the home.
Zainuddin, a 31-year-old farmer, had returned from Banda Aceh last Saturday to see if he could find the body of his wife and 18-month-old daughter -- or his mother, father and two brothers, all of whom lived under the same roof as him.
But he too was giving up hope. After a few hours of looking he turned back to Banda Aceh and to the refugee camp where he is living, unsure what to do.
"Before this happened everything in Leupung was so safe," he said as he prepared to leave. "Nothing happened here."
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