Tsunami FC’s remarkable come-back

Arsa is 28 years old and passionate about football. But his passion conceals a tragedy: three years ago, all but two of the football team he played for in the province of Besar, in Banda Aceh, were killed in the great Asian tsunami.

Arsa vividly recalls the day the big wave came for his seaside town. "I walked home early that morning, but the rest of my friends were on the beach sleeping. We were all woken up by the earthquake. The ground was trembling. Because I was 500 metres from the sea I survived: I ran into the hills."

He stares pensively out to sea, which is now a flat mirror of turquoise. "The waves swept everything away. Including my friends. Everyone ran in any direction they could, but if you were that close to the ocean you had no chance."

The aftermath was gruesome. "The beach was strewn with wreckage. Telephone poles, motorcycles, concrete blocks from houses, entire cars. The whole shoreline was in chaos. It was horrible." Arsa does not mention the bodies - but the sea was bobbing with corpses, some of them Arsa's team-mates.

Club Carlos, Arsa's team, lost 30 members that Boxing Day morning. The brutal carnage took all but Arsa and his friend Adex Yunardi, now 23. It looked as if it would be the end of the club, previously a flourishing side in the second division of the Indonesian League. But it wasn't.  Adex Yunardi takes up the story:

"After the tsunami I went to Bandung in West Java, to look for a job. But it was impossible. There were so many people made homeless by the disaster: they were all doing the same. Then a few months ago I heard that Fifa were rebuilding the football field where Club Carlos used to play. Not only that, they were going to make it better - turn it into a real proper ground."

Adex came home, and was delighted to discover that the rumours were true. As part of the international aid project, following the tsunami, Fifa had agreed to rebuild the club, as a source and symbol of hope.

The reconstruction work has not been easy. "The football field was a mess of heavy wreckage," said Adex. "This all had to be moved. It took so long."  Fifa spent a grand total of $3.5m on new seats, new goals, a proper brick wall and fresh green turf.

Of course, times are still hard in Banda Aceh. Billions of dollars in aid have been injected into the local economy, yet some people still subsist in temporary housing. The tsunami was so disastrous it may take a generation for the region to fully recover. And people will never, ever forget.

But the wounds are slowly healing. A few weeks ago Club Carlos played their first match since the wave came. Now they hope to rejoin the league. More important, the club's rebirth has changed the ambience of the area. For three long years the palm-fringed Acehnese beaches have been haunted by the voices of the drowned; now they echo with the happy laughter of kids, playing soccer. ·