A different view of Oxfam

I'm assuming this interpretation is correct, but don't know for sure. The politics seem real.

By the bridge at Ulee-Lheue, the Ground Zero of the tsunami where the giant wave smashed into Banda Aceh and made the city look like a nuclear wasteland, stands the shell of a ruined house.

It has become an icon of the destruction, partly because of its location and partly because of the graffiti that have been painted on its cream walls.

The first, days after the deluge, defiantly proclaimed the owner still alive against all the odds. Later a more philosophical admonition, "Remember we will all die", followed. The most recent, in dark blue paint, alleges: "Oxfam bandit".

According to Ian Small, the charity’s senior programme manager for Aceh and Nias, the inscription was the work of a single disgruntled individual, who believed he had been promised a cash grant by one of its staff in a livelihood programme later transferred to another agency. "We weren’t able to communicate with that individual," he said.

But Faisal Hariandi, head of a barracks where 150 people live a few yards away from the house, said: "Oxfam have made a lot of promises but it hasn’t come. They always ask people to have meetings, so we lost patience and we protest.

At the time of the disaster, the overwhelming sentiment among the Acehnese victims was to accept their fate. Comments along the lines of "If people want to help we will be grateful and say thank you, if they do not that is our destiny" were ubiquitous.

But when $7 billion are pledged to a devastated province, and hundreds of aid agencies establish themselves in the area, expectations are inevitably created. Those who feel the wave of benevolence has passed them by have become more critical.

Down the road from Ulee-Lheue, in Deah Geulempang, Oxfam quickly built scores of semi-permanent houses, but time has taken its toll on the structures.

Muktar Rachmani, 63, the oldest survivor in the village, said: "Oxfam built quite fast in the early days after the tsunami so the people just accepted it at that time. We feel embarrassed to live in that house and disappointed because other houses are much better. "If it rains the water will come in - the wind takes the water into the house. They said they have a plan to rebuild the house better. It’s been a while now and nothing has happened.

"Some of the NGOs fight each other to claim a village is occupied by them, but then build something bad and other NGOs cannot come in and build something better because that NGO has occupied it."

The fact is, everyone wants to help those in need...initially, but when it gets messy or too much time passes (think NOLA), they really don't give a shit. Aceh province is now suffering from flooding from heavy rains and it hasn't recovered from the tsunami.

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