'It's just like the ocean here now'

The rice fields are washed away. The coconut trees and chilli plants, flooded with salt water, are all dead. The farmers’ fish ponds fail, the water so high that the fish swim over the nets. And rubbish, carried by the tides, floats in and out of homes with doors that can no longer be closed.

On the northern coast of Central Java, Indonesia, villages are hit hard as sea levels rise, one of many effects of climate change. The occupants have had to raise their houses by several feet with cement or earth so that seawater does not come in. Others can only be accessed when the tide is low, trapping people inside for hours at a time.

Many villagers have fled the area, becoming climate migrants seeking new lives in places that are drier and higher above sea level. Others have remained in their flooded homes – some by choice, but many because they lack the money to move.

Zuriah, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, stands in front of her flooded home. The only remnants of the land she once owned are the dirt-filled flower pots that sit on a wooden platform above the water in front of her home.

Without the means to move, the 50-year-old woman continues to live in the house even as almost all of her neighbours leave. In November of last year, 11 homes were still occupied, but by July 2022, that number had dwindled to five, including Zuriah’s.

Zuriah says she is on a list to receive aid from the government, but nothing has happened so far. She has been told to be patient.

Living in the home has meant learning to adapt. Inside, she points to the electrical socket that has been moved up several times on the wall to decrease the risk of electrocution when there are high tides. The wall bears watermarks that show how high the water gets, sometimes less than a foot below the latest electrical socket placement.

Zuriah’s daughter now lives with relatives outside the village so that it is easier for her to attend school. She says her daughter worries about her but that she tells her she must get an education so she can chase her dreams.

When talking about whether she wants to move away from her flooded village, 18-year-old Dwi Ulfani begins to cry.

Ulfani and her family have been living in the flooded family home for as long as she can remember. Outside the house, the yard where she used to play with her friends is now filled with water about eight inches high (20 cm). The home’s concrete terrace is occupied by swimming guppies. Inside the home, a snake slides out of the flooded kitchen, into the sea.

Ulfani’s father and mother are planning to move. They would have preferred to have left already, but say they do not have the money right now.

Ulfani is studying airport management, but when asked what she wants to do after school, she responds in a whisper: “Move.”

Sri Wahyuni sits on a raised wooden doorframe, watching as fellow villagers occasionally pass by on the wooden platform above the water. Her terrace, already elevated by layers of concrete, is under about four inches (10 cm) of water.

Wahyuni, 28, and her husband Jaka Sadewa, 26, moved to the village after they got married in 2018. She says that when they moved here the water was not like this. You could still ride motorcycles along the main road through the village, and the water level always returned to normal, she explains.

But as time went by, Wahyuni started to notice that the water was receding less often, increasing the number of days that their home was flooded. They decided to do what they could to elevate it above the water — adding layers of concrete at first, and eventually building a permanent wooden level above the water. Despite this, the water still comes into the house occasionally. Still, if they had not raised the house, they’d be neck-deep in water, Wayuni says.

Their three-year-old son Bima sits in Sadewa’s lap. While Wahyuni, who grew up in the village, remembers playing in rice fields, watching adults harvest corn and seeing snakes glide through the grass, her son will not have the same experiences. She says he will have to adjust, but she also hopes he has the opportunity to live elsewhere by the time he grows up.

“I’m worried that every year the water will get higher. But we don’t have any resources,” she says. “If we had resources, we would move out.”

Sixty-year-old Kumaison remembers the time she cried when a bad flood washed away the 400,000 Indonesian rupiah ($27) she had been saving. Other items, like clothing and furniture, could be cleaned and repaired. But the money was gone forever.

As a young girl growing up in the village, Kumaison says she remembers her neighbours’ rice fields and shrimp ponds being a thriving business.

But now she says: “Everything is gone, can’t harvest shrimp or fish. It’s changed everyone’s livelihoods.”

Kumaison says her home has been raised with concrete and dirt three times, but the water just keeps getting higher. In the flooded front yard, villagers have helped her build nets that help catch rubbish, preventing it from floating into her home.

Now she has trouble sleeping at night as she worries the water will get even higher as she sleeps. Kumaison’s son lives in a nearby village and has offered for her to move in with him. But despite her worries, Kumaison says she does not want to leave, as she enjoys the company of friends and the community she has known for decades.

Water-damaged books lay drying on the elevated wooden terrace of 46-year-old Munadiroh’s home, while a floating white tub used to transport items in the water is tethered nearby. With no land left in the village, two chickens rustle in a tree nearby, causing the only audible noise in the entire village.

The village has grown quiet since almost every family left due to the constant flooding. Even the local mosque, where Munadroh’s husband served as a scholar, has stopped its calls to prayer.

Without the financial resources to move and with no alternative home to move to, Munadiroh and her family have remained in the village. Her child makes the long journey to school by wading through the water and riding in a boat several times a week. Sometimes their home still floods, but Munadiroh says she keeps working to dry as many things as she can in the sunlight each day.

Sixty-three-year-old Sudarto stands at the door of his flooded home, stepping into the water to walk out onto the terrace. On the wall are water lines, some up to 30cm (one foot), that show how high the flood waters have reached in his already-elevated home.

Sudarto’s 34-year-old daughter, Turiah, lives in the home with him. Born with a physical disability that prevents her from walking, she spends her days sitting in the front window on an elevated wooden platform.

Like many homes in the village, the windows are partially immersed in the seawater that is a permanent fixture inside. In some areas, barnacles and mould rings cling to the walls. Personal items, such as a refrigerator, clothes and an old clock, are kept on wooden platforms elevated above the water.

Mariah sits in a chair at the end of the village’s elevated walkway, her flooded wooden home not far behind her. The 70-year-old widower lives alone with no one to help care for her.

With most of the trees having been killed by the saltwater, there is no shady place where she can sit outside her home unless she is willing to wade through the flood water.

In a soft voice, Mariah explains that she sits in the chair every day waiting until her house is dry enough to enter again. Unlike in neighbouring villages, there is no dirt left in the village that can be used to help elevate her home’s floor. Wooden platforms previously used to elevate the house have already flooded and remain underwater.

Mariah’s remaining neighbours say they have heard that a nearby village has received government aid, but that help has not come to Timbulsloko.

Ngatiroh says that after her mother Suratmi’s home collapsed due to flooding, she moved her into the windowless, dirt-floor home they now share. Damp, mould-laden air hangs in the living room where Suratmi, who is paralysed, lays on a mattress.

Ngatiroh’s home has not been spared by the floods either, she says. They have used layers of dirt to try and raise the floor high enough to keep Suratmi’s mattress dry. The home’s kitchen has permanent standing water, while chickens use the back room as their grazing ground since the back yard disappeared to floods long ago.

Ngatiroh says that she wants to move to a new, drier home, but the family lacks the financial means to do so. Instead, she says, she will just keep adding layers of dirt to raise their home above the rising water, trying to keep her ageing mother safe.

Sitting on the porch of the house she was born in, 55-year-old Wahidah chats with her friends as they avoid the heat of the sun.

She recalls how when she was little she would see buffalo roam through the village’s fields where rice, corn and chillies would grow. Some neighbours kept fish ponds filled with catfish they could sell at the market or eat themselves.

“Everything we needed was here,” she says.

She remembers how the water began to rise. The fields and trees all died from the salt water. All the buffalo were sold as the land they were kept on disappeared. Eventually, even the graveyard was flooded.

“It’s just like the ocean here now,” she says.

These days, a man comes on a boat during the week to sell them the things they used to be able to grow or raise for themselves. Houses have collapsed around them.

Wahidah says she knows about 40 people who have left, moving to other parts of Java that have not permanently flooded yet.

“I think the younger generation should move. If they have money they should buy land. But I don’t have money right now, so I stay,” she says.

Crabs scuttle through the water where Sukarman’s yard used to be.

The 73-year-old man has lived in the village for most of his life, working as a handyman and staying close to his family. He has raised his house and the land around it twice, but the floods still come into the house. He says he gave up trying to raise the land again.

“We’ve already done it twice and it hasn’t worked, so what else can we do?” he asks.

He says the government has helped with donations of food and advice on where villagers might be able to move. But the government has not been able to stop the flooding.

Sukarman thinks younger people, such as his granddaughter Dwi Ulfani, should move away if they can. But he knows that with no money or other family homes, he is likely to spend the rest of his life living in an increasingly flooded home.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asks. “I’m old. There’s nothing I can do.”