INDONESIA Final Report
Before we get to Marc's 120 Day Report I wanted to take a moment to thank Marc personally for his big heart and strong back. He has worked so very hard in the last year in both Mississippi and Yogyakarta. I valued his help, guidance and friendship in Biloxi and I want to personally thank him for all the great things he did in Indonesia. Thank you for helping to create another successful Hands On project Marc!
Micro Financing
Right at the end of our time in Sawit one of our alums from Biloxi, Nick Taranto, arrived. Nick is working as an ETA (English teaching assistant) in Indonesia and brought some people to the village that are establishing micro-financing programs throughout the country. The idea is to have a co-operative type of bank that is self managed and allows the community to draw small loans for livelihood development. Providing start up money and given a relatively small amount of seed money, the project could help many people in the village. It is all very much in the preliminary stages at this point but there is possibility that we will have an ongoing presence in Sawit in the form of this program. We are very excited about the prospect of helping to bring this to the village and will keep you posted with the progress.
Photo Project
We continued to developed photos right up to the last week! The last batch of 368 prints was taped up in banner form at our farewell party. It was amazing to watch the villagers walk around, discuss, and laugh at the photos. They would single out prints that contained friends or family and refer the pictured person to that particular print when they arrived. Once someone took one of the photos and the gates were opened, it took a matter of minutes before all that was left were the bare lines. That last batch of prints brought the total number of photos developed by Hands On to 1,989!!! Thanks to all of the volunteers that gave pictures to our photo bank and also to those who walked with the HODR camera and took photos of the villagers. What fun it was to visit the transitional shelters (homes) and find snapshots or school student photos, that we provided, taped up on the walls to be admired and treasured.
Strong Finish !!
What a blast to have 2 new volunteers arrive for a day of work, on the last day in the field! Through Nick Taranto (see below) that made 3 volunteers arriving in the last week! They are all part of an English teaching program working in different cities throughout Indonesia and were actually on a holiday (of sorts) in Jogja. I was invited to a dinner with the group and had a chance to speak about what HODR was doing in the Sawit and some of the group felt they would like to give some of their time. The last week we had 8 volunteers staying at the "posh house" while repairs were being conducted on Pak Ponos house. We had the added benefit of finishing with 3 fluent Bahasa Indonesia speakers.
The House of Pono
Headquarters, house #1, Pono's house - whatever you want to refer to it as, it was being rebuilt as we left. The plan was to have everything done before we left, but things in Indonesia take time, and then some. The work was well under way with all of the cracked walls repaired and the 3 man crew carrying out the works was scheduled to begin work on the ceiling. The ceiling was estimated to take 2 more days and then the painting would begin. Pak Pono was happy to oversee the finish of the work and he and his family were looking forward to having a newly repaired (and painted) dwelling for the fast approaching rainy season. The location of this house gave us great access to the village and we were fortunate to have been allowed to stay there. Thank you Mr. Sumpono!
Harmi's Cooking Continues!!
Everyone who was there knows how crazy good our food was, everyone who wasn't missed out on sharing food prepared by Harmi and Miaseh. What some of you may or may not know is that Harmi used to have a food stall in the village prior to the earthquake. When everything was knocked down her livelihood was destroyed by falling walls. When TC and I arrived we were lucky to find her and she was happy to have us help her financially. The Thursday before we left Harmi came to us to thank us. She was able to use the money we paid her to purchase the items she had lost and was planning to re-open her stand!! She was beaming. Thank you Harmi and good luck as you continue to please people palates!
Farewell Lottery!
It was suggested way back in early August by David Campbell, as he was sweating over a wheel barrel of rubble, that we have a grand give-away at the end of our stay. Sounded like a really easy way to avoid any sort of social jealousy with a random chance for everyone to win, right? Well, our party coordinator, Stefanie Chang may beg to differ. After a great deal of agonizing it was decided to have 2 lotteries; 1 for the neediest 17 families and 1 for the community as a whole. Then we had complications with choosing a date as well, owing to the start of Ramadan. Then there was the question of who gets an invitation? In the end Stefanie and all of the volunteers did a remarkable job of putting the event together and we gave away the whole lot!! From dust pans, to spring mattresses, to the (in)famous sexy motorbike!! There must have been 200 people at the party where we had the traditional speeches, box catered meals, and loud music followed by a chaotic drawing. It was difficult to decide who was more excited, the person who won the motorbike, the bicycle, or the gas cook top.
Prize Claim Day
Saturday, 30 September, too bad it was just Kevin Digget and I there to see it, but the villagers walking off with their respective prizes was a hoot!! So much fun to have them arrive nervously at the door and speak to Wiwin. She would analyze the documents and tell us what they had won then we would scurry around and gather the items to hand over. Smiling faces all around. They had all manner of transport to haul away their take. We had the chance to carry some of the larger prize loot through the village to the homes of the winners. We used to walk through the village with tools in hand setting of for another day of hard work, but this day we had mattresses on our heads, bamboo benches in our hands, or stand fans across our shoulders. Just about everyone had a laugh as we traipsed along carrying the booty of our prize winning escorts.
There are a few people that I would like to give special recognition to. We would not have been as successful in Sawit as we were without the help and kindness of the following people:
Pak Suparman
Wiwin
Mbak Harme
Mbak Miaseh
Pak Sumpono
Ibu
Ayu
Finally, I want to extend a thank you to all of the volunteers who came to Indonesia and gave their time to help the victims of this horrible natural disaster. The opportunity we had as volunteers to be loved and nurtured by those in need was truly inspiring. It was an experience that will not be forgotten, by the volunteers or by the residents of the village of Sawit. Thank you for helping, thank you for caring, thank you for sharing.
I hope to see you all again, just under different circumstances!
Marc Young, Operations Director
INDONESIA Update: Sept 08, 2006
What a fabulous 30 day period we have had! The volunteer numbers swelled to 18 at the highest point and we have maintained double digits for weeks. Even better is the international face this effort is displaying. Countries represented include volunteers from Korea, South Africa, Malta, Switzerland, Italy, France, Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, Australia, and the USA. You had better act fast if you desire to represent your country, state, or city. We will be here until 30 September, 2006 so book your ticket now and come be a "rock star" volunteer in Sawit.
INDONESIA 60 Day Report
60 Days in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
GREAT NEWS - We have decided to stay in Indonesia until 1 October, 2006. If you were not able to come and help us yet….this is your opportunity. The rainy season in this area typically starts around October and we should be present in the community to help with the final push to get everyone ready for that seasonal change.Many of the people are still living in tents and we are helping to move them into transitional shelters. This type of shelter is designed to withstand rainy season and last a year or 2. So, come, join us for the final month of Project Yogya.
GROWING - This past month saw a HUGE expansion in the volunteer numbers present in Sawit. It went from TC and me to 8 (yes eight) sleeping in the house. This is exciting because it has increased our impact in the community. Where prior it may take up to 4 days to complete the "ruins" removal from the footprint of a house it now takes a single day to clean most areas! The month of August has a steady number of about 15 volunteers with us throughout.
NEW DIGS - We have another house! From the information above I am sure you were wondering where all of those people were going to be resting after a hard days work. It was not easy, actually not even close, but we have another house now about 2 minutes walk from the first. It is quite nice with 2 bedrooms (2 bunk beds in each) and a bathroom that has a proper flush toilet!
RUINS - For those of you that haven't had the joy of hard labor, don't delay (ask David Campbell about the fun!!!). Each of the 5 sub districts of the village has a Chief that seems to possess a bountiful list of residents that have rubble in need of clearing. The debris clearing continues to be the biggest part of our aid here but this work will eventually pass!
PHOTOS - The Village Photo Project continues to be a hit. We have taken over 400 photographs to the printer and handed out most of those to the subjects. Often the recipient bursts out in laughter at seeing themselves in print and they are appreciative to have the keepsake. We have expanded to include a School Photo Project as well. Les with the help of Jacquelyn spent one morning trying to get images of squirming rambunctious elementary age children. Each student will receive a photo of themselves and a group shot of all of the children in their grade level. Even the teachers were excited at having a photo of themselves and their colleagues. I will let you know next month what the distribution of those photos was like, should be interesting!
TEACHING - In an effort to expand the opportunities for our volunteers and allow the children to experience a native English speaker we are now helping at least 2 days per week at the school. The Headmaster of the local primary school has welcomed a number of our volunteers at her school. The students are currently attending classes in an old fashioned military type tent whilst their school is being rebuilt. HODR volunteers have made lesson plans, taught mathematics, English (duh!), and generally assisted wherever they could. Nothing like having eighty 6-9 year olds under one tent being taught by 4 different teachers!! You should try!
MEMORIAL SERVICE - The volunteers present 40 days after the earthquake had a unique experience. It is traditional to conduct a service to honor the dead at 40 and 100 days, 1, 2, and 3 years after the event. Each of the 5 sub districts in our Sawit conducted a prayer service attended by the men and while the women prepare food and tea to be consumed during. Andrea, Cindy, and I were allowed to sit in on the moving prayer ceremony as guests. It was odd to look at the 2 single female Caucasian girls surrounded by married Muslim men! But, as is typical with our experience here the people were gracious and accepting and warm. TC, Daniel, and Chuck also participated in the Rt 1 service and had the same type of hospitality extended to them.
MISSING - Toshiro Kida (TC) was on the ground here in Yogyakarta before I arrived. He was not only our first volunteer here but he was instrumental in helping set up the operation that is running today. He is a GREAT volunteer and a good friend that will be missed…..till next time
Cheers
Marc Young, Operations Director
INDONESIA 30 Day Report
Welcome to the first summary report from our Indonesian Earthquake Relief Effort!
The situation here is amazing! We have this little house in the middle of a very hard hit village. We are currently helping the very proactive residents clear the "ruins" from the footprint of their home. The reward has been great - just as we finish the clearing and they have an adequate space they start hauling in bamboo, fresh cut from neighboring stands, and begin to erect their version of transitional shelter! They lash the bamboo together and then put a tarp over the top and have something that will provide shelter while they re-build their house around it. The work at present can be physically demanding, but we are starting to find other projects to become active in (in true HandsOn fashion!).
The truth is that the government initially grossly underestimated the magnitude of the earthquake disaster. The media ran through its attention span with the numbers of houses destroyed at 60,000+. That was the number reported when HODR decided to send in an assessment team. Since our arrival the numbers have escalated to around 260,000+ homes destroyed and or damaged enough to be unusable....but now the attention of the world is gone.
The digital camera is constant source of enjoyment, especially for the children and has spawned a new project for us. We are in the process of accumulating photographs of the children and the village residents so we can print them, post them on the wall (like our gallery in Biloxi) and invite all to see. The joy will come when we give the pictures to the subjects! You see, most of our neighbors do not have the money for such a frivolous expenditure as cameras and film.
Probably the most interesting aspect of our involvement has been the heartfelt interaction with the residents of the hamlet. The spirit of community and helping and giving is overwhelming. We are feed lunch, tea and biscuits, and dinner every day at the house we are working on! They also strictly regulate our working hours! We are not allowed to work past 11:00a because the sun is too intense and we are not allowed to work after 5:00p because we must go home and bathe (I didn't think I smelled that bad!)
I don't think I have laughed as hard, as honestly, and as often as I have among the ruins with the people of the village of Sawit.
Come join us!!
Marc Young, Operations Director
INDONESIA Update: June 20, 2006
Calling All Volunteers! HODR wants you! Marc and TC have been working hard and would love to have some fresh company and additional hands. We have 5 or so Hands On Alumni planning to make it out there in the next few weeks, but we'd love to have you join them. Please refer to the FAQ & Volunteer Information section for more details about volunteering in Indonesia.
INDONESIA: June 10, 2006
We need your help in Indonesia. We have an up and running volunteer center situated halfway between the cities of Yogyakarta and Bantul in Central Java, Indonesia. Now we need your support in volunteering or donations to help keep the project running. For more information on this project, please visit FAQ & Volunteer Information.
INDONESIA First Report
Overview
This is a very preliminary report. TC and I will continue to seek information and provide facts over the upcoming days.
Our hotel (Ishiro) is in an unaffected area of Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta - or Joeg ja for short). We found this college town to be virtually fully functioning with only random pockets of damage. All services needed can be found here. Supplies, accommodations, food water, shopping, internet, transportation are all offered. We have been told that it might be difficult to find hotel accommodations, but haven't found that to be the case. We have been paying 160,000 rupiah (1usd = 8900Rp) for a room with 2 beds, aircon, and private hot water shower, including a simple breakfast. We will be moving tomorrow to a beautiful private home that occasionally lets rooms to college students (none currently rented). We will have a fan room with 2 beds, private bath, laundry service, cleaning every 3 days, breakfast and dinner provided for 95,000 Rp. PER MONTH.
TC and I have been touring the area with the help of a knowledgeable, fluent English speaking, taxi driver cum guide named Suparman. We have driven through Bantul and Klaten extensively, stopping dozens of times to speak with health care providers, church officials, and villagers, as well as visiting several hospitals and one large distribution center.
The need for healthcare seems to be diminishing daily. There are still injured people at the hospitals out in the open but the numbers have been reduced 10 fold. The government has asked that medical supply shipments be stopped. Many of the injured have returned to their villages where ongoing wound care will need to be provided. Be that as it may though, we have come across a number of cases who have refused to seek medical attention for a number of reasons, be it because they don't want to leave their house, their worry about the availability of beds, the distances involved, and/or currently unfounded worries about ability to pay (as all earthquake-related injuries are being treated free of charge.)
Bantul
OBSERVATIONS
Located about 15 minutes South from our hotel, we found devastation is everywhere. The area is heavily dependent upon the growth of rice, and the fields surround and define the clusters of villages. Children line the streets at main artery bottleneck points and intersections where vehicles slow down, holding small cardboard boxes towards the windows and asking simply "will you help us please." Many people have set up tarpaulin "tents" along the sides of the roads, as this is the only area that is flat, not covered in water, and is not covered with debris from the fallen structures. Very few of the homes and businesses are still standing. The few that remain intact have damage severe enough to prevent them from being inhabited, and what remains standing will need to be knocked down eventually, as their lack of structural integrity is beyond the level of safety. The people of the village are quite creative and industrious, using tarps to form shelter and have moved their life under the same. The fear of aftershocks has reduced, and most seem comfortable moving about inside of the damaged structures.
We were told that the earthquake lasted for about 54 seconds. The motion caused the debris pattern to be fairly tight, meaning that most of what was standing or was overhead simply came straight down. The foundations for the most part seem unaffected.
CONCLUSIONS
This area is close enough to Jogja that if reasonable accommodations could not be found it may be possible to commute back and forth. There is a need for immediate assistance with debris removal, and then possibly long term rebuilding.
Klaten
OBERSERVATIONS
Located about 35+ miles East of Jogja and is easily reached by surfaced roads. Once in the affected area, the roads tend to narrow and have been damaged by the earthquake. We encountered only 1 bridge out but I am sure there are more. This area is a little more rural, and some of it borders on a hillside that is somewhat remote, providing a possible explanation for why this region has been mentioned as being underserved. We did find people with tents and tarpaulins and encountered a mobile medical unit. The amount of damage is no less severe than in Bantul, if not worse. Virtually everywhere you look you see small villages that have been reduced to piles of rubble. We encountered one village that posted a sign listing the dead at 10, injured at 32, and homes destroyed 100%. We came upon a group of school students who were cleaning off the foundation of one of their teachers. They formed a fire chain and were passing debris hand over hand until it reached the street.
CONCLUSIONSThere is as much a need in Klaten as there is in Bantul. It is difficult to determine at this point if indeed this area is being underserved.
Overall Conclusions and Ideas
We have been here for 2 full days and have not been to any of the coordination meetings as of this writing. Any plans and ideas will need modification based on what information we glean from those meetings.
One area where our organization could make a significant impact is in helping with the debris removal phase. The work is labor intensive, and for the most part it must be done by hand with simple tools. The process is to salvage whatever materials are re-useable and pile those on the slab. The standing walls are knocked down and with the fallen debris it is moved to the edge of the street (same as gutting in post-Katrina). Even from the street the debris removal is likely to be by hand loading trucks due to the lack of heavy equipment and the difficulty of getting it into certain areas.
From what we have seen, Indonesian life in the villages has traditionally been very communal, which has been evident in the aftermath of the earthquake. One village we visited had self-organized a community feeding station, where the women took turns cooking meals for the whole village, and other tasks such as washing dishes, keeping patrol duty, etc., were assigned to the villagers on a rotating basis as well. Another example is the aforementioned fire chain of students. The dispersed geography of the villages throughout the countryside and the strong affiliation the villagers have with and for their villages would explain the lack of centralized refugee camps and the resultant difficulty in distributing supplies; conversely, we believe it is a model to which our flexibility may be ideally suited, as the majority of the relief has remained centered about Yogyakarta and the city of Bantul proper.
This need not be a "massive" deployment. If we had a consistent number of 10-15 volunteers (depending on the number of sites we decide to set up) for 2, maybe 3 months, we would be through the debris removal phase and possibly be into the rebuilding phase. The work would be hard and hot but well within the reach of "non-skilled' vols who simply want to help. As we complete the debris removal phase, we could assess whether we would want to enter into any rebuilding. An idea that came up was the possibility of recruiting interested tourists from Bali, and possibly Australia, in order to cut down on travel expense for the volunteers, and to ease any worries of a volunteer drain on our part. In addition, the area around Yogyakarta itself is a fairly large tourist attraction, as it is the cultural and university capital of Indonesia, which would seem to boost any interest in bumping it along the road to recovery.
Details on the necessary arrangements that would need to be made will follow in subsequent reports.
When viewed from a distance the number of 60,000 homes destroyed does seem to pale in comparison to the mega-disasters we have seen in the past year and a half. It is an altogether different matter however upon driving through village after leveled village. Regardless of the total number of deaths, destroyed homes, etc., these people have still lost their homes, their businesses, their villages, and their loved ones. It is our opinion that just as every disaster differs from every other in some way, a "smaller" disaster would not seem to warrant no response as much as it would an appropriately scaled deployment, applied in an equally fitting manner.
INDONESIA Update: June 1, 2006.
HODR Operations Director Mac Young and Volunteer TC (Always has to be first) Kida are on their way to Indonesia to assess what HODR might be able to do to help with the earthquake relief efforts. We expect to hear a report back from them in the next 72 hours.
