Jakarta to Banda Aceh

]January 9, 2005

Complete exhaustion. Day after day without adequate sleep, moving and waiting, searching and yielding to the chaos that defines this place. But it’s lovely and it’s wonderful and it’s a privilege, a real privilege to be part of history that will be remembered by those here now and for a couple of generations to come before it is forgotten like everything else that happens and is forgotten once the generations who witnessed it leave and the ones they told in stories also pass on, too. Then it is something of brief interest mentioned in story books, the natural disaster of biblical proportions they will call it. What to expect, what to see, what to do? It still isn’t clear because the assessment and preparation continue. Let’s back up.

0415 out of the hotel this morning en route to the airport to arrive and meet hundreds of people also packing the plane that is booked to completeness until the end of the week. Where are these people going and what are they going to do? Aid organizations from around the world flood the scene as the tsunami did. Will we leave tragedy in our path? How will this mission unfold and what will happen of the people?

Passing over the hardest hit area, there was a palpable hush in the airplane as passengers became spectators. There was a curiosity to bear witness and a reverence that honored those who died and those who suffer. The calm and hush of the passengers was witness to it all, even while most couldn’t see between and beyond the clouds drifting below us and above the refuse. The landscape looked hill green, tropical and surreal with its seemingly untouched terrain.

A man sat next to me and reeked of fear and self-doubt for coming. He was from American, from the protected enclave of California where the sun shines and where the desert lost its nature to man who dressed it in another robe of royal blue and paraded it down sunshine boulevard. This man was from there. He and his wife were moved to tears watching images of floating corpses and horrored homes that left internally displaced populations from a to z on a small island in Indonesia. They contacted friends and got money donated along with drugs and procured water purifiers, the best in the world, eight of them, pre-destined to be the most valuable “asset” coming to Banda Aceh. The initiatives of private citizens to participate in rehabilitating people’s lives is sensational.

The UN gives daily updates at 5 pm. They cover security status, education, medical services, water and sanitation, logistics and some other categories that are too fatiguing to consider now. Basically, 400 schools were damaged and internally displaced people (IDP’s) occupy the damaged structures preventing schools from opening. The camps are disastrous with people living like gutter rats. They have food donated by the World Food Program (WFP). They also distribute water, I believe. Plastic sheeting is supplied by the UN and now the people all hang out doing nothing while their needs are taken care of. What efforts are employed to reanimate the people? I wonder if the onslaught of international generosity will make the recipients emotional and physical cripples? It’s easy for people to lose their dignity when hand me downs and handouts are the rules. What impetus is there for people to actively engage when all their needs are met? They need time to heal, but surviving off the kindness of strangers doesn’t do much in terms of self-esteem.

Love,
Cary