OK OK OK!! After many requests I decided to give it a shot: a bilingual blog so that my friends who do not master the beautiful Dutch language can also keep updated on my life in the Indonesian Archipelago.
Since March of this year I have been working for HelpAge International in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. HelpAge International is an international network of organisations that works for the rights of older people. Here in Banda Aceh we are trying to ensure that older people are also included in the relief and rehabilitation efforts after the 2004 tsunami. For some reason most NGO’s consider women and children vulnerable groups that need special attention in an emergency, but they forget that older people are often also weak and need special attention. Also, older people are often excluded in projects that aim to help people in recovering a source of income. Most NGO’s consider older people unproductive and unable to work. The contrary is true: most older people can still work and are very eager to contribute to the rebuilding of their community.
Below, you will find the English version of my latest blog, which was posted last Monday.
False alarm
It seemed like it was going to be a quiet day, the first working day of June. I had just put to work one of our new Field Coordinators, when one of my colleagues entered. “Did you hear about the tsunami warning?”, she asked. I hadn’t heard anything. It was on CNN, she said, and in town people were already fleeing to higher ground. She had seen groups of crying and panicking people that had grabbed some of their possessions and had started running.
“Who should we call to confirm this rumour?”, I asked. No one answered. It turned out that nobody in the office had any idea which agency we should contact for more information. The first thing my boss did was to send our driver away to pick up his wife and daughter from their hotel, half an hour drive from the office. He did not react to my question if maybe we should check first what’s going on before sending away our only car. Then everybody just started to randomly call people. This didn’t really work, because of course the network was overburdened within no-time. Husney, our colleague who normally makes fun about everything, didn’t laugh anymore. He’s a tsunami victim. “I don’t want to die”, he said softly. This time, there was no irony at all in his voice.
I also started to get frightened. What’s going on? How can there be a tsunami without an earthquake? Or maybe the earthquake had taken place somewhere far away? The wave can travel for thousands of kilometres, I remembered from the tsunami in 2004. Who had announced this alarm, and on what basis? And what about this tsunami-early-warning system?
And why the fuck no-one knows what to do in a situation like this? Where is our emergency and evacuation plan? How is it possible that we, as an international organization with nice stories on ‘disaster risk reduction’, do not know how to act now and are just sitting here waiting like lame ducks? And why had I not thought of this before?
I tried to reach the people I knew that worked for the big donor organisations. Those organisations must have a functioning security department, I reasoned. I managed to get in touch with my friend from the Dutch Red Cross, but he wasn’t able to tell me anything. Also I couldn’t find information on the internet. By this time, many parents had come to the school in front of our office to pick up their children. We heard from different sources that the city was completely jammed with traffic. An Indonesian friend called me up in panic, he was somewhere with his wife stucked in the traffic. The university campus was being evacuated, we heard, while someone else texted me that it was all just an exercise…
My boss decided to close the office. So there we were, sitting outside calling and to texting like idiots. Just when I was about to jump on my motorcycle alone and to drive to higher ground, wherever that may be, one of us got the confirmation that it really was a false alarm. Slowly it became clear that the sirens of the tsunami-early-warning-system had accidentally gone off. It is still unclear why. Some say that the alarm was triggered by high water levels because of spring-tide. At some places the water had even entered the streets. Others say that it was a short-circuit. Was is clear however, is that the alarm went off for at least an hour, that one of the points where the alarm went off was very close to our office, and that we had not heard it at all.
It was only slowly became calm again. I decided that was high time for me to prepare an emergency and evacuation plan for my organisation and to compile a list with some useful phone numbers. We had just given the worst possible example of ‘disaster preparedness’.
After the scare was over, Husney explained again how he survived the tsunami. He had told about it before, laughing and joking. But now he was serious. He was still sleeping when the tsunami came. He woke up because he heard screaming and panicking people running through the streets. He also ran outside, towards the main road. There, he saw the wave coming towards him from three sides. He was taken by the water and dragged along. Then, he managed to hold himself to the first floor of a building from which the front wall had been destroyed.
The first ones who provided help after the tsunami were soldiers from the Indonesian army. These were available in high quantities, because of the seperatist conflict that had flared up during recent years. During the first days Husney stayed with friends of his family. Then, he tried to return to his village, hundreds of kilometres from Banda Aceh. It took days before he reached his village, because the coastal road had been destroyed. Later, it turned out that his father had come to Banda Aceh to look for his son. They did not find each other, so his father thought for a long time that his son had not survived the tsunami.
The reconstruction of the city has reached such an advanced stage by now, that it has become impossible to envisage the level of destruction that was caused by the tsunami. Last week a friend of mine showed me a series of photo’s that was taken in Banda Aceh and its surroundings right after the tsunami. Of course, I had also been watching television during the days after the tsunami, trying to grasp the level of devastation and human suffering. But now these images had so much more meaning to me. Now I recognized the demolished streets full with dead bodies everywhere.
A picture of a big boat on a street in front of a building: now I can see that this is on the square where you can get such delicious sateh. This square is at least two kilometres from the coast. A photo of a bus stop with corpses scattered around: I drive past that bus stop every day on my way to work. A photo of a beach full with swollen corpses, body parts and debris: I think that’s the beach where I went last week for beers with Alex. This explains at once why most locals avoid going there.
The pictures help me a little bit in trying to envisage what Husney must have seen here in this city and on the way to his village. But the smell of rotting corpses, the screaming of wounded people, the cries of people that found their deceased relatives and the enormous chaos and devastation, that is something also Husney rather not talks about. My other colleague who is also a tsunami victim still doesn’t want to tell anything about her experiences.
The photo’s have also increased my appreciation for what has been accomplished here during the last few years. Sure, many blunders are being made. Again and again I hear stories about another failed, delayed or money-squandering project, juicy stories, very useful for several stories on my blog. But fact is that this disaster was unimaginably big and the destruction large, and that the reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts really are in an advanced stage now.
A Dutch friend of mine that is working here gave me an example to put things in perspective that works well for Dutch people. In the year 2000 the Netherlands experienced the ‘fireworks disaster’. A storage compound for fireworks exploded and destroyed a whole neighbourhood in the city of Enschede. It took the Dutch six years to rebuild this neighbourhood. Six years! This concerns a tragedy that killed 22 people and destroyed about 4000 houses. In a city that was otherwise fully intact, in one of the richest countries in the world. The tsunami has caused 60 000 deaths only in Banda Aceh. In the whole of Aceh the death toll is estimated 168 000. The number of wounded and homeless is uncountable.
Another thought-experiment: imagine a tsunami would hit my country, the Netherlands. The enormous wave is able to travel deep into this flat country, at some places as far as 7 kilometres. The governing centre in The Hague is destroyed, ensuring that a coordinated response to the disaster will be impossible. Also Rotterdam, one of the biggest harbours in the world, is hit hard by the tsunami, making the delivery of relief items difficult. Oh, and don’t forget that the west of the Netherlands already was severely weakened and destabilized because of a separatist conflict and guerrilla war that has been simmering for decennia. And not only the Netherlands has been hit by the tsunami. All the way until the south of France the wave had caused destruction.
If it takes us in The Netherlands six years to rebuild only one neighbourhood, I doubt we’d be doing much better in dealing with a catastrophe on this scale than people have done here in Asia.
I am sorry for the shocking photo’s that I have put on my log with this story, but I felt the story would not be complete without them. Next time again pictures of palm trees waving in the wind and stories about envy-provoking trips to bounty islands, I promise.
Since March of this year I have been working for HelpAge International in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. HelpAge International is an international network of organisations that works for the rights of older people. Here in Banda Aceh we are trying to ensure that older people are also included in the relief and rehabilitation efforts after the 2004 tsunami. For some reason most NGO’s consider women and children vulnerable groups that need special attention in an emergency, but they forget that older people are often also weak and need special attention. Also, older people are often excluded in projects that aim to help people in recovering a source of income. Most NGO’s consider older people unproductive and unable to work. The contrary is true: most older people can still work and are very eager to contribute to the rebuilding of their community.
Below, you will find the English version of my latest blog, which was posted last Monday.
False alarm
It seemed like it was going to be a quiet day, the first working day of June. I had just put to work one of our new Field Coordinators, when one of my colleagues entered. “Did you hear about the tsunami warning?”, she asked. I hadn’t heard anything. It was on CNN, she said, and in town people were already fleeing to higher ground. She had seen groups of crying and panicking people that had grabbed some of their possessions and had started running.
“Who should we call to confirm this rumour?”, I asked. No one answered. It turned out that nobody in the office had any idea which agency we should contact for more information. The first thing my boss did was to send our driver away to pick up his wife and daughter from their hotel, half an hour drive from the office. He did not react to my question if maybe we should check first what’s going on before sending away our only car. Then everybody just started to randomly call people. This didn’t really work, because of course the network was overburdened within no-time. Husney, our colleague who normally makes fun about everything, didn’t laugh anymore. He’s a tsunami victim. “I don’t want to die”, he said softly. This time, there was no irony at all in his voice.
I also started to get frightened. What’s going on? How can there be a tsunami without an earthquake? Or maybe the earthquake had taken place somewhere far away? The wave can travel for thousands of kilometres, I remembered from the tsunami in 2004. Who had announced this alarm, and on what basis? And what about this tsunami-early-warning system?
And why the fuck no-one knows what to do in a situation like this? Where is our emergency and evacuation plan? How is it possible that we, as an international organization with nice stories on ‘disaster risk reduction’, do not know how to act now and are just sitting here waiting like lame ducks? And why had I not thought of this before?
I tried to reach the people I knew that worked for the big donor organisations. Those organisations must have a functioning security department, I reasoned. I managed to get in touch with my friend from the Dutch Red Cross, but he wasn’t able to tell me anything. Also I couldn’t find information on the internet. By this time, many parents had come to the school in front of our office to pick up their children. We heard from different sources that the city was completely jammed with traffic. An Indonesian friend called me up in panic, he was somewhere with his wife stucked in the traffic. The university campus was being evacuated, we heard, while someone else texted me that it was all just an exercise…
My boss decided to close the office. So there we were, sitting outside calling and to texting like idiots. Just when I was about to jump on my motorcycle alone and to drive to higher ground, wherever that may be, one of us got the confirmation that it really was a false alarm. Slowly it became clear that the sirens of the tsunami-early-warning-system had accidentally gone off. It is still unclear why. Some say that the alarm was triggered by high water levels because of spring-tide. At some places the water had even entered the streets. Others say that it was a short-circuit. Was is clear however, is that the alarm went off for at least an hour, that one of the points where the alarm went off was very close to our office, and that we had not heard it at all.
It was only slowly became calm again. I decided that was high time for me to prepare an emergency and evacuation plan for my organisation and to compile a list with some useful phone numbers. We had just given the worst possible example of ‘disaster preparedness’.
After the scare was over, Husney explained again how he survived the tsunami. He had told about it before, laughing and joking. But now he was serious. He was still sleeping when the tsunami came. He woke up because he heard screaming and panicking people running through the streets. He also ran outside, towards the main road. There, he saw the wave coming towards him from three sides. He was taken by the water and dragged along. Then, he managed to hold himself to the first floor of a building from which the front wall had been destroyed.
The first ones who provided help after the tsunami were soldiers from the Indonesian army. These were available in high quantities, because of the seperatist conflict that had flared up during recent years. During the first days Husney stayed with friends of his family. Then, he tried to return to his village, hundreds of kilometres from Banda Aceh. It took days before he reached his village, because the coastal road had been destroyed. Later, it turned out that his father had come to Banda Aceh to look for his son. They did not find each other, so his father thought for a long time that his son had not survived the tsunami.
The reconstruction of the city has reached such an advanced stage by now, that it has become impossible to envisage the level of destruction that was caused by the tsunami. Last week a friend of mine showed me a series of photo’s that was taken in Banda Aceh and its surroundings right after the tsunami. Of course, I had also been watching television during the days after the tsunami, trying to grasp the level of devastation and human suffering. But now these images had so much more meaning to me. Now I recognized the demolished streets full with dead bodies everywhere.
A picture of a big boat on a street in front of a building: now I can see that this is on the square where you can get such delicious sateh. This square is at least two kilometres from the coast. A photo of a bus stop with corpses scattered around: I drive past that bus stop every day on my way to work. A photo of a beach full with swollen corpses, body parts and debris: I think that’s the beach where I went last week for beers with Alex. This explains at once why most locals avoid going there.
The pictures help me a little bit in trying to envisage what Husney must have seen here in this city and on the way to his village. But the smell of rotting corpses, the screaming of wounded people, the cries of people that found their deceased relatives and the enormous chaos and devastation, that is something also Husney rather not talks about. My other colleague who is also a tsunami victim still doesn’t want to tell anything about her experiences.
The photo’s have also increased my appreciation for what has been accomplished here during the last few years. Sure, many blunders are being made. Again and again I hear stories about another failed, delayed or money-squandering project, juicy stories, very useful for several stories on my blog. But fact is that this disaster was unimaginably big and the destruction large, and that the reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts really are in an advanced stage now.
A Dutch friend of mine that is working here gave me an example to put things in perspective that works well for Dutch people. In the year 2000 the Netherlands experienced the ‘fireworks disaster’. A storage compound for fireworks exploded and destroyed a whole neighbourhood in the city of Enschede. It took the Dutch six years to rebuild this neighbourhood. Six years! This concerns a tragedy that killed 22 people and destroyed about 4000 houses. In a city that was otherwise fully intact, in one of the richest countries in the world. The tsunami has caused 60 000 deaths only in Banda Aceh. In the whole of Aceh the death toll is estimated 168 000. The number of wounded and homeless is uncountable.
Another thought-experiment: imagine a tsunami would hit my country, the Netherlands. The enormous wave is able to travel deep into this flat country, at some places as far as 7 kilometres. The governing centre in The Hague is destroyed, ensuring that a coordinated response to the disaster will be impossible. Also Rotterdam, one of the biggest harbours in the world, is hit hard by the tsunami, making the delivery of relief items difficult. Oh, and don’t forget that the west of the Netherlands already was severely weakened and destabilized because of a separatist conflict and guerrilla war that has been simmering for decennia. And not only the Netherlands has been hit by the tsunami. All the way until the south of France the wave had caused destruction.
If it takes us in The Netherlands six years to rebuild only one neighbourhood, I doubt we’d be doing much better in dealing with a catastrophe on this scale than people have done here in Asia.
I am sorry for the shocking photo’s that I have put on my log with this story, but I felt the story would not be complete without them. Next time again pictures of palm trees waving in the wind and stories about envy-provoking trips to bounty islands, I promise.
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