Bird's-eye view of the past eight months

Already more than one year has passed since I’ve arrived here in Aceh. By now, many things that I found extraordinary when I arrived here have become normal to me. I’m no longer excited whenever I see a palm tree, or a whole family on a motorbike, or a traditional market, or a colourful sarong, and many of the other things that strikes a European when he first sets foot in this country. Now some weeks are also passing by with ‘nothing special’.

There are also things that I still haven't managed to get used to. The urge a lot of people feel here to start shouting whenever they see a white face is something that keeps startling me. The astounding beauty of the countryside just outside of town keeps amazing me. The immense resilience of people who have been hit by one of the biggest natural disasters in human history ever keeps striking me.

Many things have happened since Ramadan last year, the last time I posted a story on my previous blog. I'm going to try to provide an overview of the hightlights in my life of the past eight months.

During the Eid-holidays (the week-long holiday to mark the end of Ramadan, which fell in October last year) I went on my first ever ‘business trip’ to Thailand. Me and my colleague Samantha had to leave the country in order to get a new visa, and this opportunity was used to pay a work visit to the regional office of my organisation, conveniently located in Chiang Mai.

We travelled to Chiang Mai with a brief stop over in Bangkok. A bizarre coincidence had it that one of my best friends from back home, Laurie, was also in Bangkok for a few days at that time. She had come with a friend who worked as a stewardess for KLM. This Dutch airline always puts up its personnel in the most fancy hotel in town. So I found Laurie and her friend pampering themselves in the most luxurious hotel room I had ever seen, overlooking the immense city of Bangkok. Over a delicious breakfast (croissants, dark whole wheat bread!), and while cruising through town in a tuk-tuk, the Thai version of a rickshaw, Laurie and me tried to catch up as much as we could on the developments of the past 6 months. I had a quick peek at the Wat Pho, an enormous golden Buddha, and also a glimpse of Khau San Road, the backpackers street of Bangkok. Generally such overcrowded spoiled tourist areas are not my thing. But now, coming from lifeless Banda Aceh, I got all thrilled in this street bustling with young and energetic crowds, the beats and the atmosphere.

Chiang Mai is fantastic. This city really combines the best of Asia and the West. Fantastic Thai and Western food. Beautiful calm avenues and lanes. An impressive number of Buddhist temple complexes. And then the shopping… During our five days in this city, me and Samantha transformed into true shopping maniacs. We even went to work earlier (it was after all still a work visit) in order to get off early to go to one of the shopping malls, heavenly night markets or massage places. And of course the cinema. It had been over six months since I’d been to the movies, and I was so excited by it that the poster of Stardust was the wallpaper on my laptop for weeks after. It’s really funny how such things work. When I’m in Aceh I really don’t miss the malls, the bars, the western food and all that. But as soon as I enter ‘the free world’, as some of the expats like to call it, I’m like: yes, I needed this!

Following Chiang Mai was over two months of uncertainty over whether or not my organisation’s programme in Banda Aceh would be extended or not. Only two weeks before our office would be closed the word finally came through that indeed our programme could be continued into 2008. Although at some point it really wasn’t funny anymore not to be able to tell my friends and family if I was going to be able to make it home for Christmas, the whole process did give me a very interesting look into how decision making on funding, initiating and extending programmes in the development sector takes place. And of course Aceh offers enough distraction: the beach, the tropical nature and a nice bunch of friends to hang out with. On the picture you can see us enjoying a few drinks at Lampuuk beach, where we often go during the weekend.

In the end, I did make it home for Christmas. And it was the ultimate coming-home-for-Christmas experience: it was snowing when I arrived! This hardly ever happens in The Netherlands, and certainly not around Christmas time. It was weird to come home in my own country for holidays, knowing that I would be going abroad again after just a few weeks for work. Normally it’s the other way around! But it was great to be back for a few weeks, and I managed to find a good balance between trying to catch up with as many friends and family as possible, and trying to recuperate from a busy and stressful period at work.

In January I returned to Aceh with renewed energy. We started the new year with moving our office to the same compound where I am living. Now my room and my office are just a 1-minute walk apart, only separated by a small road, which is psychologically a very important barrier for me to keep work and leisure time separated. From our new office we are working to strengthen the projects and advocacy efforts that HelpAge International has initiated here over the past two years. I've been explaining a little bit about what it is that I am actually here for in my previous story on this blog.

I had already travelled accross Sumatra, Java and Bali during the holiday with my family last August. But outside the tsunami-hit areas where we are working, much of Aceh was still unexplored territory for me. That was to change in March, when I went on a short trip to Takengon. This is a small town situated at a beautiful lake high up in the Gayo mountains. This area was one of the hotbeds of the seperatist conflict, which had only recently come to an end in 2005. Only two weeks before I was to head out there the most serious violent incident after the signing of the peace agreement had taken place not far away from Takengon. A violent mob had attacked a rival group and brurally slaughtered five of its members. It was a gruesome reminder of the fragility of the peace and the major unsolved issues that still remain.

Us tourists didn't notice much of all these tensions that are still brewing just below the surface, apart from some banners on the road sides calling for the splitting up of the province (one of the causes of the recent rise in tensions). We enjoyed the cool weather, the total absense of other tourists (the few tourist that make it out here were probably scared away by the recent incident) and marvelled at the beautiful lake surrounded by pittoresque hills with incredibly grean ricefields.


After four months at a stretch in Aceh without a single trip to ‘the free world’ I went to Yogyakarta in May for a short course of Indonesian. I had already been taking language classes here in Aceh and picked up quite a bit of the language. But during the intensive course in Yogya many things fell in place. I came back to Banda all motivated again to master this language and started pressing my colleagues to speak only Indonesian to me. This didn't work out at all, since they all want to practise their English on me :-)


Next time: Banda Aceh's party scene uncovered!

Work

Last Friday I had my debut in the Indonesian media, and found myself quoted on improving health care for older people. I had prepared an article on primary health care for older people in Aceh, and sent this to a few web-based discussion groups widely read amongst the NGO community here. This story was picked up and published by a local newspaper.

This unplanned media attention was a nice boost for the morale at our small office on this late Friday afternoon. An advocacy project aiming to encourage other institutions to take better care of older people in their programmes is largely dependent upon the actions of those other organisations for its success. Although the environment we are working in is getting more and more receptive to our message, at times it still requires a lot of patience and diplomacy to get seemingly simple things done.

Sometimes I find it difficult to explain HelpAge International’s programme, and my role in it, to people who ask me how I fill my days at work. Our achievements aren’t as tangible as those of most other organisations working here. We don’t have numbers of houses, schools or roads built to boost with. But I will try to give it a shot.

HelpAge International is the largest worldwide network organisation working for the rights of disadvantaged older people. During and after emergencies, the needs of older people are often not taken into account by humanitarian agencies. Women and children are recognised by most agencies as vulnerable groups that need specific attention. But older people, often one of the hardest-hit groups during emergencies, are habitually neglected in the relief effort.

The aftermath of the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was no different in this respect. Literally hundreds of aid agencies rushed to Aceh, where more than 160 000 people had been killed by the giant waves of the tsunami and over a thousand kilometres of coast line had been destroyed. Despite the this huge influx of aid, surveys by HAI found that this aid did not sufficiently reach older people, or that the aid wasn’t suitable for them. For instance, older people were unable to reach aid distribution sites, or the food packages did not contain food that was easy to cook and to digest.

After the immediate emergency phase was over, NGOs started to focus on recovery of houses, infrastructure and livelihoods. Here too, older people were often forgotten. An important reason for this neglect is that most organisations do not disaggregate the data of the population in the area where they are working by age-group. Older people and their problems thus remain invisible.

Considering the large numbers of organisations that were working in the relief and rehabilitation effort in Aceh, HelpAge International thought that rather than to implement a programme by itself, it would be more effective to support those organisations in focussing their programmes more on older people.

“Supporting INGOs and the government in addressing the needs of older people”… what does that mean? It means, first and foremost, trying to convince others that there is a need to pay more attention to older people. Perhaps surprisingly, we have come across many instances where people didn’t see the need to consider older people as a separate vulnerable group. Others presumed that almost all older people had perished in the devastating waves of the tsunami, clearly a result of the above mentioned lack of segregating population data by age. In fact there are many older people living in the areas where the tsunami has hit. As the recovery effort progressed, many of those older people were left behind because of the lack of attention of NGOs towards their needs.

For instance, many organisations organised cash-for-work projects in house and road construction in order to provide tsunami-victims with a direct source of income. These activities are generally too heavy for older people, leaving their livelihoods shattered and keeping them dependent on their family or community for their survival. In order to convince organisations of the current gap in the rehabilitation effort, HelpAge went out and conducted research on the status of older people after the tsunami, organised workshops and media-events and undertook countless meetings with organisations working in Aceh.

Next, supporting INGOs and the government in addressing the needs of older people means providing those institutions that are willing to make their programme ‘age-friendly’ with the training and tools to do so. This has been another major component of the programme. In a few cases, this has resulted into elaborate partnerships, such as with the British Red Cross and with the Provincial Health Department.

So where do I fit in all of this? Already more than one year I have been working here as a Programme Assistant. My focus is on the livelihood activities of the programme and on documentation and reporting, although in such a small office as ours (since January just 6 staff!) everybody is doing a little bit of everything.

Last year, one of my major activities was working on the partnership with the British Red Cross (BRCS), which just got off ground when I arrived. We were supporting the BRCS in ensuring that their programme targeted older people as a vulnerable group by providing orientations to staff, having our Field Officers working with BRCS in the field, and regular meetings between management to advise on strategies. I was involved in coordination between the two organisations and documentation of the whole process, which was largely a new experience for both organisations. This documentation effort ultimately resulted in the publication Mainstreaming Age-Friendliness.

I have also been working intensively on a project we have implemented together with a local organisation. In 14 tsunami-hit villages we have assisted the community in setting up Older People Associations. These are community-based organisations aimed at improving the living conditions of older people. In the same 14 villages we also implemented a livelihood cash grant programme. This means that older people received a sum of money which they could use to start or strengthen an income-generating activity, such as opening a shop or buying livestock. This project was intended as a pilot, to demonstrate to NGOs and the government the need for livelihood support to older people and the benefits of organising older people in groups.

Last year, I’ve worked on designing and implementing the cash grant programme and monitoring its progress. This year, I have been doing a detailed impact monitoring of the cash grant programme and in designing strategies to strengthen the programme. For two months, I have been interviewing beneficiaries about their thoughts of the programme and to find out if the cash grant has been useful to them. In the picture you can see me conducting a group discussion with older women who have received the grant. One of the things that came out is that awareness is very low amongst older people about different government services that are available. Now, I am in contact with several government departments to find out ways for older people to access these services.

Congrats, you have made it to the end of this story on oldies :-) Next time more about my life in the Archipelago outside of HelpAge.