Managing the Tsunami Recovery, Meulaboh, Indonesia, Sept 2006

So the challenge is writing something of appropriate length and excitement to keep those of you not bored at work sufficiently interested to read on. Or I could accept that I am unlikely to achieve that, rattle on anyway reminding myself that it will at least one day give the Grand kids something to read and in the mean time those of you who are bored at work something to do ………….or mock

So, I finally arrived on Wednesday 30th Aug. Flying into Western Sumatra aboard a tiny Cessan plane, I was sat up in the co-pilots seat for the 1 hour flight. I recall how when I flew these small planes in south Sudan how much I enjoyed this privilege, now, with my recently developed ‘discomfort’ shall we say, of flying I spent most of my time contemplating what would happed if the pilot suddenly didn’t feel too well. Not a thought process I wanted to entertain I can assure you, and as I was to find out a few weeks later, not the main risk involved, as for another hours I would contemplate a premature end as we hastily picked / plunged our way through a ‘shocking’ storm to quote the pilot and inconveniently placed mountain range, an experience up there, or reminiscent of the ambush in Darfur 1 year earlier.

As the Area coordinator for the Indonesia Disaster Management Team I am responsible for managing operations for Aceh Barat, a district of Aceh province, the northern section of Indonesia that bore the full brunt of the Tsunami. Now, over 19 months on the physical destruction of the earthquake and the resultant Tsunami remains clear, from those who arrived in the first wave of assistance, I am informed the site I currently live would have been totally wiped out, the grounds of our office, which marked the inland limit of the Tsunami waters were awash with human and cattle corpses which had to wait for weeks to be collected. Many of those people most needed to help recover form the Tsunami doctors, nurses, teachers, and government officials died. Many of my staff who resided along the coast survived by climbing coconut trees, often their entire families (literally….children, parents, and siblings) the people they kissed good bye to that morning were never seen again.

One of the things I am slowly adapting to is the change of scenery, Darfur, as you will recount from my ramblings last year is not exactly rife with visual beauty or social opportunities. Here, well, we work 1 day less a week which helps, and from where I sit (well if I was to stand up) I can see the beach, it’s a 5 minute cycle from here. I have acquired a very cool bike that I reckon was probably ridden here by some missionary from Amsterdam over 400 years ago, well maybe not but probably paints an accurate impression. So yes a safer, more sustainable pace of life for the next 9 months.

Things have started relatively well, certainly had hit the ground running, we have many projects that we are about to deliver, including 150 houses / Shop houses, a nursing school for 300 students, and a number of goats and cows to give to farmers! I have also just been made Country director for Indonesia for this month to cover my boss leave.

In total Tearfund is delivering over 350 houses in the first 2 years of operations and rebuilding agriculture and livelihoods along the coast by distributing animals, tractors, and rehabilitating agriculture land parched by the salt that has poisoned the soil as the flood water retreated..

I am excited by the opportunity to rebuild lives here to a better standard than they were before, but most importantly to see that our organisation imparts sufficient knowledge and technical ability within the community to better increase their chances of surviving should or when disaster strikes again. An example of this would be building rounds inland rather than along the coast as many people died as they simply had no where to run.

Lets see what we can do, I will keep you posted. Darren