Hands On Disaster Response is now All Hands Volunteers

Walking around, you can hardly believe this is the same village: no piles of debris lying where houses used to be, no stacks of salvaged bricks, the fields are in harvest, the water supply fine. The roads and paths are all back to normal, traversed now once again instead of the network of temporary pathways born after the earthquake out of adaptory necessity. There are large brick houses where once we had been trundling through with our multitude of tools and basket-loads of debris – the bulk of which has all been hauled off by the government somewhere, somehow – and the area has the feel of a vibrant, livable village once again. And it feels great.


 The new, reconstructed Sawit: The house of the old man on the corner

I am back in Sawit, Indonesia, almost two years after the earthquake of May 27, 2006, that first brought us here, and am being led through the nearly unrecognizable maze of newly cleaned, reconstructed, and painted houses by our indefatigable friend and interpreter, Wiwin, bright and cheerful as ever. And I am dazzled by the efficacy with which the villagers have gone about rebuilding their lives. I hadn’t taken more than two steps off my rented bicycle upon arrival, when Yani, she of the huge smile who had loved hanging out at the HODR house after work hours, intercepted me, sat me down, fed me, and led me through the album of photos from her marriage, which had only taken place last month. All throughout, I kept catching glimpses of Mbak Miasi’s great smile flashing through the doorway, who immediately to Mbak Harmi upon finishing, whereupon I was reintroduced to her son Oki, grown almost unrecognizably taller, and the food cart to which she had upgraded, thanks to the microcredit program instituted by former volunteer Nick Tarranto and KOMPIP, which is all the more poignant for the fact that it was the team of these two women who were cooking our food, immaculately washing our filthy clothes everyday, and otherwise looking after us like family throughout the run of Project Yogya.

Pak Pono and daughter. Mbak Mianti refused to be photographed. 

I am shown into the house of Pak Pono and Mbak Mianti, who continue to rent out the house we once occupied, and are now living in a new room they’ve built onto the bathroom/kitchen unit with the monetary aid the government has distributed. I bid health and good luck to Mbak Mianti, who’s just returned from a week in the hospital, apparently due to abnormally high blood pressure, then move next-door to her sister, Mbak Miasi’s family. Pilar and Fajar, the two kids, have grown wildly in the intervening time, and the family explains that though they aren’t in the same place, economically, as some of their neighbors, they continue to rebuild their house “step-by-step.” I sit in awe at the sense of dedication and perseverance that they exude. And I meet with the old man on the corner, whose blue-tarp temporary shelter there is a photo of us helping build, and whose huge brick house now sits on the same site. The happy reunions continue on and on.

I am also in unexpectedly good luck, as the two days I have somehow been able to spend in Sawit just so happen to lie on the two-year anniversary of the earthquake, going by the Javanese calendar, apparently a bit faster than the Western Gregorian. And that means I have been invited to attend not one, but three different hybrid Muslim/Javanese commemoration ceremonies for the departed, normally reserved only for the married men of each RT (village sub-division). The members of the family who aren’t able to attend receive a basket of goodies as consolation, a practice which we’ve adapted to our own farewell parties in deployments since. As such though, it was auspicious enough to have been able to take part in a previous iteration of the ceremony, the timing for which fell when Project Yogya was still active, but to be asked to attend three of them now, at such a distance of time… I can only muse about how this serves to show the extent to which the community continues to keep us it its regard for what we were able to contribute then, and how much were are still a part of their family, though we might come from strange and distant lands. I am greatly honored and accept readily, carrying in my heart the spirit of HODR’s volunteer community, for it is through the collective efforts of all of our previous and continuing volunteers that we have been able to do what we set out to do, to do what needs to be done.

Wiwin hanging out with some friends. Check the T-shirt. 

It is always hard, living and working in the places we do only after disaster has fallen, never to have experienced “normal” local life, and it also equally hard to leave these places before the transition back to such “normality” has completely taken hold… which makes having the opportunity to revisit and see for oneself the lasting effects of one’s efforts in that direction so gratifying. And now while I sit writing this report, watching as the responses (or lack thereof) to Burma and China’s concurrent catastrophes continue to unfold… the old, familiar urge to somehow drag myself out to the next disaster zone keeps knocking on my conscience, but I am equally convinced of the importance of maintaining the human face HODR puts on the business we happen to be in. Having seen the end result goes a long way towards putting the entire endeavor in more complete view, lending itself also to constant process of evaluation, learning, and development that is so necessary along the path we continue to traverse. And it also keeps alive the cross-global human connections we’ve forged in our time living, working, grieving, and rejoicing within each community we’ve been able to reach out and touch, if only to lighten their load a bit.

-TC Kida
HODR Volunteer