04 July 2006

After a few hours sleep on the Sunday before our trip to Meulaboh, the owner of the truck called to say that the truck was not available as it was out of town and had not returned. He said however that he did have another truck available later in the evening. The owner turned out to be someone different from the person we had met earlier and he said there had been a misunderstanding on the price. The price was not 4.5 million Rupiah but rather 5 million. On top of that this price did not include fuel, food and cigarettes for the drivers. We told him to bring the truck round to the house anyway so that we could have a look and negotiate something.

The guy turned up later with a small truck, the sort of one normally used for transporting bananas and coconuts. A small truck was what I wanted as we did not have a very big load. However there were a few problems. First of all, the truck ran on petrol. Petrol is less efficient and more expensive that diesel. Secondly with a price of 5 million before petrol and driver expenses, we estimated the total trip would cost about 9 million Rupiah. This was pretty much the same price as a big truck. Big trucks tend to go faster and be more reliable for long distances over poor roads such as those in Sumatra. Thirdly and the biggest problem of all was that the truck did not appear to be roadworthy. Although the engine sounded ok, the truck looked to be very old and the tyres were completely bald. When we challenged the owner on this he said he was willing to change the tyres before setting off. He said he would drive the truck himself and he would not do this unless he had complete confidence he would make it to Aceh and back. After an hour of not being able to make a decision we sent him off and told him we would get back to him later...

Novi had been trying all weekend to find the number of someone called Bang Jaka who had helped find our truck for the previous trip last year. At about 9pm on Sunday she finally found his number scribbled on a piece of paper inside a drawer at home. She gave him a call and he said yes, no problem, he would help us find a truck. He works as a security guard in one of the markets so he know lots of people. We arranged to meet him at the market and set off. When we got there he said he was not able to find anything immediately but assured us that he would find a truck before the end of the night. He told us to go home and he would do the work. We went back and got some sleep.

When we woke up in the morning we had an SMS from Bang Jaka to say that he had a truck for us and the price was 9.5 million Rupiah. I set off for work and left Novi to arrange everything and the truck was on the road by lunchtime on Monday. Novi's brother Yan went in the truck with the two drivers.

Based on the last trip we estimated that the journey from Jakarta to Medan would take the truck three days. They beat this by half a day reaching Medan very early Thursday morning.

We left Jakarta on a fight to Medan on Thursday around lunchtime. The last time we had flown to Medan back in August we had taken Mandala Airlines. A few weeks later, the same plane that we had flown on (there was only one which went back and forward a few times per day) fell out the sky just after take off, killing over 100 people on board. The only survivors were people on the back row. The governor of North Sumatra was on board and the rumour was that he was taking 2 tonnes of durian to Jakarta (durians from Medan are among the best. See durians if you're not familiar with durians) , and that the plane was heavily overloaded. Here is more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala_Airlines_Flight_091. We decided not to take Mandala this time: we took Adam Air instead.

We took Ronan with us this time and also Novi's sister Cucu. Ronan did not come with us on previous trips as the journey wais a bit long for a three year-old but this time we did not want to leave him again for a long weekend and he's a bit bigger now that he's four..

We arrived in Medan around 3pm. Herri from the PMI and Riza and Gunawan with the car were at the airport to meet us. We did some shopping and then went to meet the truck. Yan and the drivers has checked into a guest house for a few hours sleep. Yan told that the trip from Jakarta had been mostly ok with the exception of the previous night at 3am when a car was trying to stop them driving through a remote palm oil plantation. Trucks often get robbed like this so they refused to stop until the next town where they went to the police station and reported the car. The police said that there was nothing they could do as the car hadn't done anything illegal...

We set off from Medan around 8pm. The trip to Meulaboh was fairly uneventful. Apart from one or two exceptions, the road seemed better than on previous trips and there were obvious signs that it had been repaired in places. After about 16 hours on the road we arrived in Meulaboh around noon on Friday. As we arrived in Meulaboh we could see some new houses that had recently been built:

and some which were still being built:

We arrived in the centre of Meulaboh to find a banner on the roundabout displaying "Bangun Kembali Aceh Tanpa Korupsi!" which translates as "Rebuild Aceh Without Corruption!"

Aceh has had some bad press recently with some NGOs alleging accounting regularities. This was always going to happen despite genuine efforts by the central government to stamp out corruption. The amounts that have allegedly gone missing are quite small however in the grand scale of things but it does make bad press however.

Although we could see that many of the buildings in the town centre had been rebuilt or repaired there were still a lot of tents around.

We called Pak Dadek after we arrived and he came to meet us. After we had lunch he took us to his office to unload the truck.

He told us that he had arranged a small ceremony the following day to hand over the aid to the people. He invited us to dinner in the evening at his house.

We went and checked into the hotel that Pak Dadek had booked for us. The hotel had only reopened in the last few months and was mainly used by people working for foreign NGOs.

After that we had some time to have a look around. We wanted to go and see what condition our toilets were in so that was our first stop. The tents were still there and there seemed to be even more of them than the last time we were there.

We went to Pak Rudyalsjah's house first and met his wife. She had some children in her house practicing an Acehnese dance. Novi and Ronan joined in.

Pak Rudyalsjah's wife took us over to see the toilets.

We had suspected that the toilet extension had not been finished properly the last time, so we were not surprised to see the outer wall had not been plastered.

Apart from this however everything seemed to functioning properly. Although the toilets were not very clean the people told us that they were the best in Meulaboh.

Pak Dadek told us later that there was a plan for the people in the camp to move to permanent housing in three months time. We have to bear in mind that a year ago they only planned for the people to stay in the tents for six months. So three months time probably means 2007 at least the way things are going. So far only 30% of people in Meulaboh who lost their houses have already been rehoused.

We went back to the hotel to have a rest and then went to Pak Dadek's house for dinner. Pak Dadek had also invited some people working for the UN World Food Programme. We discussed the progress of reconstruction in Aceh. Pak Dadek was very critical of the govenment's Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BBR - Badan Rehabilitasi dan Rekonstruksi). He told us that the biggest current barrier to reconstruction of new houses was the bureaucracy attached to the reallocation of land. The BRR said at first that only people who originally owned land should be compensated with new land. He said that the problem was that there was no proof of who owned what, and also given that many people lived in rented accomodation, this was not practical. They're now looking at other ways but in the meantime there is no progress. The BRR even asked the foreign NGOs to purchase the land from them to get round their problems. The NGOs rightfully refused to do so: otherwise the money donated to them for the purpose of aid would simply be going into the Indonesian government coffers. The NGOs are ready to start building once the land problem is solved.

Pak Dadek showed us a painting that he received from Kartika Affandi, an Indonesian artist whose father was the famous artist Affandi.

She had visited Meulaboh recently. While she was there she also painted the camp where we had built the toilets:

We got up early on Saturday morning and went for breakfast at a coffee stall across the road from the hotel. The coffee and Acehnese noodles (mie Aceh) were very tasty.

After breakfast we went to Pak Dadek's office for the ceremony that he had arranged to hand over our air compressors, sewing machines and tools to the people. We were surprised to find so many people waiting for us.

Pak Dadek made a speech to tell the people who we were and that we had already been to Meuaboh a number of times but he had not had the chance to arrange a ceremony for us to hand over our aid until now as on previous occasions they were still in emergency mode. He warned them all that they were not allowed to sell anything that we gave them and that he would visit each of them from time to time to make sure they didn't.

Meanwhile Pak Dadek's staff arranged the sewing machines out to make it easy for each person to collect a set.

My turn to say something...

We started up the air compressors to make sure they were working ok.

And then handed them over.

After this Pak Dadek's wife called the women one by one to receive a sewing machine.

And then we gave out the toolsets...

It took about an hour to distribute everything.

Herri, Pak Dadek, Ronan, Pak Dadek's wife, Novi and Ciaran.

At the end everyone started to take their things off by various means...

One thing that struck us this time was how excited people were to receive things. On previous trips we found a lot of apathy which was obviously down to trauma. This time however people were excited as you can see from the photo of the mechanics below. The people were also very thankful. Hopefully this is a sign that they are starting to get over the trauma.

When the ceremony was over we said goodbye to Pak Dadek and his wife. We had a few hours before setting off back to Medan in the car. We went for a ride using the local means of transport.

And then we went shopping for some souvenirs.

We then went for a drive around the port and the beach area where the tsunami had done the most damage. We saw more tents and a few houses being built.

The grass has grown over a lot of the area meaning it looked a lot different from the last time we were there.

Despite the planning directives that there was to be no new buildings within a certain distance of the sea in case there should be another tsunami in future, we saw quite a few new houses right on the beach.

Before setting off for Medan we went for a late lunch (more Acehnese noodles).

We met up with Zulyadi Miska whom we made contact with via Jack Large from KOTESOL in Korea.

Zul works for a local NGO in Meulaboh. He had helped us out when we were building the toilets by taking photos and emailing them to us.

We set off for Medan late afternoon Saturday. The trip was uneventful apart from a puncture in the middle of the jungle.

We reached the Berastagi mountain resort about 5am just before sunrise. Berastagi is only one hour from Medan and since our flight wasn't until 6pm we decided to stop for a while and get some sleep at a restuarant owned by a friend of Herri's.

Novi and Cucu went for a shower in a local waterfall.

And Ronan kept Yan awake. Ronan was the only one who had a good sleep in the car.

We got back to Medan around lunch time. We spent some time in Starbucks before flying back to Jakarta in the evening.

Comments on this update:

No comments have been added yet for this update.