20 March 2005

We flew to Medan Thursday 18 March afternoon and waited at the PMI office for the trucks to arrive. We broke up our wait by going shopping for a water pump and some inflatable mattresses and then going for dinner. By midnight we had heard nothing from the trucks and we were starting to get a bit worried. Novi's cousin Maman was travelling on one of the trucks and he had a mobile but we knew that the battery would probably have been flat but we did think he would have charged it up a bit during a stop. Shortly after midnight they finally arrived. We were really relieved to see them.

By then we were running so late that we had to set off as soon as we could. But the drivers looked exhausted having driven three days non-stop. There was only three drivers for the two trucks so they were rotating between them. We decided that we would let them have two hours sleep and set off at 2am.

We eventually set of at 2am. There was six of us in the car: two drivers in the front, me and Novi in the middle and Herri and Dian in the back. Within half an hour of setting off one of the trucks got a puncture so we had to stop an get it fixed. Luckily we found somewhere that was open. We had to wait about an hour before we could get back on the road again. We had a steep climb which the trucks, heavily laden with their loads of bricks and cement, slowly negotiated up to the town of Brastagi at 1300 metres altitude. We reached Brastagi by 6.30am just as the sun was rising. Then the same truck got another puncture in the spare which had replaced the wheel which got the first puncture. So we stopped and replaced the spare with the original. We never got the spare repaired again during the journey, something which made me wonder for the rest of the trip.

It took us another few hours to reach the border between the provinces of South Sumatra and Aceh with only a few obstacles such as a few temporary bridges around ones which had collapsed. Then things got tough.

For about 100km into Aceh the road goes up and down over a series of hills. These hills are not very high but they're very steep and there really are lots of them.

Our trucks were loaded to their maximum weight capacity, one with 700 concrete blocks and the other with 70 bags of cement.

We had a real battle with every hill getting the trucks to the top. In some cases they didn't make it and they had to reverse back down and take a second run at it. Then when we did get to the top we had to stop now and then to let the clutches and brakes cool off. It took us about 8 hours to negotiate this 100km (60 miles) stretch.

We stopped at a town called Tapaktuan on a very scenic part of the Acehnese coast just before sunset. We had something to eat there around 7pm and set off for the final stretch to Meulaboh an hour later.

We had estimated that we would arrive shortly after midnight but by then we were still about 60km short of Meulaboh. We lost one of the trucks behind us so we turned around and went back to look for it in case there was a problem. We found it after about 10 minutes. The driver told us that the truck was running very low on oil and he could feel the engine getting rough. We didn't want to take any chances with engines seizing so we decided that the truck was going no further until we got oil. We had two alternatives: the first was for us to go ahead to Meulaboh, get some and drive back, and the second was to stay put until morning. We went for the latter and got out the inflatable mattresses that we had bought in Medan and got a few hours sleep under a shelter next to a house by the roadside.

By around 6.30am the sun was rising for the second time since we left Medan. The driver of the truck low on oil suddenly decided that his truck had enough oil after all to continue. We suspected that he had simply been exhausted to the point that he could not continue the night before but didn't want to say so, and probably made up the story about the oil. We could easily forgive him for that under the circumstances. We set off again and arrived in Meulaboh about two hours later at 8.30am on Saturday morning.

As we hadn't had a wash in two day we decided a shower was number one priority so we headed straight for a Red Cross camp with reasonable facilities. After that we went for some fried noodles next to the PMI station. Herri had already arranged with Pak Dadek the camat (the head of the local government) for us to see two sites where we could build. Herri called him and he asked us to wait for a while until he was available. After an hour or two we started to get worried about time as we would have to get on the road back to Medan by around 8pm to make it back on time for our flights back to Jakarta Sunday afternoon.

We decided we go and look for the Pak Dadek's office and wait for him there. We found the his office around driving round in circles for about half an hour. Herri went in to look for him first. It turned out to be a good move to go looking for him for as soon as he saw Herri he gave him a warm welcome by throwing a crowd of people out of his office and inviting us inside. He told that the generator from our previous trip was still running and keeping the market lit and that the market had become a lot busier since our last trip with many vendors having returned.

With that we headed off to see the first of the two sites. It was only a five minute drive away. I went in Pak Dadek's car and Novi followed in our car. Pak Dadek explained that our first site was a new camp that was being set up. It currently had 50 tents which had been donated by a Taiwanese Buddhist organisation. They went still in the process of putting up the tents on top of wooden platforms.

No IDPs were yet staying there as the camp was not ready in terms of tents and also toilets. Pak Dadek said that as soon as the toilets were ready IDPs could start moving in.

IDPs would be moved from other temporary camps and from overcrowded houses.

He told us that this camp was on goverment-owned land so we didn't have to worry about anyone making claims on the land later. He also told that the tents would be gradually replaced with houses over a two-year period so hopefully two years would be the longest anyone would have to stay in a tent there. Still, two years is a long time in a tent...

We liked this site as soon as we saw it. Something we'd worried about prior to the trip was what we'd do with our materials when we got there. The materials would be used up gradually over a week or two until the toilets were complete so we would have to store them somewhere until they were needed. The bricks, wood, pipes, tiles were not a problem as rain would do them no harm. But if the cement got wet we would have a big problem. Then there would be the problem of finding our workers somewhere to sleep.

The fact that the few tents that has already been put up on this site solved all these problems for us. We would be able to fit all our materials and our workers into two tents. Another bonus was someone had already dug a big hole for a septic.Which made me realise that the builder hadn't mentioned a septic tank so I wondered if we had the materials.

We told Pak Dadek straight away that we would take this site that he was offering us. Pak Dadek asked Novi to send our car back to get the two trucks and bring them there as they were still waiting at the PMI station. Novi went off to look for them. Pak Dadek pointed out that there was a radio station based in a house across the road from our site. He told me that the owner of the station was a friend of this and he invited me to go over and meet him.

The radio station was called Dalka FM and the director was called Pak Rudyalsjah. He invited me upstairs to see his studio. He told that the studio had been in a building next to the house and had been completely destroyed. He had managed to set up again with amateur equipment and a 1000 Watt transmitter that a Jakarta radio station had donated. He said that they were playing a mixture of news, public information and music to fill the gaps. Their news includes a relay of the BBC world service news twice a day and the public information service includes announcements for people searching for family and friends. Pak Rudyalsjah told us that apart from the poor equipment the other problem was there was a real shortage of radios. So far the radio station had distributed 2000 radios which had been donated by a number of radio stations including 200 by the BBC. They are aiming to distribute a total of 5000 radios so they need 3000 more to reach their target. We said we'd look at bringing a few on our next trip.

Novi turned up with the trucks and some food and coffee so we had lunch at Pak Rudyalsjah's place. It was worth getting to know him as he lived across the road from our site so he could keep an eye. He offered to let Dian stay in his house and he offered us a cook and the use of his kitchen to feed our workers and his toilet also until ours was complete. So everything was falling into place nicely.

We knew that we wouldn't get to see the builder make a start on the toilets as it was already late so I decided to spend some time making sure that he knew what we wanted. This is good as it turned out that despite the plan I had drawn up, he had a completely different idea of how the toilets should be built. We marked out the foundation lines with some string and then it became clearer to him what we wanted. Then he mentioned that he'd forgotten to tell us that we would need additional bricks for the septic tank. We had the hole but we didn't have any bricks. It would have mattered much anyway as the trucks were on maximum capacity and a few more might have stopped them from making it up some of the hills that we had passed.

Pak Dadek told us that we could buy bricks locally. Even though they were three times the Jakarta price they would be ok for finishing the job.

It was getting close to sunset so we got everything into the tents.

We started up up the generator and wired up some lights.

Pak Dadek had invited us for dinner at his house at 7pm. It was 6.30pm already and it was starting to get dark.

We were aiming to set off back to Medan by 9pm at the latest so we were running a bit late. We got showered at Pak Dadek's house and then had dinner with him and his wife.

By the time we were finished it was after 9pm so we were running a bit late. We had to go back to the site to meet the trucks and drop Dian off.

Pak Dadek insisted on taking us to see the market first with our generator running the lights. We could say no and it wasn't too far away anyway. By the time we had gone there and then dropped Dian off and said goodbye to everyone it was 10.30pm. This means we only had about 16 hours to get back to Medan in time for our flight. So we set up in a hurry.

We stopped a few times on the way back for breakfast and a shower.

Apart from that we got a few hours sleep.

We arrived back in Medan at 1.30pm on Sunday which meant we had a hour to spare before checking in for our flight. We got back to Jakarta Sunday evening. Sunday was the first time we had got to bed in four nights so it was nice to get back.

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