Hands On Disaster Response!

I did it! i finally made it all the way down to Pariaman in Indonesia. It took me a good seven days to actually make it all the way down via bus and ferry. lot longer than if i had flown and it actually ended up costing about the same. however, it meant that along the way i met a variety of interesting people and got to see a lot of things that i would have otherwise missed out on.

For example, one of the first places that i stopped was George Town in Malaysia, its an ex British colonay and obviously named after the king of the period. it is an endless maze of colonial arquiteqture with signs in cantonese, hindi and english. the population seems to be generally made up of hong kong chinese that were brought over there during the colonial era. This means that you can have english food for breakfast, chinese food for lunch and indian food for dinner. and most of the time you arent going to be paying a lot more than 5 ringit for your food and drinjk which equates to about 1 pound british.

Ferry time. I took the ferry over to Medan (belawan) in North Sumatra. It was a good option in the end as the price is fixed at 200 ringit for a three month open return, which is about 40 quid. flights fluctuate regularly and can obviously mean sometimes that you are going to be paying a lot more.

I arrived at Padang Panjan which really has nothing going for it to be honest. the hotels were far more than i was willing to pay so i decided to go and sleep outside in a bus shelter. after a bit one of the owners came out and insisted that i wasnt allowed to sleep there and that he would give me the room for free. i reluctantly accepted as i dont like to impose on people. I had a good nights sleep and woke up nice and early to head off on my journey to the volunteer site. The owener again insisted that he took me on all the buses and actually paid for all of them as well as he was so grateful that someone had come out to his country to help out people less fortunate than us.

On arrival i was greeted by an australian called dave who was really friendly. Then i got plunged in at the deep end, i set my hammock up in the garden, as i didnt really want to sleep inside with everyone else; then headed off to work.

The devistation was something that is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. We went past houses that were totally flattened and some that were just meerly damaged. but it didnt matter, i was overcome with emotion at the plight of these people. yet they were still smiling... waving... and retorting the usual "HELLO MR!!!!!"

The work was very tiring and the conditions were exceptionaly hot. i thought my blood was boiling at some points and of course on the first day, being so close to the equator i got pretty red on my arms, neck and face.

The work mainly involves two important stages. Deconstructing the damaged properties whilst trying to keep the majority of materials intact for reuse. the second stage is seperating all these materials out into useable and not reusables. i.e salvage.

salvage involved a lot of motar removal from brickwork and also moving around cement and riverrocks. Deconstruction involved making the house stable and then gently encouraging it to fall over in the dircetion and place that we wanted it whilst ensuring a minimum amount of damage.

over the months i was at this project i learnt a fair bit of general indonesian and also menung which is the local language spoken in west sumatra. i became friends with many of the local people and even went on a home stay with a fabulous woman called eti which i will go into at a later stage.

the local people were fantastically happy for us to be there and be helping them out with something that they didnt have the money or skills to accomplish. we were saving on average about 20-25% of the brickwork from a house and then also the majority of the tin and wooden structure from the roof. if you look at that in terms of a house in the uk that costs 400,000 quid, thats 100,000 we are saving them on the cost of rebuilding their homes. in terms of rupiah, we were saving them a few years wages.

the work that hands on disaster relief accomplishes is of the like that i have never seen before. the people there were relentless. the energy was fantastic and its definately something that i will never forget. please go and visit their website at http://hodr.org/

i am going to have to write a proper article about my experiences but for the time being i am going to post a video from their website so that you can all have a look at the work thats put into doing disaster relief and hopefully decide for yourselves that its something you will endevour to do at some point in your life.

http://hodr.org/2009/11/24/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-volunteer-project-sungai-geringging/

please watch it and enjoy!!! more to follow as soon as i get a bit more time and im not feeling quite so lazy!!!