| 22 February 2005 - Eric While waiting for boat building materials to arrive in Krueng Raya, I have spent most of the last few days doing mostly nothing but spending time with the Acehnese. Walking the streets, learning the language, dodging the motorcycles, smoking Sam Soe’s, buying fruit from the vendors calling mister, how are you?, waving. And if I had a horn on my backpack you can bet I’d be honking it. They seem united in teaching me perfect Indonesian and its Acehnese equivalent within the next month or so. Spending a week in Jakarta before getting here was enough to help me recognize they are different. The Acehnese are strong, proud of their culture, their coffee, proud to speak their Acehnese, polite enough to translate it. The more I get to know them the more I realize that only now could I begin to grieve with them. 20 February 2005 - Eric Yesterday, we walked tired, having been awakened by earthquakes several nights running. Earthquakes are common here but locals say they have increased in magnitude and frequency since the tsunami. Our living at one end of the third floor with narrow exit at the other makes it an ordeal when we charge down the narrow stairwell half asleep. This reinforced concrete building made it through a nine-O, so unless god falls asleep on the repent button I am sure it will continue to survive medium quakes regularly. Still. While Aaron and Eddie spent yesterday preparing final reports of Livelihood Recovery in Fishing Boat Construction, I met with Tarsis Kodrat, Koordinator Hublu/Instansi at the Pendopo. The Department of Immigrasi sent me to him to get a letter recommending the extension of my visa. He is a very gracious and kind man whom Aaron, Eddie and I spoke to a week or two ago while researching the fishing industry in Aceh. Among many topics, we discussed wanting an easier way to renew visas so we could keep working without leaving the country every thirty days. He mentioned how there was something different about Americans who had traveled. He told us of a journalist who recently walked into the Media Center here and broke up a half dozen conversations by asking loudly, “Does anyone here speak English?” Pak Tarsis asked me to hand write a request for my visa’s extension. He took it and then swung around his own laptop and asked me to review and edit a letter he was writing to the UN. They were beginning a new visa extension program and asking the UN to please have their people and those working under them get special ID’s from the Pendopo and to display them properly while doing volunteer work in Aceh. I was the first volunteer in Aceh to receive this special ID showing my visa status. Pak Tarsis said he would include a copy of my written request with his directional letter as a model for the UN. Though it was mostly through random timing that I did these things, I found it ironic but fitting that I edited letters aimed at streamlining the visa renewal process for an agency we’ve thought a little cumbersome for our particular goals. Yet, streamlining the process to get things done is consistent with the spirit of our work, and really, the limited time available to us demanded it. The arrow in AIRO’s logo means and the mindset of us three is; do what is needed and get it right the first time for everyone. Because of this we have local craftsmen building boats in Krueng Raya while the news trickling out of the media is that Aceh’s fishing industry needs rebuilding. This project was partly possible because of the village structure in Aceh. Our going forward with the project is with trust in the local leaders who have given us every reason to believe they will be fair. Aaron and Eddie are on the plane headed to Medan, Jakarta, then home. They made sacrifices much greater than mine in order to travel here and did not want to leave. But I am sure they have an incredible satisfaction knowing that our successes were worth that sacrifice and the hard work enduring the many obstacles thrown at us. This morning Aaron and Eddie bid farewell to a special family that felt the same way. “Thanks for helping the people of Aceh,” they’ve said, “maybe some day we can help you in return.” |
Journal Entries
Journal Entries
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