| 1 February 2005: Eddie Here is a flavor of my work detail... email text from the LDS country director out of Jakarta... Eddie, Visited with Aaron at hospital this evening and he's doing well. Eric will fly to Banda Aceh on Monday morning. Aaron mentioned that you have someone who is willing to possibly donate materials for fishing boat construction -- that would be a blessing. One of the villages/resettlement places we visited appears to have the room for a possible construction site (I think their boat construction person might have been taken by the tsunami). It was the site where they may also make bricks -- Surya Arsyad would know and also could help find an expert that could oversee the work of boat construction. We do have a bid for 15 boats at approximately $525 per boat (20 hp diesel engine, 10 meter wood boat, 3-4 man crew) but they will take 12 weeks for construction. Another possibility is finding used boats further down the island from areas where tsunami did not cause such serious damage. We may also explore foreign mfgrs such as China where shipment might be immediate. We would like to get at least a few boats to some of the settlements to invite hope for the future. Did you get to visit UN meeting? Are there people at UN or Indonesian Government level that are addressing the fishing boat issue? If you learn anything please let us know. Also, we received a call today from Ministry of Health asking for more body bags or black plastic rolls. We are working on securing some from Medan and trucking it to Banda Aceh, but we have never had final confirmation that 20,000 bags we sent via DHL were ever picked up at the harbor. They sent them by vessel from Jakarta (originally came from China where the Church purchased them and shipped them by air to Jakarta). If you or Surya can find time to go to the harbor and determine whether they ever arrived or were picked up it would be helpful. The consignee on the shipment was "POSKO TERPADU BANDA ACEH" and the shipment should be labeled with both The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and China Charity Federation. DHL Tracking numbers on 4 lots were: 194-3861-710 and 824 and 754 and 743 (first seven numbers are the same). Should have arrived between 11 and 15 January, but POSKO may have never received them. If found they should be delivered directly to the POSKO and brought to our attention and to the attention of Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, Alwi Shihab. Surya knows where his office is. I don't want to burden you with these kind of things, but at this point this is a critical need in Banda Aceh. I'll stay in touch. Thanks for all you are doing. Elder Palmer |
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