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Warning: Please do not read this unless you are
prepared for the worst. The stories and pictures
contained in this entry are very unpleasant and
difficult to digest.
The light version is that we spent the day
handing out food and doing first aid for
people with minor injuries.
The heavy version is, well, heavy.
Please post your comments - I will pass them
on to our team and to the people.
I did not know what to expect. I mean, sure, I had some idea - broken buildings, injured people, smashed infrastructure -- but no real concept of how it might be when we got here.
Arriving in Jogja (Yogya) did not make it any easier. I mean, sure there was some damage, but most of what we saw initially was superficial or, if not superficial, not complete destruction. (Topher, it was a bit like the time I visited you a few days after that big quake in LA.)
There are lots of Red Cross workers here - Red Cross Spain, Red Cross France - and other NGO’s are also well represented. We visited some organisers just outside the hotel to
Rubble in the road.
This rubble used to be the houses behind the stores on this main road.get an update on aid distribution and to get passes to travel around the region.
In the mean time, I checked my mail and had a quick glance at the news to see if there was anything I should know about the area or about Merapi - it could blow, apparently, at any time.
I saw, on CNN, a story about a town that after 6 days had still not had any relief and decided that we would try to find it. We debated the issue thinking that the CNN story might have inspired others to do the same but decided that others may have the same thought and that the village might need our help. We set out to find it.
As we drove through Jogja the scale of the damage became more and more clear. Massive buildings lying in heaps of rubble on the ground. A university so badly damaged that people would have been killed inside had the quake happened an hour later. We saw a government building lying at a 45 degree angle, desks and furniture hanging precariously from the second and third floor windows. Now we are starting to see how hard
Ahimsa Staff Help Loading Van
The staff at Ahimsa was so helpful, supplying rope and helping us load the Van. the ground must have shaken.
(Last night a Red Cross worker I spoke to said that the area they were in had a not-so-small aftershock that frightened everyone, including her driver. We have not felt any in our travels.)
As we entered Bantul the scale of destruction became unreal. There were piles of rocks, bricks and metal lying in orderly piles on the road. The buildings around us looked fine so it was hard to imagine where they came from. Then we looked down the back roads and got our answer: the buildings on the main road were better built then the residential houses behind them. They were completely destroyed and people had been carting the material out onto the street to make room to rebuild.
As we went deeper into the remote areas of Bantul we arrived in places where nothing was still standing, except the odd wall. I remember seeing this wall, standing in the middle of a pile of rubble with a paining of a pretty girl in the middle of it - what a strange image.
A thorough search of Bantul and maps of the region did not help us to locate
CNN’s little town and the area was full of relief efforts and camps. We found a massive Kuwaiti camp, various Red Cross teams and news tents. We decided to head North to an area that Augusto (our driver) had heard news of. He said the destruction there was just as bad or worse than Bantul and that little or no help had arrived.
When we got there we found entire villages wiped out, houses lying in piles of rubble, people sorting through the rubbish and children and old people on the side of the road. Feeling a bit cynical, I thought perhaps it was good ‘marketing’ to have the very young and very old doing the begging but it is simpler than that: Those in the middle have tonne of work to do rebuilding their lives.
Some locals told us of a hard to find village that needed support. We set out to find it. One tiny road lead to a smaller one. And then a really tiny one. And then we saw a VERY small road leading to the left with a hand painted sign pleading for help in Javanese. We turned down the road…
We
were almost immediately greeted with scenes of complete destruction. Just when you think you have seen the worst of it, it gets more terrible. A man stepped out to greet us - a local chief he explained. He told us that the ‘house’ we were looking at belonged to the old lady beside us. She had lost her son and husband when the quake destroyed her house. Alone now, he begged us to support her. We did. Some food, some water - she was so grateful and yet we really did so little for her.
The chief then explained that as hard hit as this little village was, he had it under control and knew of another, 10 minutes away, that really needed help. But he was afraid to take us there because he thought they might try to loot the truck because we had stuff strapped to the roof. We came up with a plan.
We moved all the goods inside the van, leaving no room for me. I rode on the back of his motorbike, about a third of a mile ahead, and if I did not like the look of things I would signal to
Give me Shelter
These kids sat under this tent preparing food they had received from one of the aid organisations. the van to stay back. We were fine. We arrived in the village and the chief told everyone to give us some space.
The first man we met had this shell-shocked expression on his face. He seemed okay - no obvious injuries, but he looked completely in shock. He was. 7 days ago the ground started shaking, bringing his house down around him and crushing his wife. She was in her ninth month. They tried to get the baby out, but it was dead too.
He just stood there in a middle of a pile of rubble that was once his house.
We gave him food and water and moved deeper into the village where I found an old couple trying to organise the peieces of their house into manageable piles. They were very old and frail, the job was too big for them.
I watched as the old man tried to free sections of corrugated iron from the rubble so he could construct a make-shift shelter for them to sleep under. He could not get one section loose and just kept trying. I walked over, moved the heavy stuff off the iron and moved it
for him -- thinking the whole time that my help was really irrelevant unless I stayed for six months and rebuilt it with him.
The chief came to get me. He took us to a central part of the village where he said they had not had food or water drops since the quake (many of the roads had only just been reopened and we had to cross may precarious bridges just to get there). We started handing out boxes of instant noodles, rice and fresh water. For the kids we had brought some crayons and paper - they were delighted. And then I saw her.
This little girl. So sad. So cute. Pretty pink dress. Black eye. Scratches and bruises on her face. We had medical supplies but we had only intended to donate them to a field hospital, not use them ourselves. Still, I asked if I could clean and dress the wound on the side of her face - yes, please, they said. So I did.
And as I did the chief told me the little girl’s story. After the quake they thought she was dead - after all, her mother had been crushed
to death and she could not be found. Until they heard her crying. They dug for over 2 hours to get her out and when they did her only injury was a scrape and bruise on the side of her head, resulting in a black eye. But the story does not end there. Her mother already dead, the little girls father had also been badly injured in the quake - his leg compound fractured. He died of his injuries later.
While I cleaned her up, she was so brave. We warned her that the alcohol might hurt, she did not flinch. As I worked on her, a crowd gathered. More and more wounded showed up. I was not prepared for this.
There was the little boy with the gash on his head. The man with the infected scratches down his back. The old women with a badly injured toe. Another few children with cuts and scrapes of various kinds.
This very old woman hobbled over with the help of a few others. Something was wrong with her foot. Removing the dressing revealed an open hole in her foot - she had cut herself running out of a
falling building - and a powerful and awful smell. I could not believe what I was looking at. She had received some first aid on the day of the quake and someone had packed gauze INSIDE her wound. That was a week ago. For a week she had been walking on the wound with no sandals or shoes. It was filthy, infected and smelling terrible. I did what I could but made the chief promise to get her to a proper hospital first thing in the morning - she is in serious trouble.
Some of the wounds we saw had never been treated, and others had but long ago. One little boy had some stitches in his cheek which he had torn out with his fingers in his sleep.
Other than the old lady with the hole in her foot, the injuries were not severe except for being untreated and dirty. The man with the scrapes on his back would be fine in a normal situation but without clean clothes and water every scratch was swollen and infected.
It was starting to get dark and the line of injured had come to and end. The chief told
us that we needed to leave. Bandits have been coming down into the villages at night and if they saw westerners there could be trouble. We took his advice but not before offloading our remaining goods (rice, water, noodles and a few footballs for the kids).
I got into the van and sat in stunned silence. I was so tired, so drained, I could not even cry. Maybe I will later.
If you can, please give. .
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Paula Thorne
non-member comment
Very Special
Hi Eric, Just liked to say how much of a wonderful job you and the team are doing, I think that your all very special people for the help and bravery for even being there. The little girl brought a tear to the eye. Be safe, take care Paula