… I remember
thinking how incredibly resilient the Sumatran people were and I wonder if we’d
be as stoic if our entire town or village had been reduced to piles of bricks?
On October 13th
I received an email from Lasse Petersen. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in
contact, in fact my heart raced every time his name flashed up in my inbox or
on my mobile phone. Lasse works for the charity Shelterbox, a Non-Government
Organisation (NGO) based in Helston, Cornwall. Over a year ago I’d spent nine
days training to be a member of their Shelterbox Response Team (SRT). We
trudged up and over Dartmoor in the rain, slept in tents and received an utter
grilling on the contents of the big green box they send out to disaster areas.
I had been waiting for the call for deployment and I’d had several over the
last 18 months, but work commitments, my own wedding and honeymoon meant I’d
been unable to respond to the call.
October 13th was
different. Lasse was asking for my availability for immediate deployment to
Sumatra. I looked through my diary, usually a hectic mishmash of irregular
freelance work, speaking engagements and meetings, but remarkably I only had
four work dates. They were relatively easily dropped and although it would be a
financial loss if I didn’t take the opportunity then I didn’t see myself being
able to deploy for another year. I called Lasse back; I’d be flying to Padang
just 4 days later.
Shelterbox
I first discovered the
charity in 2004; a friend and Rotarian had recommended it as a possible
recipient of fundraising from my second Atlantic Ocean row. The Rowgirls (my
four-girl team) adopted the charity and set to raising money and awareness for
them.
It was the perfect fit; the Shelterbox packed with a ten-man tent, cooking equipment, blankets … everything a family would need to keep them warm and dry under canvas, effectively camping until they’re able to get back on their feet, and Rowgirls, four women ‘extreme camping’ at sea.
On visiting their warehouse
and seeing the scale of their vision I made a promise to myself that I would
see the boxes delivered to those who needed them.
The Rowgirls raised over
£30,000, equivalent to 60 boxes, 600 people protected from the elements.
Sumatra
In my own mind I’d prepared
myself for the very worst, imaging scenes broadcast after the tsunami in 2004 -
unparalleled destruction, bodies strewn among the wreckage, children screaming,
mothers weeping. I faced the full
horror of the disaster in my imagination and spent much of the four days
leading up to our departure gaining reassurance from my family and friends that
I would be able to cope with the situation.
Luckily, if I can call it
that, our arrival was almost four weeks after the initial quake and the clear
up was already in full flow. I was under no illusion that we may only be able
to help 100, maybe 200 families in the two weeks I’d be out there, but compared
to 125,000 families affected it seemed like a drop in the ocean.
All my nerves and
apprehensions were forgotten when my teammate Mark and I experienced a
terrifying emergency landing on our flight out. We spent seven hours in Muscat
awaiting a new plane that wasn’t on fire! We also discovered our baggage had
been separated and sent on to a completely different country and after a
cross-city dash in the middle of the night through Kuala Lumpur my nerves had
in fact been calmed by the time we eventually arrived in Padang airport.
Exhausted by our journey Mark and I where then met by the SRT crew already on
the ground, we were bundled into a car before setting off to see the
devastation first hand.
As we drove Pat, SRT who
already been out for a week, gave us an overview of the situation, how many
boxes had been sent over, how many had been distributed. It was so much to take
in when you’re experiencing the sights and sounds of a new country. It was also
incredibly hot. Although it was monsoon season the morning sun was already
blasting the temperature way up into the 30’s.
Bouncing down unmade roads
we stared out of the windows as we passed house after house that had collapsed.
Pat was explaining that the poorer communities with their wood built homes had
faired relatively well, the richer families had also scraped through with
barely a scratch, their brick built houses protected by better, more expensive
workmanship. The ‘middle classes’ were the ones who’d suffered the most.
Upgrading themselves from the wooden huts they’d employed unskilled workers to
build with bricks and cheap mortar. With no regulations to speak of their homes
were literally shaken to collapse. The houses we saw were roofs left sat upon
rubble.
I also discovered that in
these situations it’s not just your collapsing home that can kill you. After a
long day in the car stopping off in village after village taking in the
widespread destruction, Pat asked our driver, a kind and gentle man named Yan,
to take us to one last spot. By this point we had met up with the rest of our
team, Per from Canada and team leader Wayne, from the USA.
Driving through an army
checkpoint I could sense there was a more serious situation up ahead. The paddy
fields around us were empty. A small group of people was walking down the road
towards us, and as we slowly passed it became clear that they were carrying a
black body bag. A lump formed in my throat.
We arrived at a busy, noisy
thoroughfare. There were dumper trucks, industrial diggers, food stalls, the
army, people with camera phones. The beep-bibbing of the reversing digger and
the chatter of smiling smoking Sumatran soldiers became the gateway for what
lay ahead.
After the quake, the mountainous,
water logged landscape had become dangerously unstable. Many of the villages
were set deep within the valleys making the very most of the flat land by
working paddy fields and farmland. It seemed the landslides moved too quickly
for the villagers. Before us there had been homes and now it was just mud and
broken palm trees. Beneath, 300 people who weren’t able to escape the fast
moving wet earth.
The Australian army were
there with their diggers, not to extract bodies but to excavate the drainage
system. The mud had blocked the irrigation channels leaving the surrounding
fields bone dry. Not only would the surviving villagers lose family members but
without the rice they would also lose their only means of income.
We walked back into the
hubbub of the village, the ramshackle houses that remained, stopping briefly at
a makeshift shelter where a board had be set facing the road. Yan explained
that this was the list of all the families that were missing. Any bodies that
were recovered during the excavations would be identified and marked on the
list.
It wasn’t the last
landslide area we visited during our two weeks but I was surprised and proud at
my own resilience, and that of my team in the face of all this loss. It helped
that we had a job to do and our training had proved invaluable. Our days were
long, sweaty but ultimately rewarding. We packed boxes onto lorries, the
lorries went to a pre-arranged destination, we unpacked, gathered members of
the community, demonstrated how to pitch the tents and then left them to it.
It was really important to
ensure the community had a sense of ownership, that they understood that the
boxes were for those who really needed then, that the content of the boxes
belonged entirely to the recipient (and no one else!) and that it was their
responsibility to look after and support their neighbours. In most cases they
did this with vigor. Tents were pitched with throngs of watching families, land
cleared to make way for a mini tent city!
On other occasions the distribution didn’t go as smoothly; local bureaucracy played its part with the Wali’s (the local mayor) choosing not to receive aid for fear of inciting jealousy. Some would except aid for their own benefit, passing on boxes to family or stockpiling to their own ends. It seemed like a constant battle to keep on top of the distribution. For every box that went out there was a follow-up visit to double-check its appropriate use.
The days passed so quickly and the bonds between us as a team grew stronger. Sharing a tent with three men had its benefits . . . and its drawbacks! We won’t even talk about the smell! When we could we took the opportunity to take some time out and visit the beach, diving into the Indian Ocean with such zealous enthusiasm, running about and playing like the children we’d seen in the villages … skipping amongst the rubble.
Returning Home
I’d also picked up a bug,
not so difficult when you saw how filthy Sumatra was. The introduction of
plastic packaging and the lack of any infrastructure to dispose of it meant the
street where awash with rubbish. Huge piles of household detritus smoldered on
the curbside. With nowhere to throw our used water bottles it felt like
blasphemy to toss it on the floor with the rest of the litter, but toss it we
did…. you have to accept that you can’t change everything.
