a girl and her brother
posted by sageincaravan at 6:58 PM
2 comments
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Banda Aceh 1
Sultan Iskandar Muda airport of Banda Aceh turned out to be much larger than my expectations. A hard concrete runway of 8,200 feet lies in the middle of rice paddies and green fields. You see an old Russian Mil Helicopter sitting on the grass, being repaired. A stripped Boeing 737 is discarded at the far end of the ramp area. One day (Around January 4, 2005) in the early stage of rescue flights after the Tsunami, the aircraft hit the roaming water buffalos on the runway upon landing. Since the aircraft engines, interior and cockpit instruments were completely removed, I guess the owner decided to leave the carcass of the aircraft to rot away in the sea breeze.
We refueled our Caravan after the passengers of Medicines Sans Frontier left the airport. MSF, The Red Cross, Mercy Corps are many NGOs are in Banda Aceh. These quiet professionals from all over the world are here and other places in Indonesia currently. Many of those locations are only accessible by small airplanes like the Cessna Caravan. It is my new job to take these aid workers and their mountains of equipments to rural airports.
The MSF people will return to the airport by 14:00, that gives us 3 hours to kill. Ken (not his real name), the chief/instructor pilot of my new operator, and I caught a cab to visit the downtown for lunch and tour the site where the 2004 Sumatra Tsunami hit the hardest. Shortly after leaving the airport, we passed by the mass graveyard on our left. In Muslim religion men and women are supposed to be buried separately even among married couples and families. Yet this old tradition was abandoned at the site due to the enormous number of bodies and the harsh reality that in many cases bodies are damaged beyond the recognition of their gender.
The town where the tsunami wave didn’t reach seems idyllic, sleepy with many water buffalos in rice paddies, chickens and ducks around the houses. As we got closer to the center of the city, the streets became crowded with lots of traffic and it looked like any lively city in Indonesia. You see many Army soldiers in full combat fatigue with automatic rifles, the reminder of the fact that Banda Aceh has been the battle-ground between the hard core Muslim rebels and the government. Occasionally, compressed, severely damaged cars are seen abandoned on the shoulders of the street and parking area. Made me wonder if the water could twist metals like giant’s hands.
After turning the corner from the wide street and proceeding for a while, suddenly the forward view got wider and I saw more blue of the sky than buildings along the narrow street. The view that abruptly appeared in front of us, the flattened land with only few houses standing barely, resembled the black and white pictures of Hiroshima taken right after the WWII. At least 180 degrees horizontally in front of me, the land is almost completely flat with collapsed houses. The sheer scale of the devastation numbed me, making me deny what my eyes were seeing. I saw the tall white tower of Mosque in distance, standing in the midst of severely damaged houses. For some strange reason God only knows, one house survived the strong current of tsunami, sitting in the open field forlornly. Amazingly, I couldn’t still see the shore from where I stood there. We got back in the cab and continued to one of the famous sites in Banda Aceh.
After several turns in the narrow streets, there she is, PLTDAPUNG1(meaning floating generator), a flat-bottomed 5,000 ton ship driven ashore and now in the middle of the residential area. She must be the sturdiest object the tsunami encountered in Banda Aceh. I didn’t see any substantial damage on the hull. Propellers are gone for sure but the superstructure looks fine and I could hear the sound of the generator running. Surrounding this behemoth are small houses that miraculously survived the tsunami and advancing 5,000 tons of steel vessel. The shortest distance between the ship and the house located closest to the ship is about 5 meters. There is still a lot of debris trapped between the ship’s flat bottom and the ground. Understandably, after the tsunami they found several bodies there as well. I walked around the ship, wondering how strong the current had to be to carry the vessel from the shoore. How could be those houses, some of them look like mere shacks, around the ship still standing here in fairly decent conditions?
“Hello, mister.” said a girl, about age 5, as she approaches me from one of the houses of miracle. She is holding an even younger boy, presumably her brother. They look so fragile, standing in the field of disaster, yet her smile is so brilliant, almost cheerful, fun-loving somehow. (Later, I came to witness more smiling kids storming to the airplane as I taxied into the ramp in the airport of Nias Island where a major aftershock had happened nearby and killed about 900 people on April 29, 2005.) I asked her if I can take their photos and she replies it’s OK. She never asked for anything in return but I gave her 50,000rp.
“Thank you, mister.” She smiled beamingly, while the boy in her arms looks insulted.
“Your house?” I asked as I point my finger to the direction of the houses.
“Yes, mister.” said a girl and turned away to walk to that direction. I followed her to a small house with concrete wall. The glass in the window is gone and instead the sheet of cardboard is filling the frame. I was greeted by a young lady, maybe in her teens, and a woman at her 30’s, probably their mother.
“Selamat siang. (Good early afternoon)” One of the only several Indonesian I could speak at that point. “My name is Seiji. Would you please show me your house if that’s OK with you? I’m so interested in the lifestyle of people here after the tsunami.” We shook hands and the mother said to me something in her language which I didn’t understand at all. My only hope, a young English-speaking girl just keeps smiling at me innocently. The teenage girl is quite attractive, smiling at me as well but she doesn’t seem to know what to do with me. As a matter of fact, all of us, excluding the youngest boy who is toddling into the house, were standing in front of the house, smiling at each other, yet not knowing what to do next for few seconds. It was an uncomfortable moment for me. Most people I’ve met in Indonesia don’t understand English at all. All I can speak in their language is a simple greeting. Asking them for a favor in English is almost useless to convey my interests to them. But I had to say something, you know? And it’s better in English than Japanese, I thought. In either language, they would have done the same thing, I guess.
They walked in the house and welcomed me inside. As I was taking my shoes off before stepping into their house, the mother wove her hand fiercely in side way, saying “no, no!” But my shoes were so muddy after walking around the still wet land around the ship. How could I possibly step into her tidy house with dirty shoes on, after asking for so much already? I took them off and stepped into the dark room. The floor is covered with brown, worn out carpet and blue plastic sheet partially, about 2 meters by 3 meters. Two pillows on the carpet indicated this room may be their sleeping room. Two small pieces of furniture, more like shelves, sit in the corner. The next room is a kitchen, brighter than the first room because part of the roof is not there, allowing the sunshine to pour in and fill the kitchen with fresh air. There is no gas. The fireplace, several pods and a table are against the wall. Next to the kitchen is a bathroom whose roof and wall facing outside the house are completely gone. The house next to theirs seen from the kitchen, further away from the ship, is severely demolished with several stone-made pillars and the remaining wall left. Seems like nobody’s living there. With the increasing afternoon UV baking my neck, feeling sweat dropping on my chest beneath my shirts, I was astonished by their living condition. What would they do in the rain? There’s no door between the rooms. Do they sleep on the wet floor, or cuddle over each other to stay in the small dry part of the floor? My imagination ran no-stop, trying to envisage every possible situation in this small house…
Yet what amazed me most is the fact I see more smile in their eyes than sorrow and despair. How could they be so cheerful after losing so much only 5 months ago? Did they have to learn how to cry with smile on their faces since so many journalists and curious invaders like myself had come and asked the same questions again and again? But they have no TV, no computer to see themselves captured in the world media network anyway. What do they care? The girl talked to her mother, then the mother talked to me. Two sets of eyes are fixed to me, waiting for my response intently. “Sorry, I don’t understand your language.” I said. Then both women gesture drinking water from a cup. They are asking me if I would like to have a drink. “No, I’m OK.” I was a bit thirsty but in the cab I had a bottle of green tea. Plus I didn’t want to have their precious supply of drinking water. It’s about the time to return to the cab. I thought I was staying there too long now. “Terima kasih. (thank you)” I repeated saying. I even pressed my both hands together as if a Buddhist monk to show more gratitude. I thought of giving money again but for some reason, it seemed it would be offensive to them. Giving money to that girl for some pictures was one thing. But to her mother for her kindness is cheap. I don’t know. Maybe I was the one who’s rather cheap.
On the way back from Banda Aceh, we followed the coastline to see the damage of the tsunami. I saw the ship from the air; their small house, too, at least a good mile inland from the shoreline. Lhok Nga, located west of Banda Ach in the small peninsula, was hit hard. The tsunami wave attacked the town from both the shore and land. The wave that reached Banda Aceh was so high that it engulfed the residential area and came around the rocky peak of the peninsula and met the wave from the shore over Lhok Nga. I saw the mosque standing alone, surrounded by many flattened houses. A large ship is half sunken in the port of the cement factory, revealing her red keel. I found the white scar at the lower part of the mountains which extend south from Banda Aceh to all the way to Lam No. The tsunami must have chiseled the soil and trees, showing white rocky earth. This part of the island of Sumatra lost its elevation along the shoreline by about 1 meter. The soil which used to be above the water is now below the waves, coloring the blue water with muddy brown hue. Must be chocking the coral nearby. Funny, I thought in sarcastic way, that I briefly cared about coral. More than 120,000 people died in Banda Aceh alone. Who gives a damn about the coral here?
It has been a very long day and when I landed at Medan Polonia airport after 18:00 I was exhausted. Short field take-off and landing at close to max gross weight are something I haven’t done so often in my 11 year flying career. And those scenes of disaster are so powerful and gripping, stories so dramatic and overwhelming. One of many stories Ken, the instructor pilot, told me today caught my mind and still hasn’t let me go. It was about one aid worker who had been called back to Medan from Aceh suddenly. Before she came to Indonesia, she had gone through a thorough medical check. Now the result showed she’s HIV positive. She was notified the reason why she had to leave her station and go home upon arrival to this small airport ramp where I stood now. Maybe it was a good thing that I hadn’t met that lady. She was so benevolent to come to this far end of the world from her country to help people she didn’t even know. Now, she is fighting for her own survival somewhere by herself. As many faces of people I’ve met and heard about today flashed back through my mind, I found myself emotionally drained yet at the same time deliriously satisfied of this day, feeling so alive for the first time in many months. I was glad to have decided to come down here. My new job as a Caravan pilot in Indonesia is surely challenging enough for my liking.
We refueled our Caravan after the passengers of Medicines Sans Frontier left the airport. MSF, The Red Cross, Mercy Corps are many NGOs are in Banda Aceh. These quiet professionals from all over the world are here and other places in Indonesia currently. Many of those locations are only accessible by small airplanes like the Cessna Caravan. It is my new job to take these aid workers and their mountains of equipments to rural airports.
The MSF people will return to the airport by 14:00, that gives us 3 hours to kill. Ken (not his real name), the chief/instructor pilot of my new operator, and I caught a cab to visit the downtown for lunch and tour the site where the 2004 Sumatra Tsunami hit the hardest. Shortly after leaving the airport, we passed by the mass graveyard on our left. In Muslim religion men and women are supposed to be buried separately even among married couples and families. Yet this old tradition was abandoned at the site due to the enormous number of bodies and the harsh reality that in many cases bodies are damaged beyond the recognition of their gender.
The town where the tsunami wave didn’t reach seems idyllic, sleepy with many water buffalos in rice paddies, chickens and ducks around the houses. As we got closer to the center of the city, the streets became crowded with lots of traffic and it looked like any lively city in Indonesia. You see many Army soldiers in full combat fatigue with automatic rifles, the reminder of the fact that Banda Aceh has been the battle-ground between the hard core Muslim rebels and the government. Occasionally, compressed, severely damaged cars are seen abandoned on the shoulders of the street and parking area. Made me wonder if the water could twist metals like giant’s hands.
After turning the corner from the wide street and proceeding for a while, suddenly the forward view got wider and I saw more blue of the sky than buildings along the narrow street. The view that abruptly appeared in front of us, the flattened land with only few houses standing barely, resembled the black and white pictures of Hiroshima taken right after the WWII. At least 180 degrees horizontally in front of me, the land is almost completely flat with collapsed houses. The sheer scale of the devastation numbed me, making me deny what my eyes were seeing. I saw the tall white tower of Mosque in distance, standing in the midst of severely damaged houses. For some strange reason God only knows, one house survived the strong current of tsunami, sitting in the open field forlornly. Amazingly, I couldn’t still see the shore from where I stood there. We got back in the cab and continued to one of the famous sites in Banda Aceh.
After several turns in the narrow streets, there she is, PLTDAPUNG1(meaning floating generator), a flat-bottomed 5,000 ton ship driven ashore and now in the middle of the residential area. She must be the sturdiest object the tsunami encountered in Banda Aceh. I didn’t see any substantial damage on the hull. Propellers are gone for sure but the superstructure looks fine and I could hear the sound of the generator running. Surrounding this behemoth are small houses that miraculously survived the tsunami and advancing 5,000 tons of steel vessel. The shortest distance between the ship and the house located closest to the ship is about 5 meters. There is still a lot of debris trapped between the ship’s flat bottom and the ground. Understandably, after the tsunami they found several bodies there as well. I walked around the ship, wondering how strong the current had to be to carry the vessel from the shoore. How could be those houses, some of them look like mere shacks, around the ship still standing here in fairly decent conditions?
“Hello, mister.” said a girl, about age 5, as she approaches me from one of the houses of miracle. She is holding an even younger boy, presumably her brother. They look so fragile, standing in the field of disaster, yet her smile is so brilliant, almost cheerful, fun-loving somehow. (Later, I came to witness more smiling kids storming to the airplane as I taxied into the ramp in the airport of Nias Island where a major aftershock had happened nearby and killed about 900 people on April 29, 2005.) I asked her if I can take their photos and she replies it’s OK. She never asked for anything in return but I gave her 50,000rp.
“Thank you, mister.” She smiled beamingly, while the boy in her arms looks insulted.
“Your house?” I asked as I point my finger to the direction of the houses.
“Yes, mister.” said a girl and turned away to walk to that direction. I followed her to a small house with concrete wall. The glass in the window is gone and instead the sheet of cardboard is filling the frame. I was greeted by a young lady, maybe in her teens, and a woman at her 30’s, probably their mother.
“Selamat siang. (Good early afternoon)” One of the only several Indonesian I could speak at that point. “My name is Seiji. Would you please show me your house if that’s OK with you? I’m so interested in the lifestyle of people here after the tsunami.” We shook hands and the mother said to me something in her language which I didn’t understand at all. My only hope, a young English-speaking girl just keeps smiling at me innocently. The teenage girl is quite attractive, smiling at me as well but she doesn’t seem to know what to do with me. As a matter of fact, all of us, excluding the youngest boy who is toddling into the house, were standing in front of the house, smiling at each other, yet not knowing what to do next for few seconds. It was an uncomfortable moment for me. Most people I’ve met in Indonesia don’t understand English at all. All I can speak in their language is a simple greeting. Asking them for a favor in English is almost useless to convey my interests to them. But I had to say something, you know? And it’s better in English than Japanese, I thought. In either language, they would have done the same thing, I guess.
They walked in the house and welcomed me inside. As I was taking my shoes off before stepping into their house, the mother wove her hand fiercely in side way, saying “no, no!” But my shoes were so muddy after walking around the still wet land around the ship. How could I possibly step into her tidy house with dirty shoes on, after asking for so much already? I took them off and stepped into the dark room. The floor is covered with brown, worn out carpet and blue plastic sheet partially, about 2 meters by 3 meters. Two pillows on the carpet indicated this room may be their sleeping room. Two small pieces of furniture, more like shelves, sit in the corner. The next room is a kitchen, brighter than the first room because part of the roof is not there, allowing the sunshine to pour in and fill the kitchen with fresh air. There is no gas. The fireplace, several pods and a table are against the wall. Next to the kitchen is a bathroom whose roof and wall facing outside the house are completely gone. The house next to theirs seen from the kitchen, further away from the ship, is severely demolished with several stone-made pillars and the remaining wall left. Seems like nobody’s living there. With the increasing afternoon UV baking my neck, feeling sweat dropping on my chest beneath my shirts, I was astonished by their living condition. What would they do in the rain? There’s no door between the rooms. Do they sleep on the wet floor, or cuddle over each other to stay in the small dry part of the floor? My imagination ran no-stop, trying to envisage every possible situation in this small house…
Yet what amazed me most is the fact I see more smile in their eyes than sorrow and despair. How could they be so cheerful after losing so much only 5 months ago? Did they have to learn how to cry with smile on their faces since so many journalists and curious invaders like myself had come and asked the same questions again and again? But they have no TV, no computer to see themselves captured in the world media network anyway. What do they care? The girl talked to her mother, then the mother talked to me. Two sets of eyes are fixed to me, waiting for my response intently. “Sorry, I don’t understand your language.” I said. Then both women gesture drinking water from a cup. They are asking me if I would like to have a drink. “No, I’m OK.” I was a bit thirsty but in the cab I had a bottle of green tea. Plus I didn’t want to have their precious supply of drinking water. It’s about the time to return to the cab. I thought I was staying there too long now. “Terima kasih. (thank you)” I repeated saying. I even pressed my both hands together as if a Buddhist monk to show more gratitude. I thought of giving money again but for some reason, it seemed it would be offensive to them. Giving money to that girl for some pictures was one thing. But to her mother for her kindness is cheap. I don’t know. Maybe I was the one who’s rather cheap.
On the way back from Banda Aceh, we followed the coastline to see the damage of the tsunami. I saw the ship from the air; their small house, too, at least a good mile inland from the shoreline. Lhok Nga, located west of Banda Ach in the small peninsula, was hit hard. The tsunami wave attacked the town from both the shore and land. The wave that reached Banda Aceh was so high that it engulfed the residential area and came around the rocky peak of the peninsula and met the wave from the shore over Lhok Nga. I saw the mosque standing alone, surrounded by many flattened houses. A large ship is half sunken in the port of the cement factory, revealing her red keel. I found the white scar at the lower part of the mountains which extend south from Banda Aceh to all the way to Lam No. The tsunami must have chiseled the soil and trees, showing white rocky earth. This part of the island of Sumatra lost its elevation along the shoreline by about 1 meter. The soil which used to be above the water is now below the waves, coloring the blue water with muddy brown hue. Must be chocking the coral nearby. Funny, I thought in sarcastic way, that I briefly cared about coral. More than 120,000 people died in Banda Aceh alone. Who gives a damn about the coral here?
It has been a very long day and when I landed at Medan Polonia airport after 18:00 I was exhausted. Short field take-off and landing at close to max gross weight are something I haven’t done so often in my 11 year flying career. And those scenes of disaster are so powerful and gripping, stories so dramatic and overwhelming. One of many stories Ken, the instructor pilot, told me today caught my mind and still hasn’t let me go. It was about one aid worker who had been called back to Medan from Aceh suddenly. Before she came to Indonesia, she had gone through a thorough medical check. Now the result showed she’s HIV positive. She was notified the reason why she had to leave her station and go home upon arrival to this small airport ramp where I stood now. Maybe it was a good thing that I hadn’t met that lady. She was so benevolent to come to this far end of the world from her country to help people she didn’t even know. Now, she is fighting for her own survival somewhere by herself. As many faces of people I’ve met and heard about today flashed back through my mind, I found myself emotionally drained yet at the same time deliriously satisfied of this day, feeling so alive for the first time in many months. I was glad to have decided to come down here. My new job as a Caravan pilot in Indonesia is surely challenging enough for my liking.
posted by sageincaravan at 4:08 AM
1 comments
