BEBEKAN 8

Last week, Carrefour gave its agreement to rebuild one of the primary schools which the children of Bebekan attend in common with the surrounding villages. The school is located at approximately 1 km from the village. I accompanied the Director of Corporative Affairs, Irawan, on the spot. Carrefour had in mind a simple restoration project, because of the two buildings, only one was half-collapsed. But when we arrived, soldiers of the Indonesian army were completely demolishing the damaged building in order to avoid any accident with the children who played around it. Carrefour will thus have to rebuild everything from scratch. We met the teachers and the principal which assured us that no rebuilding was as yet planned and were delighted to see Carrefour taking this initiative, although they were unaware of the very name Carrefour. She (the principal) gave to Irawan the old plans of the school. We have agreed with the managers of Carrefour that the rebuilding of this school must bring three benefits to the people of Bebekan :
1) A new school for their children as soon as possible. Carrefour is indeed decided to act quickly, if there is no objection from the local Indonesian government. 2) A salaried employment for a number of men from Bebekan. Carrefour immediately agreed with my proposal to hire the men of Bebekan and near villages, whose children attend the same school, as basic workers for the rebuilding, under the supervision of course of professional foremen. If the people of Bebekan demolish and rebuild their houses for free, according to the principle of the "gotong-royong", it is clear that for the construction of public buildings, outside the village, hired people must be paid. 3) A training in construction techniques according to earthquake-resistant standards for the men of Bebekan hired to rebuild the school.

Saturday June 24. A female friend of Moroccan origin living in Bali, Zohra, came with her husband and a truck (from Bali) loaded with mattresses, toys, clothing, doors and window frames for Bebekan. Zohra is in fact the young sister of Midu who came back for another three days last week to complete the electric installation in the village. A few days ago, old cables hastily assembled caught fire near a tent : the incident has convinced the villagers of the need to have cables which respected safety standards. But each time Midu believed he had cabled the last house, a new house, or rather a new ruin or tent, emerged behind a coconut! Now, each tent has its neon light and a plug for television or the domestic iron, and the entrance to each road is also lighted by neons.

Saturday noon. We went to buy the costumes for the Reog dance in a specialized shop close to the palace of Yogyakarta. The two leaders of the group accompanied us, as well as the painter Heri Dono who then followed us to Bebekan to take part in a discussion about Reog with the members of the troupe. Heri Dono told them that they could add to their spectacle giant cardboard puppets, such as a dragon (naga) which while spitting fire out of its mouth (the crater of the Merapi volcano) caused a violent movement of its tail (earthquake in the Indian Ocean). The young dancers told us that what the spectators preferred was the moment when the dancers entered in a trance, and that what they, the dancers, preferred, were the battle and war scenes. But they were eager to transform their "script" and to learn new movements. In the next few weeks, we will invite the great Javanese dancer Didik Nini Thowok (a friend with whom I collaborated on the Book of Centhini) so that he teaches them some new movements.
Just as the rehearsals of Reog were about to start in the middle of the ruins, the ground suddenly shook violently for ten seconds. A villager sighed: "When will she finally calm down !". Since the earthquake of May 27, the ground still shakes very frequently. In the villages of Imogiri (the area where stand the tombs of the Javanese kings) the peasants say they often hear the ground thunder under their feet.

Sunday June 25.

We organized a bus excursion for some 40 children of Bebekan. The destination of the excursion was… my house, on the slopes of the Merapi volcano. There is a large "pendopo", an open pavilion which can accommodate many people. Behind the house, there is a small field and a small forest going down to a tiny river. Plus a wooden hut built on stilts. The counselors were the students camping in Bebekan, including two coeds studying psychology, Bintang (Balinese) and Sita; Sutris, a fine-arts student who gives drawing classes three times a week to the children of Bebekan; and Ujang, a young man who teaches Koranic reading to the children twice a week. We try our best to transmit everything to the children without discrimination : religion, arts, nature conservation, etc… Sutris has long hair, nose piercings, and the face of an androgyne. As for Ujang, he is more traditional but quite open. All these students are voluntary, we pay Sustris and Ujang only their gasoline expenses (10,000 rps, 1 euro, for each trip to the village). Let me underline that Sutris and Ujang are also victims of the earthquake : their houses were completely destroyed.

When the children returned, the women of Bebekan expressed the keen desire to also go out on an excursion… to my house. It is true that for the moment we have dealt almost exclusively with the men (Reog and the clearing of the ruins), with the children (playgroup), but not at all with the women. Their turn has thus come. Providence being always at our sides, on Sunday evening I received a call from Francisca, a Mexican woman whom I met in Aceh, at the time of the tsunami. I had gone over there as a volunteer on an air freighter leased by Metro TV, a private Indonesian TV network. The first day, I had been assigned to "evacuation", that is the search and collection of the many corpses still remaining in the mud and the ruins. The following day, I had met Johny, an Indonesian Chinese from Kalimantan who had come with several voluntary friends, of which Francisca. In Mexico, Francisca had a bread and cake factory. In Aceh, she trained the women of one village to bake breads and cakes and set up with them a co-operative in their village managed by the women. She told me that she had worked for three weeks in several villages affected by the earthquake and had offered the same training to the women of these villages. I proposed to her to come to Bebekan to advise us on how to organize the women in the clothing industry and the marketing of "emping", the local chips made from the "melinjo" acorns.

Monday June 6, 11 o'clock in the morning.

Meeting of the women of the village at Bebekan, with Francisca and the sister of Johny, Eli, who lives in Yogyakarta and is very active in assisting the victims of the earthquake and setting up micro-economics projects with the women. As I already said in a preceding report, the women of Bebekan are only workers of emping. They get the acorns in a factory, transform them into emping, bring them back to the factory and are paid (a pittance) for their work. The idea would be to advance to them the money that would enable them to buy themselves the acorns, and then to help them sell themselves their production, which would enable them to gain three to four times more money. Saturday, as I was in the Mercure Hotel of Yogyakarta, I met the manager of the hotel whom I know quite well, Xavier. I asked him whether the Accor group would be interested in buying the emping of these women from Bebekan in "fair trade". He responded immediately in a positive way and asked me to quickly elaborate a small project for him. That would be the first outlet. The women would continue to work for the factory, and would also take one or two hours of their day to make emping for their own business. We will proceed by stages, slowly. One needs also quality control and other sale networks. Eli and her husband propose to help us because they have good networks in all Indonesia and because the women of the villages they assist also produce emping. The basic idea would be to set up a small co-operative encompassing all these emping-producing villages. We will invite the women of Bebekan to my house this weekend in order to brain-storm on how they want to be organized, which other money-making activities they could or would like to get involved in.
To be followed.

Vincent continues to lobby and to meet the big NGOs and to provide us with precious aid. Asep of SAR is setting up a blog which will have texts and photographs. You will finally see images of Bebekan. Tomorrow, I will send you the balance sheet and the expenditures until now, not to ask for more funds because we already have enough money to implement all our current projects, but to inform you. I do not want to put this assessment on the blog which anybody can access. I think that the finances of Bebekan and the management of the aid only concerns the donators. Thank you for your support.

Elisabeth