BEBEKAN 10

My apologies for this long one-month silence due to my journey in India. Furthermore, when I came back home, I had to write several articles which I had postponed since the earthquake and were piling up on my desk. But the activities of Bebekan go on more than ever.

The blog of Bebekan is finally on line, though with some minor imperfections :
bebekan.blogspot.com

The entry page is in Indonesian, but there are links to the French and English versions.
If you want to go directly on the French version, use this link :
bebekan-e.blogspot.com

If you want to go directly on the English version, use this link :
bebekanvillage.blogspot.com

The English translation was kindly made by a Canadian friend living in Yogyakarta, Georges. The text is essentially the letters you have already received but they are accompanied by photographs so that you can finally see the faces of the people of Bebekan.

I plan to post on this blog the list of the people who donated to Bebekan. If some of you do not wish to appear on this list, please let me know. I will only mention your initials. For the sake of financial transparency, should I also write down next to the names the amount of the donation ? I will wait for your opinions. You can answer on the blog or by sending me an email.

During my stay in India, the uniforms for all the school children of Bebekan were bought. We chose to order them a size above rather than below, so that a uniform might serve the same child for at least two years. All the children were thus able to go back to school (in mid-July) with new uniforms.
Carrefour confirmed their commitment to rebuild the public primary school Krekah 3 and the contiguous private nursery school. The estimate has just been finalized and accepted by management. Meanwhile, half of the classes are held under a large tent. As long as it does not rain, it is OK.

We discovered 10 days ago that a man of the village, Pak Miskijo, had had a very poorly performed surgery on the collar of his thighbone. This discovery was made thanks to my sister Dominique, a rheumatologist who came on holiday with her family to Yogyakarta and that I took along to Bebekan to make a round of consultations. At the time of the earthquake, this man was severely hit on the kidneys by the collapsing walls of his house. Since no one in Bebekan has a car, they laid him down on a door plank and transported him on this makeshift stretcher to the main road where an army convoy then took him to a hospital. Since on the first day of the earthquake, the hospitals were overflowing with casualties, Pak Miskijo was rushed from one hospital to another until the public hospital Sarjito accepted to take him in and perform an emergency operation. They released him two days later and gave him crutches but not the X-ray of his broken hip bone after the operation. Each time I passed in front of his house in Bebekan, I asked him how he was doing and he would answer that he felt better and better. I had my doubts though since he was still unable to walk. When Domenica examined him, he was obviously in deep pain, but he did not complain once. He acknowledged that he had never gone back to the hospital to do a follow-up on the operation, whereas he had told me that he had gone twice after the earthquake. Dominique was quite convinced that the operation had not been done correctly and she advised me to have a new X-ray done.

I called Handicap International and they told me to take Pak Miskijo to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), who had installed a field hospital on the esplanade in front of the Sultan's palace. I went there the following day, on August 3, but MSF told me that since they were leaving at the end of August, they could not accept any new patients and that in any event they did not have surgery facilities. Finally we brought Pak Miskijo to Sarjito hospital, where he had been initially operated. The consultation was free because he was a victim of the earthquake, but we had to pay for the X-ray since the doctor did not wish to make a new one.

I insisted and stated that we would pay. It was a wise decision, because when the doctor saw the new X-ray, he indeed recognized that the operation had failed (he had not performed it, but another one of his colleagues) and that the patient needed a prosthesis. An operation whose cost will be entirely paid for by the hospital, the doctor assured us. When my sister returns from Bali, I will show her the X-ray and see what her diagnosis will be.

Pak Miskijo, a humble and modest man, had never dared to say that he did not have the means to go to the hospital. He had told me that he was able to sit down on the back of a motorcycle. However, when the students of the Bebekan posko tried to transport him on the back of one of theirs, the pain was too intense. They had to rent a car to come to the hospital where I was waiting for them. Pak Miskijo is the best carpenter of the village. Carpenters are very much in demand right now for the work of rebuilding, but since Pak Miskijo cannot resume his work, he manufactures “emping” (local chips) like his wife in order to survive. He is the only “severely wounded person” of Bebekan and we will do everything to bring him back to health.

The clearing of the rubble is finished.

As for the project of constructing six public WC : thanks to the contacts of Vincent, the Cardi NGO came to Bebekan to look at the possibility of giving us materials to build, not the WC or the septic tanks, but the roof (out of corrugated sheet), the pillars (wood or bamboo) and the walls (plastic tarps) which will “wrap” (à la Cristo!) the toilets to be built. When they saw with their own eyes the level of destruction in Bebekan and the kindness of its inhabitants, they promised to give us materials for more than six WC. Previously, Cardi had already distributed more than ten rubble-clearing toolkits to Bebekan: saws, hammers, wheelbarrows, etc.

We will keep in reserve these Cardi building materials, because finally the men of Bebekan have decided to build right away only one public WC, namely that of the small mosque, the only collective space of Bebekan. The walls already exist, so they are now digging the septic tank and installing the WC. They will also take this opportunity to repair the arch of the door which leads to the WC and which has threatened to collapse since the earthquake. We buy the building materials, but the men of Bebekan always carry out the work to be done on the principle of the “gotong-royong”, collaborating with each other without pay.

Why this decision to build for the moment only one WC? Because the rainy season is just 3 months away (it usually starts at the end October) and the majority of the families of Bebekan still live under plastic tarps. These tarps can stand at most two days of rain, but not six months of downpours and violent winds every afternoon and every night. The people of Bebekan will quickly be soaked and flooded. Therefore it is of the utmost urgency to start rebuilding rudimentary houses using salvaged materials from the ruins and complementary materials to be eventually bought.

The people of Bebekan, indulging in a bit of humor, have called this house project : RSS, the initials of “rumah sangat sederhana” (a house more than rudimentary).

The idea was inspired by Pak Jamhari, the artist of Bebekan who is the leader of the Reog group and who carves wooden masks of the ancestral spirits of the village. In one week, he rebuilt a house of 3 x 6 meters on the location of an old room of his collapsed house, using salvaged materials from its ruins: tiles, frames, plywood panels, vertical main beams. He only bought nails and some additional beams to reinforce the wooden structure by building a horizontal “crown” which keeps it interlocked as a whole in the event of an earthquake. Since he works in a workshop of sculptures intended for export, he earns decent wages (compared to the average person of Bebekan). He was thus able to buy by himself the few missing materials he needed. Five or six other families were also able to do the same. But the majority do not have the means to do so, either because they are too poor, or because nothing or almost nothing remains of their old house.
One month ago, we did not plan to get involved in the rebuilding of the houses, even such simple ones. We only wanted to concentrate on collective spaces. But when we understood that neither the Indonesian government nor any international NGOs proposed any practical and clear assistance for rebuilding in the immediate future, it was obvious that we could not delay any further because the monsoon was coming.

We have thus undertaken, in the last fifteen days, to make an inventory of each house : how many tiles, beams, bamboo partitions, or wooden or laminated ones, etc. are remaining. Also we are establishing what materials are missing to supplement the construction of a simple 3 x 6 m house, whose basic plan we have designed and that can be modified for each house. In a few days, we will post on the blog photographs of the simple houses which have already been built and of the shelters inside which the people of Bebekan currently live.

The people of Bebekan are firmly committed to rebuild their houses on the principle of the “gotong-royong”. The only workmen to be paid daily wages (25.000 rp, or 2,3 euros) will be the carpenters. There are four or five of them in Bebekan. They will work every day and not one day out of five like the other men of the village, because their skills are necessary for each house. Since they will not be able to work outside, they must be paid wages, although less than the usual daily wages of a carpenter (35.000 RP). We are in the process of drawing up a budget for each house. It is an architectural, social and financial headache. Each house, each family, is a special case. It is impossible to use a standard solution the way international NGOs do, since they do not take the time to get to know the situation of the villages and the mentality of their inhabitants.

Here are some examples of the kind of problems we faced. Asep, the students of the posko and myself took part in the “preparatory” meetings with all the villagers of Bebekan (men). The first meeting took place on Saturday evening (August 5) with the men of the RT 1 (district 1), and Sunday evening (August 6) with the men of the RT2. Let us look at this second meeting. There was no rain (we are in the dry season), the night was beautiful and in any event Bebekan does not have any more roofs, so we met in the open on the cement flagstone of the old house of the RT2 chief. Multicolored mats were laid out. Hot tea and coconut manioc cakes were served by the chief's wife.

Question of the RT2 chief :- If you only have funds to rebuild 10 simple houses, would it be possible rebuild 5 of them in RT 1 and 5 in RT2?Our answer : - We are committed to help all the families on an equal basis. If our funds only cover, for example, 50% of the total budget established for all the 90 houses to be rebuilt, we will allot for each house a total value of 50% of its rebuilding budget. Because we will not pay cash, here is an example of what we will do : if a particular house needs 8 wooden pillars and 6 bamboo partitions, we will give it 4 pillars and 3 partitions, and the family will have to manage to find the rest by themselves. And so on for each house.

Question of a villager:- My house is still standing but it is completely cracked. I need only cement bags to consolidate it. Since I do not need to build a RSS house, can I still get your help to buy cement bags?Our answer:- Of course, but if your house is very big, we will have to calculate the number of the required cement bags on the basis of a 3 x 6 m house.

Question of the same villager:- But if with the cement bags given to me I can only repair the cracks of a 3 x 6 m room, and the unrepaired walls of the adjacent rooms threaten to collapse on this part, what then?Our answer:- Impossible to answer for the moment, it is necessary to examine the total situation of your house and we will adapt our help accordingly.

Question of a second villager:- I still have bamboo partitions, but they are devoured by insects. These insects did not come because of the earthquake, they were there before. Can I still ask help to obtain new bamboo partitions ?Our answer: - Yes.

Question of a third villager:- If I rebuild my RSS house immediately, by myself, could I then receive your assistance on the complementary materials which I will have bought?Our answer:- No. If you are able to rebuild your house all alone, like Pak Jamhari did, so much the better. It means that you have the means of doing it. Help will not be retroactive.

Intervention of the guardian of the mosque, who will show throughout the meeting a noble wisdom and a practical common sense : "Let us be honest, generous and supportive of each other. Those who can manage by themselves must endeavor to do so and leave the financial assistance to the most destitute, and they should be happy about it.

The budget for each house will be ready around August 15. We will post it on the blog. Vincent will pass it on to the international NGOs to try to obtain building materials. But International NGOs have a way to do things which often runs up against the local cultures and destabilizes the social fabric in a permanent way. The report dated July 31, 2006 of the Office of the United Nations in Yogyakarta has the honesty to recognize it. I quote: “Due to different behaviors and activities of the NGOs, some confusions and conflicts have been created in the community.”These NGOs moreover had already chosen “their turf”, and almost concentrated all of their activities on the villages in the area of Klaten, where more people died. It should be known that assistance is evaluated according to the number of casualties, and not according to the number of survivors. It is an unconscious emotional reaction on the part of these NGOs. The Klaten area had a rate of casualties by village higher than in the Bantul area (where Bebekan is located) but the rate of destruction of the houses is also important, namely 95 or 100%. It a strange phenomenon which has already occurred in the aftermath of the Aceh tsunami : the considerable number of casualties (close to 200,000 in Aceh only) caused a stupendous avalanche of donations never seen before in the world. However the Aceh tsunami left much less people without shelters than the Yogyakarta earthquake. The reason is simple arithmetic : in a village of 2000 inhabitants in Aceh, on average 1800 people died, and there remained 200 people without shelters. In Yogyakarta, in a village of 2000 inhabitants, at most 15 people died. But the other 1985 people were left without shelters. The Aceh tsunami created all in all 500,000 homeless people. In Yogyakarta and its surrounding areas, the earthquake destroyed 300,000 houses, which has affected 1,500,000 people (an average of 5 people per house). About 6000 people died, leaving therefore approximately 1,494,000 people without shelters. (The countryside around Yogyakarta, which is very fertile because of the volcanoes, is the most densely populated area in the world).

Sunday morning August 6,

the children of Bebekan expressed the playful desire to go to a swimming pool, something they have never done before the earthquake. We all left by bicycle or motorcycles on country lanes weaving through rice fields. Eventually, at the end of a 7 km ride, we arrived at a very pretty and big and quite pastoral public swimming pool. We were entitled, as “earthquake victims”, to a 50% discount on the entry tickets (already very cheap). Having been formerly a swimming champion in college, I gave to the children their first swimming lesson : how to overcome the fear of water by putting one's head under the water, eyes wide open. Some may see in this a sort of post-traumatic therapy. For the children and myself, it was joy in its simplest attribute: water. We will go back there next Sunday.
Thank you.