The Village of Bebekan

Bebekan 20

2008-10-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

Waisak (celebration of the birth, the Awakening and the death of Buddha), public holiday in Indonesia.

We left off in October 2007 on a note of suspense about a set of gamelan instruments which a man wanted to offer the sanggar, but where to put it ? Seven months have since gone by, and the life of the sanggar went through many metamorphoses. The gamelan has arrived in Bebekan, but it actually comes from a village not far away, where a group of fanatical Muslims reject any "profane" music. In rural southern Yogyakarta, it is a case as rare as it is saddening but Bebekan is the happy beneficiary. The group of musicians asked that their gamelan be granted "asylum" in the sanggar, while allowing the villagers of Bebekan to use it as well. We have therefore built on the northern side of the "pendopo" (pavilion), against the wall of the library, an annex to house these very bulky instruments. The group of "refugees" only practice once a month, from nine in the evening to midnight. We serve them tea, coffee and a few local delicacies. As a result, women of the "emping" cooperative have also organized a gamelan group and practice every Monday afternoon. As for the men of Bebekan, they practice on Tuesday evening. Astonishingly, the young people (girls and boys) who had been so far "allergic" to gamelan and had their own pop-rock band, have asked us if they could also learn to play the gamelan. The sanggar now has four gamelan groups. It is a country-side kind of gamelan set, made of iron, and doesn't sound very "sophisticated" but the musicians (who are mostly farmers) play together with such energy and joy that their happiness is contagious. The gamelan orchestra doesn't necessarily need to be played by virtuosos in order to generate just and pleasant sounding notes, as is the case for Western symphony orchestras. Each musician plays a note from time to time, he or she strikes a gong, a bowl, a bamboo, and it is the addition of all these blows, which individually might seem fragmented and disconnected, that makes up this lunar and ecstatic music.

This spontaneous development of gamelan in Bebekan, without any intervention on our part, proves what we have been slow to understand : that the traditional arts can not be "restored" by outsiders, that the desire and the initiative to do so must come from inside, from the villagers themselves. A friend of ours, writer and poet, the Indonesian Jesuit priest Sindhunata, came one day to the sanggar. He told us that for four years he had tried to revive traditional arts (gamelan, pantomime, dance) in a village on the slopes of the volcano where he has an out-of-town room (otherwise he lives in the Jesuits presbytery in the center of Yogyakarta). He had even organized a complete puppet shadow theater, but at the end of the performance, which lasted all night, he found himself alone when time came to store the puppets in their boxes and fold the screen.

He gave up eventually and he now composes Javanese lyrics for a hip-hop singer (Marzuki). He is also re-composing the Gospels in "tembang", the standard meter of Javanese sung poetry. According to him, artists suffer from a misguided urban romanticism when they seek to restore the traditional arts in villages, because the villagers feel "backwards" and would much more prefer (especially the young) to enter urban culture. So when urban artists come to them as prophets spreading the word to return to their traditional arts, they consider it almost like an insult, as if outsiders wanted to preserve them in "the mud of their rice fields." Sindhunata told us that we had succeeded in the sanggar, because we focused on education, health, micro-economy, modern technology (computer, Internet, video camera) and that we did not touch the traditional arts. We certainly learned the lesson at our expense with the Reog dance group that we supported with the purchase of instruments and costumes, and the training of the dancers and musicians. Now that group is at a standstill, not even bothering to practice, waiting for a performance that doesn't come. But is this a failure ? The Reog group has played the role of a genuine post-earthquake collective therapy by bringing to the villagers stuck in the middle of their ruins the trance and joy of this hallucinatory dance. And we have not given up. The group will soon have to practice since they have been invited to perform on July 25 during the Centhini Night at the French Cultural Center of Yogyakarta. The evening and night will be devoted to this great poem of Java which I have re-composed a few years ago; the Indonesian version will be reprinted in a single volume. There will be architects, academics and various specialists who will talk about this forgotten masterpiece, there will be a buffet of traditional Javanese dishes, and the night will close with a riotous Reog performance.

I must also add that the people of Bebekan, like all the inhabitants of the southern area of Yogyakarta affected by the earthquake, went through a dark tunnel lasting several months, a sort of delayed shock wave of the earthquake, one year later : frustration, jealousy, bitterness, selfishness, as if once their homes had been rebuilt, their egos had reconstituted and hardened like a stone. At Bebekan, this resulted in a total indifference to the activities of the sanggar. Asep and I organized meetings, but nobody came except the two security guards of the sanggar. We had the feeling of imposing this sanggar, of managing it against their will. It brought in the village a revolution which the villagers did not want. They did not want to be jostled in their habits even if these habits led to stress and poverty. The head of the village, until then an ally, began to avoid us, even though we had hired his wife as secretary and librarian (we had her trained for this work). We thought it was a form of male jealousy : while he was happy that his wife received a salary from the sanggar, at the same time he was jealous that she had a job outside the home and not him, who continued every morning to drive his cows to the field. The leader of the Reog group, a mask sculptor, also began to snub us. We thought that maybe the sanggar had taken the place of these two men who before the earthquake were more or less the two village leaders. Perhaps they felt they had been shoved out of the circle of influence of the village as the sanggar took more and more space. We almost decided to give up everything. Especially when this indifference took an aggressive turn. One day, one of the guards insulted Asep and threatened to beat him up and "kidnap" him if he did not stop the sanggar activities in the evening, after sunset, because young girls and boys would meet each other by nightfall in the sanggar (actually to learn how to use the computer in classes taught by two young girls of the village that we have trained for that purpose) and they flirted, etc. He insisted that girls should not have access to the sanggar after sunset. The next day I went to see him. He said his ears were heating up, even burning, because of all the rumors going round. I replied that I was surprised that his ears did not rather sparkle with the laughter of the two hundred children who come each week for tutoring at the sanggar, that this laughter was larger and noisier than the muted murmurs spewed by evil tongues. And that if there were rumors, these rumors came out mouths and lips that were attached to a body. I asked him to indicate who were the villagers who spread such rumors. Of course he was incapable of doing so. We therefore organized a reunion with several villagers.

I asked them :

Is there in the Koran a verse saying that girls of legal age are not allowed to study in a public place, open and lit up, after dark until nine o'clock in the evening ?

Answer : No.

Question : Is there in the Indonesian constitution an article that prohibits such girls from studying in the evening ?

Answer : No.

Question : Did the parents of these girls consent that their daughters could come to the sanggar in the evening to study ?

Answer : Yes.

Question : So where does it come from, the rumor saying that access to the sanggar is prohibited to girls of an acceptable age in the evening ?

Answer : It is the adat, the customary law.

Question : But who has formulated it, what is its legitimacy ?

No response.

The hidden power of customary law, or rather the power of customs, is sometimes terrifying in Java and in other traditional societies. It presents itself as ancestral wisdom, but it is built on hearsay, grudges, jealousies, values presented as immutable because supposedly issued by the ancestors, but nobody knows its origin nor can explain its merits. The incident was closed on this note, but a heavy atmosphere still prevailed.

At a meeting in November, while we were doing an evaluation of the education program of the sanggar, the head of the mosque said that since the beginning of the sanggar operations, the number of children who followed the Koranic reading classes in the mosque had diminished by half because the tutoring hours at the sanggar overlapped those of the mosque classes. In fact this was only an expression of the fear of losing influence, a fear we soothed by promising to rearrange the schedules for the children of Bebekan, knowing full well that since children from other nearby villages had the same kind of mosque classes on different days, it would be an impossible puzzle to accommodate all the children. But the issue was quickly forgotten when we asked if the people of Bebekan would agree to host a gamelan set seeking asylum. It is precisely the head of the mosque who was the most enthusiastic because he loves to play the gamelan.

In was in this dark period that Sheikh Bentounès arrived at the village. Or rather came back. Sheikh Bentounès, the spiritual leader of the Sufi brotherhood Alawiya, based in Mostaganem in Algeria, had already come to Bebekan in October 2006. He came to Indonesia for the publication of the Indonesian translation of his book "Sufism, the heart of Islam", a translation I had supervised. He returned a year later, this time looking for artifacts to be housed in the world museum of Sufism that he is building in Mostaganem.

As he wished to salute the people of Bebekan who were very dear to him and see the reconstruction of the village, Asep and I first took him on a courtesy call to Pak Haji, a local Muslim religious leader, healer and patron of traditional arts. The people of Bebekan have always held him in the utmost reverence because he had built the stairs leading to the cemeteries and he often lent his generator for various events.

As he lives in a nearby village, we walked there, accompanied by Pak Adi, one of two guards of the sanggar who lost an arm in a soybean dissecting machine. Pak Haji welcomed us, sitting behind his very disorderly desk and dressed in a sarong and a shirt. Young people were waiting at his feet. One of them said that his hand phone was stolen in his boarding room, Pak Haji asked him to come nearer and told him that he would see the thief if he looked into the water of a glass he was holding… Then suddenly Pak Haji spoke to Sheikh Bentounès in an extremely vulgar tone, something quite unusual in Java, using the low-level you and in a voice full of contempt : "Why did you come here ? What do you want from me ?" (I translate as well as I can.) The Sheikh replied that he simply came to pay his respects. Though Pak Haji had been told that Sheikh Bentounès was the spiritual leader of a great Sufi brotherhood in Algeria, he nonetheless continued to speak to him in the most offensive tone possible. Then he took a machete on his desk and began to carve a bamboo stick : "You see, this machete, it cuts damn well !". Then he got up, approached the Sheikh and slashed his arm with the sharp instrument. The Sheikh remained impassive, his arm did not bleed, and Pak Haji said in triumphant voice : "You see the amazing powers I have ! You should be wounded but you are not !" I wanted to interject that it was rather the Sheikh who seemed to have powers of invulnerability, but I was so stunned by the unfolding incident that the words could not get out, as in a nightmare. Then Pak Haji applied his machete to the ear of the Sheikh and started to slice it off. Still no blood. Then he ordered him to stand up and to kneel down in the prayer position. As the Sheikh complied and started to bow down, back to him, Pak Haji stepped back, picked up a brick and violently threw it against the neck of the Sheikh. The Sheikh still remained impassive, and even smiled. Then Pak Haji triumphantly returned to his desk, grabbed some tree leaves, and standing very close to us, he crushed them and when he reopened his hands the leaves had turned into bills of 20.000 Indonesian rupiahs. Then he took the cigarette pack of Sheikh Bentounès, hid it in his sarong in front of us and brought back a completely different pack. Yes, Pak Haji was jubilantly displaying all his powers.

The Sheikh asked him : "Where did you get these powers ?"

Pak Haji : "Directly from Allah. It blows your mind, hey, all my powers ?"

The Sheikh : "No. You tell me that they come from Allah, and Allah is Almighty, so it does not surprise me."

Pak Haji quoted verses from the Koran which he uses to increase his powers and asked the Sheikh : "How many times have you made the pilgrimage to Mecca?"

The Sheikh : "Once."

Pak Haji : "Me, twice! Ha! ha!" New triumph. And so on and so forth.

Finally we got up to leave. The Sheikh affectionately hugged Pak Haji in his arms and we started to walk bak to Bebekan through the rice fields. The Sheikh said: "When the ego swells with pride, this is what happens." In fact, knowing that the Sheikh was a great Sufi master, Pak Haji felt threatened, went overboard, and tried to provoke the Sheikh in a duel of magic. I had read about such duels in various mystical stories, such as The Ten Thousand Songs of Milarepa (a Tibetan yogi) or even in The Book of Centhini (the great poem Java), but this was the first time I had directly witnessed one, sitting at ringside. I realized that Pak Haji was a man who actually had real powers and that his ego could make them extremely dangerous. But Asep and I did not report the incident to the villagers for fear of hurting the veneration they felt for Pak Haji. Only Pak Adi, who had witnessed everything, was shaken. But he is a discreet man, he is not only the guard of the sanggar but also of the cemetery of Bebekan, and therefore of the dead and of silence, and he did not say anything to anyone.

We went back to the sanggar, night was falling, we drank a glass of coconut milk on the terrace of the limasan house at the top. Sheikh spoke to us of Christ who, with his arms fully opened in the cross position, welcomes all beings, while the Prophet Muhammad, arms crossed over his chest in prayer, hugs everyone. Then he told us that the time had come for us to choose a precise mode of management for the sanggar, and that we could not continue solely on the strength of improvisation. He suggested we adopt the method known as "management by the circle", a method as old as the world, universal, practiced for centuries by the Sufis. The Circle of qualities and virtues. It is about finding a balance between the spiritual center of the circle and, on one side, feelings, and, on the other, interests. In fact, it is foremost a method of working on oneself and then extending it to others. During my visit to Paris in January 2008, at the request of the Sheikh, one of his disciples, a computer scientist, generously devoted a whole day to teach me the basic principles of this method. But I must say that I haven't applied it to Bebekan because I do not yet master it for myself. Then around nine o'clock, the Sheikh wished to visit the mask sculptor, Pak Jamari, because he wanted to buy one of his masks. We told him that Pak Jamari had been avoiding us for several months, that things weren't going well for him. Well then, said the Sheikh, it is precisely the moment to pay him a visit.

We had barely sat down in the house of Pak Jamari, that his wife served us tea, and then the Sheikh asked Pak Jamari what was the last mask he had carved. Pak Jamari felt embarrassed, went to get the mask, an unfinished and terrifying face carved in wood. He said that he hadn't been carving masks for several months, in fact since the night that mask came to visit him in a dream : the figure was crying and screaming in pain and it begged Pak Jamari to stop lashing his face. The Sheikh asked him what this mask was. "An evil spirit." "Ah ! But why do you carve evil spirits ?" "Because in the Reog dance, there are evil spirits attacking good ones, there is good and evil, it is a war between two forces." "Of course, but in this case, before you start carving such a mask, you must fast and pray. Bring me a glass of water." The Sheikh then blew his breath over the water and pronounced a prayer or a verse from the Koran (I am not sure), then he asked Pak Jamari to throw a drop in each of the four corners of his house and then drink the rest (if I remember correctly). Finally, the Sheikh bought the mask of the white monkey Hanoman, the chief of the monkey army in the Ramayana. He gave Pak Jamari 300.000 rupiah (25 euros). "It's too much !", exclaimed Pak Jamari. So the Sheikh smiled, took one the three 100.000 rupiah bills, wrote Arabic letters on it and said : "This bill, you must not spend, keep it preciously." Since then, Pak Jamari feels much better, he has framed the bill and nailed the frame to the wall of the main room of his house.

At the time, the mayor of the region had diagnosed very well the symptom of "depression" that had hit all the victims of the earthquake. He therefore decided to allocate one million rupiah (70 euros) to each village district (there are thousands in the affected region) in order to organize an evening of "reconciliation". It was up to the inhabitants themselves to decide whether they preferred to organize a party, a show, prayers… Seventy euros seems a paltry sum in Europe, but here in Java, this amount will allow a community meal for 200 people. Three months had gone by before the amount was distributed. Meanwhile things had settled down by themselves, neighborly help had come back, the villagers began to appropriate the sanggar, and the head of the village had become our ally again… He has even been democratically and by direct suffrage elected "Dukuh", that is to say head of six villages. Throughout the election campaign, we suspended all activities aimed at adults at the sanggar so that it could not be used as a propaganda platform. Rumors already circulated that the village chief was using it as an electoral springboard to enhance his reputation, and activities opened freely to all children from neighboring villages became suspect. The magician, Pak Haji, supported a candidate from another village who had promised him a horse-drawn carriage if he won. Some candidates had bribed voters with money. The village head of Bebekan, who had no money and therefore had given nothing, was elected. After the election, his father fell ill, without strength. The nephew of the mosque preacher suffered sudden atrocious stomach pains. On his death bed, doctors opened his intestines and discovered inside needles and nails. Sometimes at night, dragon-tailed fireballs went through the houses, etc. The people of Bebekan attributed all these phenomena to black magic and they knew perfectly well who was sending this black magic: Pak Haji, the religious leader they had so revered until now.

Pak Haji had not accepted that these poor peasants which he had always helped had won an election against the candidate he had backed. Filled with a bitter and raging anger, he used his powers for evil and when he reached a point of exhaustion, he allied himself with other magicians in the region who took the relay, an exchange of good services. One day, as I was arriving at the village around midnight, all the men of Bebekan were gathered in the house of the village head, sitting on mats in front of tea glasses, dodols (sugar) and mendut (sweet potatoes cooked in banana leaves), There were also paper sheets with Arabic phrases transliterated into Latin characters : prayer for peace and longevity. They told me that there had been a new attack of black magic that night, that their only defense was to assemble and meditate together, and recite the name of Allah (Dikhr, remembrance of God), in order to erect a sort of spiritual fortress around the village to prevent the intrusion of black magic. Suddenly, it was as if this black magic was reuniting the people of Bebekan around a circle of spiritual solidarity. Here they were, back together again, united, ready to help each other.

They decided to use the one million rupiah given by the mayor for purposes of reconciliation, and planned an evening of prayers to take place on March 20, the day of celebrations for the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. They wrote "an oath" that was typed out by the young people on the computer and decorated with illuminations. The reconciliation evening took place at the sanggar, under the big pavilion. The hadrah group, girls and boys, opened the evening with their drums and their praises to Allah. Then the oath was read aloud, sentence by sentence, and the people of Bebekan repeated each sentence. The event was solemn, moving and heart-warming : "We swear to always remain united in our activities, our feelings and our work in order to rebuild our Bantul region in a prosperous, democratic and religious way... By the oath we have just made, all the problems that have destroyed the fraternity, all the disagreements, the hatred and the bitterness are hereby cleared. The harmony for our common well-being is restored. Together, this evening we are committed to this promise and commit ourselves to achieve it.

Bebekan, Kadekrowo, March 20, 2008

Are signatories to this pledge : the religious representative, the citizens representative, the youth representative, the women representative, the village head."

Since then, the sanggar activities have resumed with accrued intensity. The people of Bebekan really begin to appropriate it, especially the youths who assembled every night around the computers, the electric piano and now around the gamelan. With an Indonesian painter friend, Edi, we launched a "garbage bank." An ambitious project. Edi is a 35 year old painter. During the earthquake, his house collapsed on him and he remained unconscious for several hours under the ruins. His neighbors eventually dug him out. He was hospitalized for three months. He suffered physical injuries but also mental trauma and depression, because all his life's work, all his paintings, were destroyed in the earthquake. For several months he acted like a mad man, and no longer talked to anyone. Finally one day, he met a foreigner friend who told him that there were only two ways out of his severe depression : meditation or gardening. Edi chose gardening, he became passionate about plants, organic fertilizers, and started looking for rare and endangered plants or seeds. By replanting life through plants, he replanted life in himself. The director of the Academy of Fine Arts, his former professor, entrusted him with the garden of his institute : Edi started planting trees, and converted the open areas between the buildings into bio-gardens… It is through this director, an old friend, that I had met Edi : at the time he was looking for a community to implement his ideas, and of course Bebekan was available !

He now comes every Sunday. With the young people, he picks up the teak and bamboo leaves that the villagers were until now burning. They gather big lots every day. A portion is used to make craft paper, based on models designed by the young people (the paper is used to make envelopes, box covers etc., which are in big demand by a Jakarta company with which Edi is working). Another part is used to make compost and organic fertilizer on the sanggar grounds. With the young people, Edi has segmented thick and tall black bamboos to create long pots, a kind of artistic scaffolding very effective for planting on various levels, especially red betel leaves which have important medicinal properties (they are in high demand by local hospitals but are rarely cultivated). Between these bamboo scaffolding (installed on the small field in front of the limasan house), Edi has planted peppers, tomatoes, a miniature organic vegetable garden set as an example for the villagers, hoping that one day they will do likewise in front of their houses. We will divide the field into several smaller plots, each class will be in charge of its own section and they will try to grow the most beautiful one. A small space would be enough to provide for their basic needs in peppers (villagers have stopped growing them even though they consume a lot, instead they buy plastic bottles of chili sauce at the grocery store, just like urban dwellers) and vegetables, knowing that the world-wide food crisis is also threatening Java, even if no hunger riots have yet taken place, as was the case in other countries in the region. Out of curiosity, the peasants of Bebekan came to observe how we were making organic fertilizer. They haven't used it for more than 30 years, they use chemicals instead. It took two generations to forget this know-how.

Edi also has also set up drawing classes for children. He teaches them how to use the materials around them : snack-bags, tree leaves, etc… We have introduced a mandatory break in the tutoring classes : accompanied by their mistress children go round the sanggar and collect garbage (which they themselves have thrown away for the most part). The girls are starting to bring us containers of laundry soap, soy sauce, etc, manufactured in a strong shiny plastic material. We are beginning to make an inventory of recyclable waste available at Bebekan in order to invent models of bags, pencil kits, mobile phone pouches which can then be crafted by the women of Bebekan. We will also put to use the elderly of Bebekan and neighboring villages. They come once a month at Posyandu, the mobile clinic which comes to the sanggar for babies and pregnant women, but also for the elderly. Some are struggling to make the journey because they live far away and cannot walk very well. We are therefore going to use for their transportation from and back to their home the small train of Bebekan belonging to a local man in which he tours children on Sunday for 1000 rp. We will show them how to scissor sequins out of shiny aluminum snack-bags in order to make padding for sofa and chair cushions. Thus, every month, they will bring their production of "glitter: and they will feel useful, although they no longer have the strength to work in the rice fields.

The process is slow because we cannot force the villagers, we must wait for them to realize that waste has value, just as money does, which is why we use the term "garbage bank." We will most probably issue cards to be used as a bank savings book, in order to write down as in a game each "transfer" of bags of laundry or sequins brought by the bank's customers. This bank will be called SAPU JAGAT, meaning sweeper of the universe, a famous mythical Javanese hero. This sweeper was originally the gardener of the sultan's palace, but when the first sultan of Java, Senopati, wanted to unite with the goddess of the South Sea, the queen Ratu Kidul with whom he had deeply fallen in love during a meditation, Ratu Kidul told him that he must first eat "the egg of the world." But by eating the egg of the world, the sultan was to become a spirit with a very ugly face. Understandably he hesitated. His gardener then sacrificed himself for his sultan and ate himself the egg of the world. Cursed afterwards with a truly ugly and repulsive face, he hid from men in the crater of the Merapi volcano. Since then, it is he, Sapu Jagat, the sweeper of the universe, who cleans the bottom of the crater of all the physical and psychic garbage of humanity. He resembles somehow the Quasimodo of Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. Anyway, this adventure has barely begun, and let us see what happens.

We also opened a nursery-playgroup for children from 2 to 5 years-old before kindergarten. It had been a long-standing request from the mothers. But we wanted to hire young girls from the village. We first had to identify those who were motivated and then train them. It has been done. The two girls, Rina and Rus, have attended a few months ago a giant puppet workshop for 15 days in an art center (Yayasan Bagong) led by artist friends, amongst whom the great Indonesian actor Butet, and the dancer and choreographer Besar, with whom we have collaborated since the earthquake : he was the one who trained the Reog dancers of Bebekan. These two young girls (18 and 21 years old) were very shy and reserved. The workshop has metamorphosed them. They met other young people from other villages and together they have created a theater group. During the Christmas holidays, they came to the sanggar to produce a play with the children and teenagers of Bebekan around the legend of the two ducks in love, from which came the name Bebekan (the residence of ducks). They crafted two giant duck puppets and with the musicians of the village and the girls learning to dance at the sanggar, they produced a magnificent show. After the show, Rina went to look for work in Jakarta, the capital. She worked there a month and a half as maid and babysitter in a family, but she was exploited and returned to Bebekan. A friend of Asep, a playgroup teacher and trainer, has trained Rina and Rus, and the playgroup started with 30 children in mid-April at the sanggar, every Saturday morning. Mothers will contribute : 1000 rupiah per child (7 cents) to cook together dietary and low-cost snacks based on products from the village : coconut, palm sugar, rice, sweet potatoes, banana… We are launching a "struggle" against the commercial snacks sold in small bags (chips and other salty and sweet junk foods) which basically ruin the mothers (we calculated with them that almost 15% of home expenditures went to these snacks for children). They wish to please their children always begging for these junk-snacks they have seen on TV. In fact, what they end up buying are by-products of those sold by the TV commercials. Ideally we should write a small recipe book of these organic snacks, locally made, healthy and cheap.

On May 13, Brigitte Bironneau, the wife of the general manager of Carrefour Indonesia, came to inaugurate the playgroup in a very informal way. Since August 2007, Carrefour always sends us every month 8 million Rupiah (about 600 euros) deposited in an account at the local bank next to Bebekan and gives us complete freedom to manage this money without ever requiring that the name Carrefour appear anywhere. After some initial frictions during the construction of the sanggar, this relationship of trust is a true joy. Alas it will stop in principle at the end of December 2008. Several major projects, which could finance part of the activities of the sanggar when Carrefour stops its contribution, are in the making, but I am waiting for a green light from our various partners to discuss them in the next letter.

One last item : we have undertaken to "restore" the limasan house at the top of the hill, which has an office and two rooms serving as artists residence or guest house. Young architects of the French association "Emergency Architects", who since the earthquake have been doing reconstruction work in villages of southern Yogyakarta, came to the sanggar and have confirmed that the inner walls of the limasan house would collapse at the first seismic tremor. These walls are more than 3 meters high and more than 3.6 meters wide, without any reinforced concrete column either horizontal or vertical. But this is one of the elementary anti-seismic rule that a wall covering an area of 3 meters or more must be interspersed with vertical and horizontal reinforced concrete columns. So far I have never been able to sleep in these rooms and could not invite people. So we brought down two walls and replaced them with "gebiok", walls of teak which we bought second-hand at a very good price. This is how the old "limasan" houses were built in the villages. Besides the safety factor, they add to the overall charm. We have also completely redesigned the two bathrooms with new tiles and a sink, and carved an opening at the top of the wall which allows the user to see the bamboo forest without being seen from it. We can therefore accommodate without fear Nicolas Cornet, a French photographer, with whom I sometimes work on assignments for GEO (amongst other accomplishments he has published two books on Vietnam). He will be coming at the end of May to give a week-long photography workshop with the youth of the village, in collaboration with the French cultural center of Yogyakarta. The photos taken by the young people of the village during the workshop will be exhibited in Yogyakarta in November 2008 during the Month of Photography, and they will be shown next to photos taken by young people of a French agricultural village (in southern France) where Nicolas held a photography workshop last year. We hope to start weaving the first frame of a network of villages between Bebekan and other villages in the world.

To this end, Asep and I have finally founded an Indonesian association officially recognized by the Ministry of Justice of Indonesia. It is called LOKALOKA. A website is under preparation. LOKA is a Sanskrit word meaning the world of appearances, the phenomenal world, the division of cosmic space with its people and their behavior. Loka comes from the root "lok" meaning "to see, perceive, hear, recognize." It is also an open space in the forest (a clearing), an open space promoting freedom. It is also the light which reveals the phenomenal world. ALOKA is the opposite : the invisible worlds, without any appearance, buried in darkness, the unmanifested cosmos. I had this idea in mind when thinking about the word "local" as opposed to the word "global" which Indonesians use today as often as Westerners, and they have even made up the word "delokalisasi" (relocation). I wondered why they did not use a more "local" word precisely, rather than a Western one, of Latin origin. And it is in an encyclopedia of the basic concepts of Indian arts (Kalatattvakosa – Vol. II – Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts – New Delhi and Motilal Banarsidass Publishers – Delhi 2003) that I discovered the origin of the word local, from Loka. After all, Indonesians, whose Javanese language comes from Sanskrit, are not so "delocalized" linguistically as one might think.

As the painter Edi says, the earthquake has triggered in ourselves an inner revolution and it is as if we were still being carried by its shockwave and were acting, despite ourselves, under its influence. A recent and much more deadly earthquake has struck China. It is up to the survivors, which we all are, to transform the destructive aspect of this telluric force into an energy of action and feeling to serve others.

Thank you and until the next installment,

Elisabeth

Bebekan 17

2007-03-29T06:33:00.000-07:00

I have been in France since the beginning of March. I will give you more details about the lively progress of the construction of the sanggar when I return to Indonesia on April 15. The day before my departure for Paris, we established the Village Organization of the Sanggar at a meeting with the elders of the village and the chief of the district. Together we chose its various members, men and women. The secretary of the district chief, a literate man, suggested that we enrich the name of the sanggar by adding a third word starting with the letter G, in accordance with the Javanese poetic tradition which is quite fond of alliterations (purwokinanti). He suggested to add the word “giri”, meaning “mountain”. Since a mountain is a symbol of solidity and nobility of heart in Javanese mythology, and since the sanggar itself is built on the side of a small hill, the proposal was unanimously accepted. So from now on the sanggar will be called : Sanggar Giri Gino Guno, meaning “the Doubly Useful Mountain”. Enin, a designer and a talented art critic from Jakarta, gracefully modified the logo accordingly. You will be able to see it on the blog "Bebekan 17" in a few days.

Just before my departure, Eli, an Indonesian woman about whom I have already written in previous letters (I had met her brother in Aceh at the time of the tsunami), contacted us to announce that she had finally found the money to set up the co-operative of “emping” (chips made from the barks of the “melijo” acorn). It is the Australian government which gave these funds to the small association of Eli. Asep is now building with the women of Bebekan five rudimentary houses which will serve as small co-operatives where the “emping” will be manufactured according to more “hygienic” standards than the “emping” manufactured until now by the women in their own dwellings. Each woman will receive a capital of 500.000 rupiah (45 euros) to buy a stock of acorns, plus 200.000 rupiah (18 euros) for the manufacturing equipment. Eli will take care of finding markets for the product. If our co llaboration with Carrefour can continue on better terms than until now, this hypermarket will also be a potential buyer. The co-operative is integrated into the activities of the sanggar which has many missions : cultural, educational, economic, artistic, public health and environmental. Eli had planned to coordinate five village cooperatives of “emping”, but until now only the one of Bebekan has been created rapidly and in a beautiful spirit of collaboration. In her mind the co-operative of Bebekan will serve as a “pilot scheme”, which is a great source of pride for the women of Bebekan.

While I was in Paris, a very dear friend and a brilliant anthropologist, Barbara Glowczewski, who is also part of the friends of Bebekan, invited me to speak about the Bebekan adventure in a seminar which she organized at the Museum of the Quay Branly on March 28.
Here is a summing up of the talk I gave entitled “House of the body, house of the heart”.
The village of Bebekan belongs to the village group of Gilangharjo, in the district of Pandak, department of Bantul, Special Province of Yogyakarta. It is located 30 kms south of the city of Yogyakarta. Its houses are built at the foot of small island-shaped hill surrounded by an ocean of green rice fields. The four hundred villagers are all landless agricultural workers, except for a few workmen, becak drivers and a civil servant, only one, who is a teacher. Of the one hundred houses which made the village before the earthquake of May 27, 2006, eighty-five collapsed in part or completely. They were a mixture of old and recent constructions, none meeting basic antiseismic standards. Two people died in the earthquake and several dozens were wounded. The three days which followed the earthquake were the more difficult days. Promised help did not arrive : there was no food, no tents, no blankets.

Coconuts, bananas and other fruits growing on the land of Bebekan were a blessing for survival. Aftershocks as well as the fear of a tsunami continued to haunt the nights of the people of Bebekan. Total destruction of the electric installations as well as the violent nightly downpours made the darkness even darker. God knows who showed us the way to this village. Asep, the coordinator of the voluntary first-aid workers of Yogyakarta, and myself, were carried along by the amazing energy of the “gotong royong” (community self-help) in order to try to raise Bebekan from its ruins, amid the total indifference of the local and international institutional assistance. We endeavored to rebuild not only a house to shelter the body, but also a house to shelter and comfort the heart. What is miraculous, it is that the absurd economic logic within which we operated (absurd because it was based on a day to day improvisation and sustained by a spontaneous network of fri endships and a kind of grace) does work. And it has continued to function for nine months in Bebekan. Let us call it "micro-assistance" (as opposed to the macro-help of the NGOs).

BEBEKAN 16

2007-03-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

The construction of the sanggar Gino Guno started on 21 January, the day following the Javanese New Year (we went from 1939 to 1940 !). Carrefour has hired an architect from Jakarta who has followed exactly our specifications. On the blog, you can see the 3D drawing of the sanggar. It looks very big and awesome on the image because the natural surroundings have been left out, namely the giant bamboos, the teak trees, the rice fields and the cemetery which surround the location from top to bottom and from north to south.

At the lowest and first level is the "joglo". The joglo is a pavilion traditionally open on its 4 sides, but here we will close the northern side on a width of 2 meters with folding wooden doors to house the library and the computers. It will look like a big cupboard whose doors will completely open to the pavilion when the children use its facilities. The Reog costumes will probably be stored there. At night the security of the joglo will be the responsability of the night patrol, called "ronda", a Javanese custom whereby a few men of the village take turn staying up all night, playing chess, drinking tea and smoking clove-scented cigarettes. If a strange intruder comes into the village, a wooden alarm drum is struck in a precise rhythm, a sort of rhythmic morse.

From the western center of the joglo, large stone steps will go up the hill. These steps will have 3 functions : stairs to reach levels 2 and 3; benches to sit on and watch shows performed under the joglo, and support wall to stave off landslides.

On the second level (still graced by a magnificent giant bamboo grove), there will be two toilets. I specifically asked the architect not to build any ceramic water tub in them, instead there will just be a simple plastic bucket filled through a tap for rinsing purposes. Water tubs are nests for the eggs of the dengue-carrying mosquito (dengue is a deadly infectious disease) and every year there are epidemics (there is one presently). To avoid the growth of the eggs, one must wash the tub at least every four days with a bleach, a precaution rarely taken by villagers. The tradition of the water tub goes back to the time when there were no electrical pumps installed for the wells. People drew water by hand and filled the tub for their daily needs. But in the village, many people don't even have a water tub. They bathe themselves behind a small wall close to the well, and draw water with a bucket each time they have to rinse themselves. So no tub. We will have to cut down the bamboos to install the toilets and a small water cistern. But we will replant them on the southern side of the sanggar to support the ground eroded by the neighbor who has dug into it to manufacture bricks.

The stairs go up to level 3 and the "limasan" house. That house will have 3 parts : the sanggar office, and two guest rooms serving as a residence for artists, visitors and friends of Bebekan. Those two rooms will have antique but rustic and simple teak-wood doors giving on the terrace. At the other end of the rooms, there will be a bathroom opening on a miniature garden. The office will also have a kitchen and kitchen cabinets.

Fourth level : the cemetery on top of the hill is far enough from the rooms so that their occupants won't hear the worms partying all night, but close enough so that they can meditate on the mystery of the human condition :

What is the universe ? What is mystery ?

An endless meal served to the worms ?

Is All slowly gnawed by Nothing ?

(Victor Hugo, The Epic of the Worm)

Tuesday 23 January, evening. We have done a "syukuran", a ceremonial meal to celebrate the beginning of the construction, as is the tradition in Javanese villages. "Syukur" is an Arabic word meaning "to give thanks". Mats were laid out on the ground of the old kindergarten, demolished a few days ago by the workers. It is you, the friends of Bebekan, who have offered this meal, because the Jakarta contractor hired by Carrefour was not aware of this custom and therefore did not plan it in his budget. All the people of the village were invited, the local authorities, and four representatives of Carrefour, the personnel director, the security chief, the clients administrator and the man in charge of confection. Was also present Emi, the woman who, on the day after the earthquake, a Sunday, had brought me to Bebekan where her mother had sought refuge at the summit of the hill and in the cemetery because of the tsunami rumors. Let's call her the angel of Bebekan. She was truly amazed to see how things had evolved and progressed in this strange adventure. She teaches English in a local high school, and she wants to support us actively in the education program of the sanggar. She has many good ideas and important contacts.

The prayers and the incantations were long, the speeches brief and to the point, the dinner simple and short, served in a cardboard box. In the middle of the guests' circle sat the traditional "nasi tumpeng" (rice mountain) and a basket of bananas. The next morning, the chief of the group of the six villages of which Bebekan is part laid down ceremoniously the first stone with offerings of red rose petals and gum benzoin. This group of six villages is called Gilangharjo. "Gilang" means rock and "harjo" means noble, sacred. It is the mediation rock where, as legend has it, Senopati, the first sultan of Mataram (the dynasty of Yogyakarta in the XIVth century), came sometimes to meditate. The sanggar will be open to all the children of Gilangharjo, about 600 students in the primary and secondary schools.

Ceremonies, prayers, magnificent boulder, offerings... the construction of the sanggar seemed to be off to a good start... but humans are, as we all know, less glorious than the psalms they sing, less generous than their offerings, and less steady than the rock on which they meditate. Behind the smoke screen of incense, here is the reality show :

(The following lines will not be visible on the blog because they involve the activities of a few persons who could prosecute us for slandering if we published them on internet. On the other hand I hope that the problems will eventually be solved, so there is no need to air them publicly. Therefore the rest of this instalment will be a private letter only available to friends of Bebekan.)

These incidents have injected a strange taste of poison in the Bebekan adventure, similar to the venom under the fangs of the black cobras which swarm in the wild shrubs which have been freely growing for years in the open hillside near the sanggar. The workers have already killed five of them which they have burned along with the undergrowth. Until now, all the contributions that have helped reconstruct Bebekan were money from the heart, with no strings attached, freely given for the sake of bringing relief and joy to others. And apart from a few incidents, everything went very well. But suddenly the logic has become quite different, and the blame must be laid at our door because we have introduced it in Bebekan. From now on, bringing joy to someone else must also bring in money. And the burnt black cobras have now been replaced by urban vipers. Maybe we shall have to become snake charmers.

BEBEKAN 15

2007-01-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day : whereas everywhere in Indonesia yesterday evening, the security staff of the two major Islamic organizations were protecting all the Christian churches to make sure there would be no acts of terrorism, and whereas the province of Aceh was again invaded by water but this time by the floods of the monsoon, here is a piece of good news : Carrefour Indonesia will finance the construction of the “sanggar” (arts centre) of Bebekan as well as pay the operating expenses for two years.

I had met the local director of Carrefour, Jean-Paul Denoix, a few days after the earthquake, to ask to him whether Carrefour would give us schoolbags and other school stationery for Bebekan. He had answered no, but on the other hand he was interested in rebuilding a school. The next morning, I had brought him to the most destroyed primary school near Bebekan, a school attended by all the children of the surrounding villages. After which I did not deal with the matter any more.

Carrefour obtained the funds for rebuilding the school from the Carrefour Foundation in France. Irawan, the person in charge of communication at Carrefour Indonesia, had met the mayor of the area, and afterwards we all went to the school where the headmaster assured us that no provincial civil servant had come to inquire about the situation of the school. Work was about to start when suddenly, a dramatic turn of event : one Monday morning, the headmaster called Carrefour to tell them that a contractor sent by the provincial government has just arrived with a team of workmen and had begun rebuilding the school ! Was it a lack of coordination ? We will never know. Irawan phoned me, a bit at a loss and asks me if I know of another school that needs to be rebuilt. I answer that I don't dare suggest another public school to him, since another bureaucratic muddle is not to be excluded. I tell him then about our dream of an arts centre in Bebekan. He is immediately enthusiastic about the project. Asep and I draw up a budget, without inflating any number, with figures corresponding to what a poor village would do, as we ourselves would have done for example if we had built the “sanggar” with the assistance of the friends of Bebekan. The Carrefour Foundation in Paris refuses, but the local Indonesian head-office decides to finance the project itself.

Carrefour has 27 stores in Indonesia, 17 of whom in Jakarta, the capital. The first store in Yogyakarta had just opened in April 2006 when one month later the earthquake broke the outer structure of the new shopping centre where it is located. As is the case with hypermarts everywhere, Carrefour has been accused in Indonesia of destroying the local markets and the rural economy. Their corporate advertising is therefore focused on the small local producers from whom they directly buy the goods distributed in their stores. It is clear that Carrefour has an incentive in sponsoring this project of small local arts centre, which is non only located in the middle of the most populated countryside in the world but was also devastated by an earthquake. But this collaboration is foremost a question of people and rests on the respect and trust with which Jean-Paul Denoix and Irawan have discreetly treated us for seven months, and conversely.

Two days ago Asep and I spent all day with two “land-surveyors” of Carrefour in the hills of Kulon Progo, an hour and a half west of Yogyakarta, so that they could measure very precisely the two old houses we had found (including doors and teak-wood beams and structures) and which we will transport like ready-made houses to the future location of the Bebekan sanggar. The two houses are respectively a “joglo”, a house opened on all sides, and a “limasan”, a traditional Javanese village house. An architect will come to Bebekan and spend several days trying to adapt our ideas to the ground and to the constraints of an earthquake-resistant construction. The owner of the land next to hour lot has been digging the hill in order to manufacture earthen bricks, so the ground of the sanggar is starting to break down on that side. It is the roots of some old trees which still hold it in place. So the whole affair is not so simple and the help of an expert is more than welcome.

In the coming days, we will organize a meeting with the people of Bebekan to record their wishes concerning the “sanggar”. Asep and I have already made a list of prerogatives. With a small part of the remaining money that we have, we will, as of the beginning of January, finance intensive computer classes for two quite brilliant teenagers of the village who will then be employed by the sanggar to teach the use of computers to the children and adults of the village. Our principle is to employ as many people of Bebekan as possible for the operation of the sanggar by giving them a preliminary training. It so happens also that the senior high-school attended by the two teenagers chose French as a second foreign language. This is very rare in Indonesia. We will see whether we can organize complementary French classes in the sanggar in collaboration with the French Cultural Centre of Yogyakarta whose new director, Marie Lesourd, is a remarkable person. Marie has already scheduled in the sanggar, at the end of May 2007, a French puppet group for children called “C'koi ce cirk” [What's all this raucus-circus about ?] which, within the framework of a larger tour in Indonesia, will come to spend two days in the artists residences and organize a workshop and a show.

A friend of ours, Slamet Gundono who is a “dalang” (shadow theatre puppeteer), advised me to call the sanggar : “Sanggar Gino Guno”. Sanggar Gino, is too short for a Javanese name. One needs a redoubling slightly shifted, one of these typical alliterations so dear to the Javanese language. It is not only the sound which is redoubled, but also the meaning, with a slight nuance. Thus “gino guno” means “twice useful”.

We also will spend two million rupiah (180 euros) to rescue a miserable family with seven children installed on a sports ground on the main road leading to Bebekan. These people had rented a hut which collapsed at the time of the earthquake. Since then, they have been living under a tent with their seven children. The father is handicapped, and the mother begs for money on the roadside. The mayor of the area has ordered the Pak Camat, the district chief who helped us legalize the ground of the sanggar, to “clean up” this tent which gives a very bad impression and can be seen by everybody. But the Pak Camat did not have the heart to use his police force to chase this family away. Usually, such poor people, without land, without a house, are sent on other less populated islands of Indonesia (within the framework of the “transmigration” program) where they are given a small holding. But since the man has a leg handicap, he refuses to leave because he knows that he will not be able to survive by cultivating this small holding. He will not have the strength. Apart from this transmigration program, there is no social net for homeless people in the Yogyakarta area. The Pak Camat thus went to the village of his parents to see whether they would agree to take back their son with his wife and the seven children. He had been rejected by his family for “very bad conduct”, several years ago. One must be guilty of extreme bad behavior to be rejected by one's family in Java. But as the Pak Camat says, they are human beings after all, however bad the father was, and one cannot throw them out on the road just like that. The family finally accepted, but it will be necessary to build an MTR house for them in their village. It will be the 53rd, and I hope that you won't object if it is not built in Bebekan.

The government assistance for rebuilding has finally arrived in Bebekan as in all the destroyed villages. There will be three payments spread out over four months. A total of 15 million Rupiah per house measuring 6 x 6 m (1460 euros). Some villages have decided to divide the first payment by the total number of houses to be rebuilt, so that each family received a first payment of 5 million rupiah. But with 5 million one has just enough to build the foundations, and as a consequence no one has a roof over their head. In Bebekan, people decided to immediately give the full amount of 15 million to a a few families, chosen by the whole community. Ten permanent brick houses have already been built. As they are very small, the MTR houses are used as an appendix. Or in some cases, for example, the grandmother lives in the MTR house and the young couple with children in the brick house, whereas before the earthquake, they all lived under the same roof. There are still many houses to be built, and it now rains practically every day.

The MTR houses have made it possible for the people of Bebekan to avoid nasty arguments such as who will be the first to have a brick house, since everyone has a roof under which to wait patiently their turn. I had been surprised in the first days after the earthquake, when the sultan of Yogyakarta (also governor of the province) had announced that he would refuse the assistance of foreign NGOs for the rebuilding of permanent houses. I had then thought it was out of a foolish pride. However, I now realize that the sultan was right. 15 million per family is a small amount but it is enough to build a small and simple house. Furthermore this 15 million comes, without any diversion nor corruption, directly in the pocket of the families via the local bank office. A team of roaming monitors make sure that the materials purchased are in conformity with earthquake-resistant standards. And it works really well ! I think that in May 2007, one year after the earthquake which has made 1.500.000 homeless people, there will be no more family living under a tent. While in Aceh, two years after the tsunami, with 500.000 homeless people and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid, there are still thousands of people living in makeshift shelters. A great part of the colossal sum sent to Aceh went in the pockets of small and big local chiefs, and the victims of the tsunami were seldom asked to contribute to the rebuilding of their own houses.

Merry Christmas and until next year.
Elizabeth

BEBEKAN 14

2006-12-11T22:29:00.000-08:00

8 November

The 52 MTR houses have been completed. We organize a meeting with all the villagers to officially announce the “end” of the rebuilding program. It will also be an opportunity to satisfy all the last requests for those which were not entitled to a MTR house, either because they had the means of building one before or because they were able to reassemble their brick house. We know that many of the villagers are still asking for more cement and tiles. In order to avoid a useless meeting (the people of Bebekan are fed up with bureaucratic meetings where the government tells them that the money for the rebuilding will come any time soon and of course it never comes) and to make sure that this meeting leads directly to concrete steps and not only empty promises, Asep met the day before with the RT1 chief in order to evaluate the last requests, the last “complaints”. That very morning we buy 95 cement bags, 5000 tiles and some bamboos. We leave my house on the slopes of the Merapi volcano at the end of the afternoon. Amid strong winds, stunning thunderbolts start to illuminate the black sky… the monsoon has arrived and it starts to rain heavily. In the south of the city, there is hardly any rain, and in Bebekan, just a brief downpour. The meeting is held on plaits, on the terrace of Pak Jamhari's house, the artist who carves the Reog masks and who drew the standard model of the MTR house based on the one he rebuilt himself without asking us for any assistance.

I open the meeting by celebrating the devotion of the RT1 chief who, for weeks, has had to endure all the complaints of the villagers, whereas he himself did not ask for anything and still has received nothing for his house which has been completely destroyed. He lives with his wife and her old father in a cattle shed (the cow has been installed cow under a plastic tarp between their bed and the TV). I explain to the assembled villagers that if the RT1 chief refuses to give cement or tiles to someone, it is not his decision, it is in accordance with our instructions. He is a remarkable man who really sacrificed himself for the people of his village. We then note down each request without promising to be able to satisfy it completely : here 5 cement bags, there 300 tiles, etc… Asep and I then make a quick calculation : the requests correspond more or less to the materials which were delivered that morning. We can thus satisfy the requests immediately and close peacefully, this very evening, the rebuilding program. We then read out loud the final attributions per villager of the number of cement bags and tiles: everyone is astonished and glad to see that their requests were 100% satisfied. And each one knows exactly what his neighbors have received. We also allot directly 10 cement bags to the RT1 chief who still hasn't asked for anything. As everyone gets ready to carry back their quota, the wind rises, the thunder rumbles, a strong rain starts to fall and the electricity goes out. Rain and darkness. The women bring two oil lamps. “Just like during the time of the Dutch !” says someone in the darkness. I ask: “When did electricity arrive in Bebekan? - In 1987. - In 1987 ?!? But Bebekan is only 15 km away from Yogyakarta!”

The oil lamps are thus not only reminders of the Dutch colonial era but also of the Soeharto dictatorship era and its so-called great economic development of Indonesia. We gather round the circle of light created by the two oil lamps set on a chair. No one dares to say it but the ambience is neither that of the colonial era nor of the military dictatorship, the ambience is that of the first evening of the earthquake. That evening, there was also darkness and a torrential rain. In the middle of the ruins. Slowly, the tongues are untied and the strange nostalgia of this first earthquake night comes back. A villager talks about that endless night where, crouched under a tree and holding his children between his legs and in his arms, soaked to the bone, he had not been able to sleep. And all this amid unceasing aftershocks and thunder. It was impossible to say if it was the earth or the sky which shook. Another man talks about the tsunami rumors that morning, when people of the other villages ran here to seek refuge in the Bebekan cemetery on top of the hill, and how while passing in front of one of the rare houses of the village still standing where the people of Bebekan had made a point of celebrating the planned wedding, they were given a handful of rice with gravy in a teak leaf torn off from the surrounding trees. Without this rice from the wedding all these people (about a thousand) would not have eaten anything during the whole day. While everyone speaks, I notice that Pak Hadi – who lost an arm that was crushed in a soya-peeling machine – and Pak Miskijo – who is still handicapped because his hip was fractured when a wall of his house crashed on him at the time of the earthquake – are leaning against each other. Is this a coincidence brought about by the darkness or the instinctive fraternity of the only two maimed persons of the village ?

The most talkative person is the old man who until now has always been grumpy, the man whose house was totally cracked but who refused to bring it down. This evening, he is very merry. With the assistance he has received, he built a hut right in front of his house, on the main road of the village where all the children pass in the morning on their way to school. It is a highly strategic location. In this hut, his wife opened a “warung”, a small restaurant where, from 5 to 7 o'clock in the morning, she sells “bubur” (overcooked rice, like a soup). The warung is a success. She cooks at the end of the afternoon, and gets up around 1 o'clock in the morning to fry small fishes. Formerly, she sold silver jewelry in Bandung, a big city 500 km to the west of Yogyakarta. She went there several times a month by train. But two years ago, the Asia-Africa Congress (the counterpart of the famous congress of non-aligned countries in the Fifties) was held in Bandung and the authorities of the city cleaned up the city and chased away all the circulating venders. She was one of them and she went bankrupt. She also played gamelan in the hotels of Yogyakarta for many years. But the tourist industry collapsed in 2002 after the Bali bomb. Her true speciality is the manufacture of baskets, plates and plaits in braided sheets of pandanus, but it is not profitable any more. Her husband, the old grumpy man, is a shoe-maker. Every morning, he takes the bus to Yogyakarta, he settles down at one the corners of the palace walls, with nothing, without even a stand, because he doesn't have an authorization. He only has his shoe-maker case and he repairs the shoes of the passers by. When it rains, he must stop working because the glue won't hold. He could be a shoe-maker in Bebekan, which would save him the bus fare (4000 rupiah for a return ticket), but none of the villagers would pay 5000 rupiah to repair a shoe. Downtown, yes.

Pak RT1 shows us the project of a set of 4WC proposed by an international NGO. A very ugly concrete building, of the kind we see in a French campsite, with a small tower for the water tank. The RT1 refused the project because, on the one hand, there is no space in the village where it would be possible to build such a structure. This lack of a large communal ground explains why we had made the project of 6 public WCs grafted around 6 wells distributed in all of the village. And furthermore, who will pay the electricity for the water pump? In Bebekan, apart from the house of Pak Jamhari, all people draw water by hand from the well. As we closed the chapter of the rebuilding, we also did the accounts. In a few days, we will post Bebekan 15 on the blog with a list of the total expenses since the second day of the earthquake, including the rebuilding expenses. But here is a preliminary overview :
- For the rebuilding we spent a total of 85 million rupiah. Our first estimate, established three months ago, house by house, came to a total amount of 101 million Rupiah (approximately 9000 euros). Therefore we did not exceed our budget. You will see the details on the blog, but here are the amounts spent for various materials:
Coconut wood : 47.676.000 rp (approximately 4500 euros)
Cement: 7.695.000 rp (approximately 650 euros)
Bamboos: 10.160.000 rp (approximately 900 euros)
Tiles: 9.174.000 rp (approximately 820 euros)
Sand: 1.000.000 rp (90 euros)
Tools: 3.836.000 rp (approximately 300 euros)
Carpenters’ wages: 5.710.000 rp (approximately 500 euros)

Since the second day after the earthquake, we have spent a total of 175 million rupiah, approximately 15.000 euros. Of these 15.000 euros, which have come exclusively through your donations, i.e. personal donations from friends (an association did give us 2000 euros, namely AISA, the Sufi association of Sheik BentounPs, but it was also a friendship gift even if he forwarded it through an association), we spent 1500 euros, that is to say 10%, in operational expenses. Since August 15, we have cancelled the student posko. We were thus only two people, Asep and I, to take care of the rebuilding, in close cooperation of course with the people of Bebekan. I thus gave Asep an amount of 90 euros per month for his operating expenses, gasoline and food, because most of his time was devoted to Bebekan. We also bought a second-hand motor bike for 500 euros. He had no means of transportation and as I did not go any more myself every day by car to Bebekan, it is Asep which went there daily to supervise the orders and the deliveries of materials and the ongoing work. For one month, he used the motorbike of my daughter who could not drive any more, since she had broken her arm at the time of the second earthquake. But when my daughter needed her motorbike again, a solution had to be found. To go by bus to Bebekan from the north of the city where Asep lives is a long journey since we live 35 km north of Bebekan. The other purchase, which goes back to July, is a portable computer costing 500 euros. It is Asep who created the blog and updates it. Knowing that the collaboration with Bebekan will doubtless continue in the coming months in the form of a small arts center, the motor bike and the computer will continue to be useful.

Miraculously we still have 34 million rupiah left (about 3200 euros). I say miraculously because since the beginning of this adventure, we never asked for donations : they all came spontaneously. My banking account number is not on the blog. It was a deliberate decision, since we did not want to interfere with the magical financial logic which has been guiding us since the beginning in Bebekan. More precisely, we did not draft a specific budget detailing the amounts we needed for this and that, and please help us if you can. No. As soon as I received the first amount, a spontaneous donation from my parents who did not know what I was going to do with it, I asked myself : what can I do with this money ? Simple : buy food and flashlights and plastic tarps. These were the things that were urgently needed in the days following the earthquake. Then a new donation arrived: what can I, what must I do with it ? Ropes and dust masks to bring down the wall sections that were still standing and threatened to collapse. And from day to day, week after week, we continued to improvise with the flow of spontaneous donations. We told ourselves: we are helping Bebekan because we are receiving money, and when we won't have any more money, we will stop, our mission will be finished. During the first weeks, not for one single moment did we think that we would get involved in rebuilding the houses of Bebekan. For a very simple reason : the villagers themselves did not think of it because they were too busy trying to clear the ruins. The thought never crossed our mind since it was a gigantic project which was clearly the responsibility of the Indonesian government. Click here for the expenses table

We invested in a sort of intangible rebuilding: the Reog dance group, the communal meals, the school uniforms and stationery… We thought only of building communal spaces, such as our dream of a small arts center which would have been the only sheltered and comfortable place, where the villagers and their children could meet while waiting for the rebuilding of their house. Or the public WC. But at the beginning of August, we realized that we had nearly 8000 euros, in spite of the previous expenses. We saw that the assistance of the government did not arrive, but that the rainy season was going to arrive in two months and that most of the people of Bebekan lived under plastic tarps. They really started to become concerned. We then established an estimate, house by house, and we saw that we had enough to get involved in such a rebuilding project. We organized meetings with the Bebekan villagers and told them that we were going to begin work. We did not promise a 100% completion but assured them that each family would receive an equal share. And amazingly we did finish at 100%. What is miraculous, it is that this financial logic, by its very absurdity since it was based on a day by day improvisation and carried by a spontaneous network of friendships and a kind of grace, does function. And it has functioned for six months in Bebekan.

Sanggar Gino

What are we going to do with the remaining 3200 euros ? We still have the dream of the small arts center, which people here call “sanggar”. Since the very beginning, the people of Bebekan kept showing us a piece of land which they said belonged to the village. It is located at the foot of the hill, slightly away from the dwellings and directly facing the ocean of rice fields. In fact, this lot goes up the slope of the hill almost to the level of the cemetery. At its base, the committee of the village built a rudimentary nursery school in 1983. It functioned for three years, then it had to be abandoned because the villagers did not have the means any more of paying the personnel. Insects devoured the beams and the earthquake destroyed the walls. Some say that this house is haunted. The site is very beautiful, and located at an intersection with plenty of wind, it is always cool with a far-ranging view of the plain. For six months, each time we passed in front of this collapsed house, we thought of the “sanggar” and visualized it. But all the money that we thought of possibly devoting to this small center was spent in rebuilding the houses. And that, finally, is better. Still, we felt a bit uneasy to leave Bebekan without having built at least a rudimentary structure for the children, with a modest library. The remaining 3200 euros would allow us to go ahead with such a project. But quickly, we learned that the ground in question does not belong to the village. It is a “gantung” lot, i.e. “in suspension”. It belonged formerly to a man called Gino. In 1942, when Gino was 30 years old, still unmarried and his parents dead, the Japanese (who had invaded Indonesia) requisitioned him and sent him to the forced labor camps in Sumatra. He never came back to Bebekan. A man of Bebekan went to Sumatra in 1985 and met the wife of Gino and his three sons which told him that Gino probably died in 1965 in a detention camp for Communists or people suspected as such by general Soeharto who had just seized power in a blood bath. A few years later, the wife and two of the sons died. So there is still a third son remaining but no one knows where he is.

We went to meet Pak Camat (the chief of the county) who had been wishing for a long time to meet us and thank us for our assistance to Bebekan. He is an intelligent, congenial and enthusiastic man. And especially quick and efficient. We told him about our “sanggar” project and asked him his opinion about the lot. He advised us to give up our plan and instead rent another ground for 20 years or so. But we insisted that it was this specific place which had made us dream since the beginning. A few days later, Pak Camat came to Bebekan. We met on the battered terrace of the old nursery school around a tea service served by the villagers. He told us right away : “I now understand your stubbornness, it is a dream location! ” He gave at once instructions to his secretary to find the title deed in the land register. A few days later, he organized an evening meeting in Bebekan with all the elders of the village. Were also present the chief of the commune and both chiefs of RT1 and RT2. The meeting was in fact a “musyawarah”, an Arabic word meaning meeting of deliberation. A decision taken during a musyawarah has legal authenticity, according to the common law as well as the republican law of Indonesia. One has recourse to a “musyawarah” when the republican law cannot legislate any more. Which is the case for this piece of land which has been “abandoned” for 64 years and which is still owned by an heir which has disappeared. But the people of Bebekan feared that, following our visit to the county chief, the commune would recover this land and transform it into a communal ground, which would have dispossessed them of it by inserting it in the infernal circle of the local bureaucracy. But no. The secretary of the county chief first read the genealogy of the Gino family. Then he explained how the inheritance law functions. He asked the man who met the family of Gino in Sumatra to testify and he duly noted that there still remained an heir. He asked the assembly of the elders if they agreed that Elisabeth could build a “sanggar” on this ground, to be at the service of the village. The answer was a unanimous “Yes”. He then asked if they agreed to restore the ground to its rightful owner if that heir should ever return. Once more, an unanimous “Yes”.

But it was also clearly specified that, in this case, the buildings and the material of the “sanggar” would remain the property of the foundation that we have committed ourselves to setup with the villagers in order to create the sanggar. Following this meeting, we obtained an official document, signed by all the members of the “musyawarah”, giving us the legal rights to this ground for a duration to be determined during the creation of the foundation. The county chief didn't ask for any fee nor any under-the-table payment for handling this affair.

I believe that he is already dreaming with us of this “sanggar”. More so since an unexpected benefactor (a company actually) proposed to finance not only the construction of the “sanggar”, but also its operating expenses for two or three years. The proposal is being studied by the foundation of his company. In this case, we could widen the activities of the “sanggar” and build a center on several levels, the lot being ideal for this : on the ground level, a “pendopo” for dance rehearsals and various shows; at the intermediate level, toilets and a kitchen; and at the top level, the library, the office of the foundation and two rooms as “artist residence”. This residence could accommodate foreign artists, students or any volunteer person willing to teach during one week or more a subject they deeply love. The friends of Bebekan, of which you are, would also be welcome. If this unexpected benefactor goes ahead with this sanggar adventure (he will let us know in one month at the latest), we will still strive to preserve a village character, architecture and economy. But no matter what happens, we will make a “sanggar”, even if it must be very modest. In Bebekan 15, we will say more about the mission and the operation of this “sanggar”. On the blog, you will be able to see its future location on the site of the abandoned nursery school. We have already found a name for it : Sanggar Gino, in homage to the tragic destiny of this man. “Gino” in Javanese means “useful”, “beneficial”.

Before concluding, just a word about Pak Miskijo, the only severely wounded person of Bebekan. I had an appointment with the surgeon who operated my daughter and who seemed quite competent. But he fell sick and the appointment was postponed indefinitely. Our friend Vincent then got me at once an appointment with a surgeon whose wife is the director of a small private clinic in Imogiri, the epicenter of the earthquake. After the earthquake, it was the only building and the only private clinic still standing. They thus took care in one week of some 15.000 wounded persons, all for free, since the government had promised to refund them afterwards. The surgeon operated almost around-the-clock : his private clinic, which until was not authorized to perform surgery, received the status of “field hospital” for three months. After these three months, the government withdrew the status and refunded absolutely nothing. A rich Indonesian woman then got very interested in this private clinic, its director and her husband, and decided to gather funds to build a true hospital for them. Vincent became a friend of this rich woman and, through the WHO, obtained for her crates of very expensive and invaluable medical material. Through this network of solidarity, the surgeon examined Pak Miskijo for free and with extreme kindness and attention.

His diagnosis : successful operation of the hip, but severe atrophy of the leg which has not been used for six months. He at once took away one crutch in order to force him to lean on his leg. And Pak Miskijo, although suffering, started to walk while leaning on only one crutch. The surgeon also noted a difference of 4cm in height between the two legs due undoubtedly to the crushed head of the femur. There seems to be a piece of bone missing to his operated hip. He recommended to make an orthopedic shoe with a 4cm sole. Pak Miskijo doesn't wear shoes but only common sandals, so when we went back to Bebekan, we asked the local shoe-maker to design custom-made sandals, with several superimposed soles, glued and carefully stitched. With the full agreement of Pak Miskijo, we left one of the two crutches at Pak RT1 so that he is not tempted to use two crutches again. And he goes twice a week to s small private clinic for physiotherapy treatments. According to the surgeon, it will take three to six months to get rid of his leg atrophy. My sister (a rheumatologist) who had examined Pak Miskijo when she visited Bebekan in August, advised all the same to redo an X-ray (the small and poor private clinic does not have an X-ray machine!) and to make him go through the “roller” test, a sort of joint handling of the hip and the knee. We will take care of this.

Thank you.
Elisabeth

Bebekan 13

2006-11-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

The "more than rudimentary" houses have sprouted like mushrooms in the last month in Bebekan.

Tuesday October 17. Thirty-seven houses have already been built. Asep and I spent the afternoon drawing up a new inventory, going from house to house and noting what is missing. Assessment : as of October 17, not a single resident of Bebekan is living under a tent or a plastic tarp. (You can see the photographs on the blog: bebekanvillage.blogspot.com). But there are still 17 MTR houses to be built for the families who are piling up in other people's house or are living in cattle sheds (the cows were relocated under plastic tarps). Since our objective is to rehouse all the villagers before the arrival of the rainy season and before the festivities marking the end of the Ramadhan month (late October), we have hired this week ten more carpenters (all from Bebekan) to speed up the work. This week, it rained during two nights, just at the moment of the “sahur”, the call to drink and eat before the beginning of the fast, around 3 AM. Fortunately, it was not a heavy rain, but the first signs of the arrival of the monsoon are there, one of which is a burning and violent wind which often rises in gusts around midday.

For one month, Asep went almost every day to Bebekan to supervise the construction work and the deliveries of wood, cement, bamboo and “gedek” (bamboo partitions). And also to listen to the complaints of the villagers some of whom were of course angry that they had not received as much as their neighbor, either because their house was less damaged or because they were able to salvage more materials. Thanks to a friend of Asep, Imam, who is very well connected to the network of the Sufi Koranic schools (pesantren), we ordered all the wood from a former master of one of these schools, who for his retirement planted coconut trees on his land in Western Java. For each order, Asep went to the local wood-cutter to choose each coconut beam with one of the expert carpenters of Bebekan. The closer to the center of the trunk a beam is cut, the more tender it will be and therefore unfit for construction. One has to choose carefully.

Once the bamboo was delivered, certain villagers started to complain, saying that the first people who were served chose the best bamboos, those that were the most straight and smooth. In order to solve this problem, we made bundles of twenty or fifty bamboos, bound together, and each house received one or more of these, without having the possibility to sort them. Cement : on several occasions Vincent took care of the delivery with his van. Abbot and Nicole sent us a new shipment of bamboos and “gedek” and bought a second grinder (we had bought only one) and this should now speed up the work of the twenty carpenters.

And yet, as of today, there is still no help coming from the international NGOs or from the government. It is still the same story as on the first day of the earthquake. However, governmental assistance for rebuilding should happen very soon. Every day the newspapers say that it will arrive and that, in a first phase, each house will receive the amount of 4 million rupiah (approximately 380 euros). If the people of Bebekan ever get this help, they will in any event not have the time (nor the required funds) to rebuild a solid and complete house before the arrival of the rainy season. The general plan for the future is to transform the MTR house as a kitchen with a terrace, and to build next to this wooden structure a dining room and some rooms made of bricks. According to the villagers, it will be very good for the beams because they will be protected and sealed by the kitchen fumes (the women of Bebekan still use coconut barks as cooking fuel).

Sand : we had ordered a truckload of it and the truck was supposed to go round the village and to deliver a pile in front of each house which needed sand as specified in the inventory. But the poor driver of the truck had to go round several times and endure the discussions of the villagers, so that he delivered only one quarter of the load and he returned the money for the undelivered sand. Next week we will do a new inventory and put in a new order : this time Asep will accompany the truck driver. Sand and cement are intended for the families which were not eligible for a wooden MTR house because they had been able to recover one or two rooms of their brick house. Or for the families which had concrete beams instead of wooden ones, in order to allow them to rebuild the damaged ones. Sometimes, for example, a house needs four concrete beams, because it still has two of them. We always use as reference a 3m by 6m house with 6 beams, plus a 6m by 2m terrace with 3 beams. In this case, the terrace is completed with coconut-wood beams.

We had some difficult cases to deal with. An old man did not want to bring down his house which was severely cracked, as did so many other people of Bebekan. Since the beginning, he keeps replastering it, trying to seal the open cracks with cement. He thus keeps asking us for more cement bags : he destroys part of a wall, puts iron bars inside it and fills it with cement. But it is a bottomless well, because on the night of Monday October 16, a new small earthquake was strong enough to generate more cracks in his house. Maybe we should be more firm : we will advise him to bring down his house for good and and we will build for him a MTR house with wooden beams and pillars. To be followed.

Sand is a problem not only because of the delivery in the village. There is a sand shortage in Yogyakarta because of the huge demand for the rebuilding of the thousands of houses destroyed by the earthquake. Furthermore, since we have kept contact with the Merapi volcano and its inhabitants from the very first day of the earthquake, we were very quickly confronted with an interesting dilemma : in the villages around Idem Kali (the place which witnessed the big volcanic cloud and the lava flows and where the disaster bunker is located), 70% of the income of the villagers comes from the collection of sand. Over a period of several months, before and after the earthquake, the Merapi volcano, in a permanent state of eruption, has generously spit tons and tons of sand… as if it knew that the south of Yogyakarta would very soon have a great need for it ! The predators did not wait very long to show up : bulldozers arrived at Kali Idem a few weeks ago, pretending that they had the mission to dig out of the river the accumulated sand in order to prevent the coming rains from triggering mud flows. In fact, they came to dig up sand which they will resell in the south. Moreover, as I live halfway on the slopes of the volcano, I saw each morning at the gasoline station near my home dozens of trucks carrying the flags of the European Commission : they would go up empty to the volcano and come down full of sand. Some truck drivers have even written in big letters behind their truck the word : PREDATOR! International NGOs are obviously not concerned about where these trucks take the sand and what damage they can inflict. The bulldozers cause two catastrophes: 1) as they dig without any discrimination, they harm the whole fragile ecosystem of the lava river, and in particular they damage the underground water network; 2) they steal the work of the hundreds of villagers living traditionally off the collection of sand.

For three weeks, these peasants have blocked and paralyzed the bulldozers. They even carried their protest to court. The problem is that they are not organized in a co-operative and that they themselves never had the “official” right to collect sand. It was taken for granted as a sort of common law. In addition this sand, considering the huge quantities available, its very high quality, plus the enormous demand generated by the rebuilding in South Yogya devastated by the earthquake, this sand is deeply coveted by both the governor of the special province of Yogyakarta (the sultan) and the mayor of the Sleman commune (located all around the volcano). A law says that what comes from the river belongs to the province and what comes from the volcano belongs to the commune. However this sand is as much part of the river where it lies as it is part of the volcano which spewed it out and on whose slopes it rests! But finally, thanks to the intervention of the head of the Koranic school Al Qodir, located in the middle of the sand villages on the volcano, the mayor ordered the bulldozers to temporarily leave Kali Idem, while awaiting the decision of the court. An ordinance was passed, stating that one could not draw sand at a depth of more than one meter. And that obviously prohibits the intervention of the bulldozers. But the villagers do not dare go back to collecting sand because they are afraid of the reprisals of the henchmen of the company which rented the bulldozers and which has already lost a lot of money with the immobilization of the giant machines. The truck drivers also refuse to drive their truck loaded with sand down south for fear of being lynched on the way by these henchmen. Moreover the villagers want to obtain through the courts the statutory right to collect sand in order to be able to legally oppose the plundering of the bulldozers.

When the head of the Al Qodir Koranic school warned us about the whole issue, we decided to support these villagers juridically and help them organize themselves in a co-operative and present a united front at court. We cannot blindly go on rebuilding the village of Bebekan which will soon be a big consumer of sand, and to be unaware of the drama this demand will cause at the top of the volcano. This situation reminds me of the poem of Jacques Prévert, The Guard of the Lighthouse loves birds too much :
“Thousands of birds fly towards the bright light,
thousands fall,
thousands crash into the tower,
thousands are blinded and stunned,
and thousands die.
The guard cannot stand such horrors
he loves the birds too much,
so he tells himself :
Too bad, I don't care !
And he turns off the beacon light.
Far away a cargo ship sinks,
a cargo ship coming from the islands,
loaded with thousands of birds,
thousands of birds from the islands,
thousands of drowned birds.”

Back to the home front. A few days before the beginning of the fasting month, the village celebrated Ancestors Day (Nyadran) in Bebekan : after an evening vigil they shared a communal meal the next morning at the top of the hill, in the cemetery. More than five hundred men, women, children were present. I was sitting besides the guardian of the tombs, Pak Hadi, who is also the spiritual leader of the Reog group and who lost an arm in a soybean peeling machine. Pak Hadi is the man of shadow and light of Bebekan. He told me during Ancestors Day that many people of the surrounding villages wished to be buried in the cemetery of Bebekan because it was on a hill, as is the cemetery of Imogiri where all the sultans of Central Java are buried. And in fact some people have succeeded in doing just that. I suddenly had a strange image of Bebekan: as if formerly this hill and its slopes were only one cemetery. The fact is that, on the slopes, one can still find old abandoned tombs in the middle of the teak and melinjo trees and the bamboo groves. People of Bebekan were perhaps grave-diggers in the past, belonging to a sort of untouchable subcaste at the time of the Hindu kingdoms. They lived at the edge of the tombs, like squatters. Then they had children, their numbers multiplied and they clung where they could on the remaining grounds, on the slopes and at the foot of the hillside. But the base of the hillside is very narrow. The plain begins right away, covered with green rice fields which do not belong to them. When we have finished constructing all the MTR houses, I hope that I will finally have the time to collect the testimony of the old villagers about their history. And to transmit it to you.

Another great moment at Bebekan: the visit on October 4 of Sheik Bentounès, a man of Algerian origins who is the head of the Alawiya Sufi brotherhood. I had met him a few years ago in his house in the south of France, at a time when Sarkozy, wishing to create the Muslim Council of France, consulted him frequently. At the end of our interview, he had entrusted me with several Arabic books written by his grandfather and told me that he wished these books would one day be translated in Indonesian and that he also wished to come himself to Indonesia. I finally succeeded in translating and publishing in Indonesian his book titled : “Sufism, Heart of Islam”. In fact, I was rereading and correcting the Indonesian translation when the earthquake shook Yogyakarta, on May 27. With the support of the French embassy in Jakarta, we succeeded in organizing a small tour of Sheik Bentounès in Bali, Yogyakarta, Jakarta and… Bebekan. On that occasion, in Bebekan, the women of the village cooked a communal meal for the breaking of the fast. Traditionally, during the month of Ramadhan, each evening two families cooks that meal for all the village and it is shared by all. But this year, because of the earthquake, this tradition was suspended because the villagers were too busy dealing with their destroyed houses. We bought food for all the village on the evening of the arrival of Sheik Bentounès, but the women decided to serve the meal in small ready-made paper boxes, in order to avoid having to wash all the dishes and to be available for the meeting with Sheik Bentounès. They literally occupied the square of the mosque, as if they had tacitly decided that the Sheik had come for them, the women; as for the men of Bebekan, they were held at a sizable distance as if they were intruders. First, a young man of the village, Toto, delivered a sermon about the duty of giving alms (zakat) at the end of the Ramadhan month, alms which are not necessarily money but can also be acts of kindness and assistance. Then Sheik Bentounès showed a film on the meetings of “dhikr” (repetitive prayer of the names of God, comparable to mantras) in the Alawiya brotherhood in the town of Mostaganem in Algeria. At the end of the meeting, he promised to the women of Bebekan to support their project of setting up an “emping” co-operative. The young people of the “Hadroh” group opened and closed the meeting, playing their tambourines and singing poems. On the previous evening, Sheik Bentounès had also gone to the Al Qodir Koranic school located on the volcano in order to symbolically connect the victims of the earthquake in the south to the volcanic sand peasants in the north. In addition, this Koranic school is directed by a very eccentric, pious and altogether pragmatic man, Kyai Masrur. He created this boarding school ten years ago in order to shelter the poorest children of all the Indonesian islands and the street children of Yogyakarta. But he is also the “spiritual guide” of one of the most famous pop musicians of Indonesia, Dhani, a member of the Dewa band.

His disciples led Sheik Bentounès through the plantations of “salak” (a fruit with a snakeskin bark) and peppers, and through the rice fields to a large field where Indonesian resistance fighters and Dutch colonial forces fought each other at the end of the 1940s. It is on this large field that Kyai Masrur, on the model of the “pesantren” (Koranic boarding school) reserved for children and young people, wants to build a spiritual retreat center for the elderly, so that they can learn how to grow old without being afraid of death. There will be a network of social, human and spiritual support in coordination with the Koranic boarding school whose children and young people will take care of the old people. And reciprocally. Kyai Masrur also actively supports the peasants in their fight against the sand predators. I believe that it was for Sheik Bentounès and the boarders of the Koranic school a very special and emotional meeting. The father of Kyai Masrur, a very short and old man, smoking cigarettes with a very long cigarette-holder, declared: “We have met our initiatory chain.” Afterwards, Sheik Bentounès spoke with clarity and intelligence about Islam in France. He added that he came from the same country as Zidane and that Zidane was a very dear friend of his. That was another reason for the young people of the Koranic school to feel close to Sheik Bentounès.

Back to Bebekan. Pak Miskijo, the only severely wounded person of the village, has been working for more than a month as one of the carpenters constructing the MTR houses. But his hip is still bothering him and causing him much pain. He is still walking with the help of crutches. On the other hand, he was one of the first people to obtain a MTR house. His wife has already planted bonsais and flowers in front of the terrace. The doctor who treated him two months ago had told us to wait two months to see whether the bones would resettle by themselves. Meanwhile, on the advice of Abbot, Pak Miskijo went to see a very qualified female bone-setter who has treated successfully a huge number of fractures amongst the victims of the earthquake. But her intervention on Pak Miskijo did not have any effect. After the celebrations of the end of the Ramadhan month, I will therefore make an appointment with the doctor who operated the double open fracture of my daughter (she was wounded at the time of a secondary earthquake in August). He proved to be a very good surgeon, although I did not choose him since my daughter had an emergency operation in the middle of the night. I will trust his diagnostic. If Pak Miskijo must be re-operated again, it should be in a public hospital since he is a victim of the earthquake. But if for obscure bureaucratic reasons this doesn't happen, we are keeping some money asides to pay for his operation.

As a final statement, let me quote the introductory sentence from the book of Sheik Bentounès: “What is the essence of Sufism ? ” Abu Said Ibn Abi'l Khair answered: “What you have in mind, give it up; what you have in your hand, give it away; what occurs to you, do not dodge it.”

Bebekan 12

2006-10-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Sunday September 17.

The first six structural frames of the “more-than-rudimentary” house were assembled last week on the ground floor of the collapsed houses. As planned, we gave these frames to the families currently living in the most dire circumstances, the ones living under plastic tarps and having children or old people with them.

We installed the carpentry workshop in the center of the village, on the site of an old house. A large plastic tarp stretched over bamboos provided a protective roof. The ten carpenters of the village work during the evening, from 8 to midnight, because they all have a regular day job which they cannot give up temporarily. Neon lights were suspended on the bamboos and under the blue cover, at night, the workshop resembles a lunar world, while big white cows are sleeping around it. Pak Miskijo, the carpenter who is still handicapped from the hip wound he suffered at the time of the earthquake, was integrated into the team. He works in a sitting position, without problems, and he is quite happy to finally be able to work again, in spite of his handicap. We have bought two power saws, two drilling machines, an electric grinder as well as several hand-tools. All the wood (from coconut trees) is delivered to the workshop. The ten carpenters cut and assemble the structure of the houses in the workshop, then on Sunday, with the assistance of the other inhabitants, they carry the wooden structures on the site of the designated houses. This centralized work makes it possible to be efficient, in spite of the limited number of tools. We thought we would be able to assemble ten houses per week, but we must lower this number, because at first the needed wood arrived slowly, and then on certain evenings the carpenters had ritual obligations, still quite numerous in the southern villages of Yogyakarta. For example, during the whole weekend of 16-17 September, the villagers organized gotong-royong teams to clean the tombs at the top of the hill, because on Monday evening (September 18), it will be Nyadran, the festival of the ancestors.

At the same time we bought the wood, we also bought all the cement and sand needed to clog the cracks of certain houses which are still standing. The cement bags were distributed immediately according to the inventory we previously drew up. We decided not to wait any longer and to provide to the families which already have the new structure-frame, the bamboos and the tiles required to finish the construction of their more-than-rudimentary house in the coming two to three weeks before the arrival of the rainy season. A married couple (friends of Vincent), Nicole (Dutch) and Abott (Indonesian) gave us a very generous gift of 500 bamboos. They themselves, thanks to donations from friends in Holland, have built nearly 200 bamboo houses in a few devastated villages. We still need 1000 more bamboos which we have already ordered and will be delivered to the village on Tuesday September 19. The bamboos are a complement to the coconut-wood carpentry and will support the roof tiles. A TV producer from Yogyakarta, who broadcasts “Nature” programs every morning, came to Bebekan and advised the villagers, in a somewhat learned tone, to build their roof with braided coconut palms. They are light and cheap since they are readily available in the surroundings. But the people of Bebekan do not want to have such roofs because they do not last very long and must be rebuilt every 3 to 5 years. Since they prefer the tiles, we will go along with their decision, knowing that they were able to salvage quite a lot of them. Curiously, the tiles withstood the earthquake much better than the bricks of the walls. In a few days, we will post on the blog the pictures of these first wooden frames.

No international NGO was interested in our project to rebuild these more-than-rudimentary houses. As for the assistance for rebuilding promised by the government, the issue has still not been resolved for any village.

The young people, girls and boys (from 17 to 25 approximately), have expressed the wish to organize a group of Islamic traditional music, known as “Hadroh” or “Hadrohan”, to bring back some life to the mosque which the children have deserted since the earthquake. More than two months ago, a fundamentalist Islamic political party, the PKS, had installed a tent close to the mosque and made an inexpensive swing for the children out of two bamboos and a rope. On the swing, they hooked the flag of their party. The women of this party, completely dressed in black, tried to attract the children inside the mosque for classes in Koranic reading, but they didn't have much success. The initiative of the young people of Bebekan of reappropriate their mosque with sufi music is thus more than welcome. We will help them buy the percussion instruments known as “rebana”. The “Hadroh” was born in the Javanese Koranic schools of the XIXth century. It is a music primarily made of captivating percussions to accompany songs, prayers and praises in Arabic or Javanese, and it is played by women and men together. “Hadroh”, a word derived from Arabic, means “to present oneself”, to present oneself in front of God. We thus met Thursday evening of last week under the veranda of the mosque with the young people of Bebekan and some of their friends from a neighboring village which has already organized a group of Hadroh. Their friends arrived with their instruments to teach them the basics. Some of the young people in the Hadroh group are also members of the Reog group. It is quite amazing to have seen them go in a trance a few days ago and then to see them again so concentrated and focused, impeccably dressed in a sarong and a black cap.

I had promised to write a text about the Reog trance, but I haven't yet found the time to do so. Here are some basic concepts. There are two types of trance : the satanic trance, which is the Reog one, where the dancers summon spirits which they themselves call “Satans”, and then the divine trance, the intoxication of the sufis. It seems that in Bebekan the villagers can live the two types of trance without conflict. The first one is frowned upon and therefore prohibited by many Moslems, even very liberal ones, because they say it brings in Satan in man. But after weeks of observing the Reog rehearsals in Bebekan, I wonder whether it is not the opposite which is true : in the trance, it is the devils that we all harbor in ourselves (anger, hatred, jealousy, fear…) who are thrown out, and the dancers, gradually, from dance to dance, are freed from them. They themselves raise the question, since the elders find that the young people enter in a trance too quickly and too easily. “When we were young, one of them said during a discussion after a Reog rehearsal, we waited until the battle scene was finished to go in a trance. Today, the young people do it after a mere 10 minutes. Even the musicians go in a trance.” Who are these spirits which come inside the dancers? On August 19, at the end of a Reog performance in Bebekan, within the framework of the Independence Day festivities, one of the young dancers was still possessed. During the rehearsal, he had gone out of the “arena” in a trance, a gesture which is considered dangerous and is thus prohibited. Trance is authorized and supported within a very precise time and space framework. It is only with great difficulty that the villagers were able to capture him after he had “escaped”. After the performance, he was still in an acute trance state. Many adults surrounded him and tried to release him and to calm him down, but it was impossible. Then a young man arrived from a neighboring village and asked for a glass of water. He made the dancer drink the water, and then had him spit it out back in the glass; he also did the same, after which he rapidly capped the glass with his hand, ran at the top of the hill towards the cemetery and threw out among the tombs the captive spirit in the glass. He then told us that this spirit was “the first ancestor of Bebekan”. This young man is known to be able to speak with the ancestral spirits. And this evening, under the veranda of the mosque, he is a member of the group of friends from the neighboring village who come here to teach to the young people of the village the “Hadroh” sufi music, which leads to divine intoxication.

The Reog group in its current form was really born with the new generation, just a few days after the earthquake. In the evenings, the young people were beating out on jerry cans or bamboos the rhythms that their elders played before the earthquake. After the disaster, the elders decided to withdraw, to leave the place to these young people and to become their coaches. I wonder if the fact that these young people can so easily and readily enter in a trance is not related to the earthquake : their material world being completely destroyed, didn't they have the vital need to connect with the spiritual world of their ancestors, this invisible chain which can enable them to be rebuilt physically, to find their material landmarks? I felt they were impelled by the urge to connect to this memory of space and time of the village of Bebekan, a memory immortalized in the spirit of their ancestors whom they call in them by the trance.

Monday September 11. I have received an email from a very dear friend of mine, Alex Dea, a Chinese-American ethnomusicologist, computer specialist and composer, who has lived in Java for 25 years. One of his friends, Leonard, has just published a very beautiful book full of magnificent photos and brilliant texts on Yogyakarta and will launch the book in Taman Sari, the old water-baths of the sultans. These baths, a mixture of Javanese, Chinese and Portuguese architecture, were restored last year with the assistance of the Portuguese government and became the smartest place in town to organize cultural events or fashion parades. There is an underground mosque and a row of courtyards, basins and turrets. It is a magical place and highly charged with history, sexuality and spirituality. To animate the launching of the book, Alex had a generous and brilliant idea: rather than inviting some pop stars to perform a “charity concert” in order to collect funds for the “poor victims of the earthquake”, he proposed to inverse the process : to invite precisely the artists-victims of the earthquake to perform on the stage of Taman Sari. Two groups were invited. The first one is a group of country-women which the great Javanese dancer, Didik Nini Thowok, has been training for several years. They come from the village of Pundong (south of Yogyakarta) which was completely destroyed by the earthquake. They perform fertility dances, known as “Gejok Lesung”, to the rhythms of a single musical instrument : a large wooden rice-mortar struck by big wooden pestles to accompany the singing of the women. The second group was the Reog of Bebekan which is called: “Satria Muda Budaya” (Young Knights of Culture). They only had four days to prepare a condensed 20 minute version of their performance on the complex stage built upon the various pools and basins of Taman Sari. Asep and I went there at dusk to draw the exact plan and the precise dimensions of that special stage. Then we drove to Bebekan. The Reog elders, who are now training the young people, at once used chalk to draw on the floor of a collapsed house the full scale and exact shape of that stage. The dancers rehearsed during the night inside that fictive space. On the only wall still standing and covered with sad graffiti (written on the very same day of the earthquake : “What will we eat tomorrow? ” “My house is destroyed, my heart weeps”), they hung a large clock in the shape of a mosque, as a sort of stop watch, to monitor the time and not exceed the 20 minutes allotted to their performance.

On the evening of Friday, September 15, the Young Knights of Culture arrived at Taman Sari by bus in their most beautiful costumes. It was undoubtedly the classiest evening which Yogyakarta has seen in these last months : among the guests were the brothers and the youngest daughter of the sultan, the greatest designers of the city and plenty of Australian wine… One of the Reog elders, who only has one arm (the other was crushed in a machine to sort soya beans), brought resin of benzoin (a traditional Javanese incense) and petals of red and white roses as offerings to the spirit of the place and to ask for the “authorization” to dance the Reog of Bebekan that evening in these old royal baths.

Thank you to all of you who have contributed to transform, for one evening, the nightmare of the earthquake into a fairy tale.

Photo Edition

2006-09-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

three days after the earthquake
RT 1
RT 2

Two months after the earthquake
RT 1
RT 2

BEBEKAN 11

2006-09-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

A week ago, we completed the inventory of the additional materials needed for each house. Before purchasing these materials, we waited to see whether the assistance promised by the government would be granted or not. Each day, the provincial authorities contradict themselves, hesitate, change their mind. The dominant plan for the moment is to grant the amount of 15 million Rupiah (1,400 euros) for each destroyed house, but in three stages: the first stage at the beginning of September for 32,000 houses (it is now already August 27 and the money is still not available for unspecified bureaucratic reasons), the second payment in November for approximately 50,000 houses, and the third payment from January 2007 until June 2007 for the remaining 100,000 houses. Obviously, the population started to protest: why not do the same as the province of Central Java which decided to give all the houses a single payment of 4.5 million. To this objection, the Sultan (who is the Governor of the Province of Yogyakarta) answers that the authorities want to have teams of architects and technicians supervise the work of rebuilding to make sure that the houses will be rebuilt according to earthquake-resistant standards. If a lesser amount is given to all at the same time, this control will be impossible, because, on the one hand, this amount of 4.5 million Rupiah (420 euros) could not be enough to build a permanent house, and furthermore because the provincial authorities could not possibly supervise the construction of nearly 200.000 houses in only one stage : it would be too much to handle. To this argument, the population answers that it does not trust the provincial authorities, and that the second and third payments are likely never to take place. The victims of the earthquake have already had the bitter experience of the 90,000 Rupiah monthly allowance which was to be given to them for three months, accompanied by 10 kilos of rice per month and per person. In the end, most people only got one month of allowance and the people of Bebekan told us that when they opened the rice bags, the rice was being devoured by insects. They were just old stocks that could only be given to cattle or poultry. By reselling this rice as animal feed, they got enough to buy 3 kilos of rice edible by humans.

Since the rainy season will start in two months, we decided to start buying next week the coconut-wood pillars and beams for the frame. These are the materials missing for the majority of the houses, and they will allow building the vital basic structure which the people of Bebekan can then complete, according to their means, with bamboo panels and salvaged bricks. If we have the means, we will of course help them to complete the construction. To maintain fairness, the houses which do not need pillars or new frames will get the equivalent out of cement, sand or other needed materials.
We also will pay the 5 or 6 carpenters of the village so that they can in shifts of three or four (maximum) days per house. This should be enough for the construction of the frame. We also will buy one or two power saws and other related tools to facilitate and accelerate their work.

Three days ago, we went to a free consultation on earthquake-resistant buildings organized by the CEEDEDS (Center for Earthquake, Engineering, Dynamic Effect and Disaster) which is under the wing of the Indonesian Islamic University of Yogyakarta. We showed them the plan of “our” basic simplified house and they gave us two valuable advice :
1. Add angled cross-beams to the frame (this technique has a specific name which I forget, but we added these beams on the blue-print of the initial plan).
2. It is very dangerous to build a short (50 cm) supporting brick wall without a foundation (it was designed such by us because it is a non-permanent wall). In the event of an earthquake, the tension of this short brick wall would pull along the pillars in its fall. But if we remove this short wall, the bamboo panels will have to rest directly on the ground and they will quickly become wet and will be destroyed by the rain. The solution is to keep this short brick-wall without making it cling to the pillars, by leaving a space of a few centimeters between the wall and the pillars. We will discuss he matter with the men of Bebekan. In 2003, the CEEDEDS published a very good booklet on earthquake-resistant buildings in collaboration with the Japanese government. We bought several copies for Bebekan.

Meanwhile, on the NGO front, Cardi, which had already promised a month ago “to wrap” six or more public WC, has only just now, it seems, received the money necessary for this project and will bring the materials in one month! On the other hand, a local Indonesian NGO donated 167 bamboo panels, an amount which we can then remove from our inventory. These panels were distributed on the basis of individual needs, according to our house by house survey.

The toilet adjoining the mosque has been completed. Two weeks ago, when I went to see the men digging the septic tank, they showed me to what extent the ground was black, incredibly black and full of white spots. They had already reached a depth of two meters when they found a shell. They told me that this was indeed the proof that the legend of Bebekan (which means duck in Indonesian) was true: a thousand years ago, the village was a ground marsh, well suited to the breeding of thousands of ducks. The ocean has since withdrawn to 15 km in the south. By digging the ground, one digs history.

For the festivities of Independence Day, August 17, there was a village fair with games. The committee of young people of Bebekan organized everything, and we supported them by buying the victory prizes. Nothing superfluous : books, pencils for the children; pots, plates, plastic basins for the women. Usually, the games are organized for the children only. When I suggested that the women take part too, they at once formed two groups : those less than 40 years old and those more than 40. The oldest was 75, and she took part in the marathon and the game of tug-of-war : eleven women pulling on a rope from one side, eleven from the other. At the last moment, a game for the men was added, the grease pole game : they suspended the trunk of a banana tree vertically by tying it to a rope stretched between two trees and coated it with black oil, very sticky and... very slippery.

On Sunday August 19, always within the context the Independence Day festivities, the men of Bebekan took the initiative to perform a Reog performance on the esplanade of the volleyball court, located at a short distance outside the village. We had prepared a surprise for them: Asep had been for a long time working on a logo for Bebekan illustrating the legend of the two ducks in love next to the water spring in the middle of the rice fields. We printed this logo on two flags and offered them to the village. But the people of Bebekan also had a surprise for me : for the opening of the (free) Reog performance, they invited me to hang one of the flags to the spear carried by a girl. Two girls of Bebekan have indeed joined the group of reog which until now had been exclusively male ! I certainly hope that others will follow. The other girl carried at the end of her spear the red-and-white Indonesian flag. The flag of Bebekan can be seen on the blog entry titled “Bebekan 11". Telling the story of this performance would take up too much space in this letter. So I will prepare another text on the subject and will send it to you in a few days. It will focus on the trance phenomenon in Bebekan, and I must say it demolished all the prefabricated ideas I had until now about this. The reog of Bebekan was such a success that the group was invited to perform on this Sunday August 27 in a neighboring village for 1 million Rupiah (90 euros). Since there are more than sixty performers in the group, it doesn't amount to much per performer. Moreover, part of this sum will be deposited in the community chest in order to pay for snacks and drinks during the rehearsals.

We will meet Tuesday August 29 in Bebekan to discuss specifically the management of this chest and talk about the one-year training program suggested by Mas Besar, a great dancer from Yogyakarta, with several friends of his, musicians, costume designers and make-up artists. I will let you know eventually what happened in this meeting.

In the middle of these festivities, on the night of August 18 to 19, the ground shook again in Yogyakarta. Even if it was a rather weak 3.9 earthquake, its epicenter was very close to the city : the houses were strongly shaken and it triggered a panic among the population. My daughter, Sarah, also panicked. Still half asleep, she fell while running from her bed to the door of her room which opens up directly on the garden. There was only two meters to cross without any obstacles. In her fall, she broke the two bones of her left front-arm : the bones pierced the skin, bored a vein, and blood gushed out. I transported her in the middle of the night to an hospital where she had an emergency operation. When they learned about this accident, the people of Bebekan expressed a moving and genuine compassion. For them, Sarah was a “delayed” victim of the earthquake. A first group of 50 women arrived at the house on Friday afternoon, loaded with boxes of palm sugar, duck eggs, emping, tempe (a pate made from fermented soya beans), fruits. Then the following day, two groups of women, men and children came, again loaded with boxes of food. The two groups had rented a bus with their own money to come all the way to our house. Since on this Saturday, it was the ceremony of the offerings to the Merapi volcano, I brought some eggs, sugar and tempe to the wife of Mbah Marijan, the guardian of the volcano. Water is still not available in their village, a gigantic bag made of sealed tissue (donated by UNICEF) acts as a reservoir and feeds out water to the toilet of the mosque. During the night preceding the offerings ceremony, the great and venerable shadow puppeteer, Timbul, performed in the village of the guardian of the volcano. Timbul lives in the south of Yogyakarta, his house was also destroyed in the earthquake and many gamelan instruments were damaged.

The following day, at dawn, we climbed the path of the offerings skirting the ravine through which lava flowed on June 14. It is as white as a ski trail. The path was covered with ashes which had become a grayish fine sand, very fine. We were wearing masks in order not to suffocate. The volcano was completely visible : under the sun, the slope still shining with ashes and white lava looked like a river of crystal silver.

In a few days, we will post on the blog a list of the friends who supported Bebekan but without indicating the amount contributed.

Here again are the links to the blog.
For the French version :
http://bebekan-e.blogspot.com
For the English version :
http://bebekanvillage.blogspot.com
For the Indonesian version (shortened) :
http://bebekan.blogspot.com

You will find below the inventory of the additional necessary materials, house by house, in English, as well as the total budget. In a few days, you will also find on the blog, the inventory, the budget, the plan of the simple house, and the photographs of each house taken three days after the earthquake and of each current temporary shelter. Each photo is labeled with a number corresponding to the number of the surname registered on the inventory for the RT 1 and the RT 2.

Small lexicon.
Bambou panel : panneau de bambou
Tweezers : bambou fendu (servant de pince)
Rafter : chevron
Lats : lattes
Roof tiles : tuiles
Pillar : piliers (en bois de cocotier)
Cement : ciment
Sand : sable
Framework : charpente
House damages : degré de destruction
totally : totalement
severely : sérieusement
slightly : légrement.

download excel data

Friends of Bebekan

2006-09-01T03:08:00.000-07:00

Simone and Guy Danière

Cécile Bigeon

Florence Evin

Laura Condominas

Deidi von Schaewen

Cécile Sépulcre

Tourlière Family

Sylvie Delpech

Edwige Guillon

Catherine van Moppès and Marc Menguy

Jeanne Dubois

Thierry Dufourmantelle

Jean-Luc Moisson

Jeanne Sandjan

Valerie Crova

Dominique and Jean-Marc Lavergne and their friends

Gregoire Rochigneux

Hitoshi Furuya

Gilles Massot

Georges Khal
Benjamin and Cécile Isnard

Puji and Vincent Meyer and their friends

Barbara Glowczewski

Carlos Bayen

Michel Laubu and Tulak Theater

Geoffroy de Boismenu and his friends

Tan Swie Hian

Kunang Helmi and Michel Picard

Hélène Samadi and her friends

Stéphane Guibourgey

Maghnia and Cheikh Bentounes

Sarah Moser and the children of a Canadian school

Geneviève Lamoureux

Raj and John Sharpley

Françoise Callier

Alex Dea

Sylvie Esman

Michaella Gallozzi

Christel Heine

Françoise Engrand

Diane Kulemkamp

Michel Paton

Pascal Guin

Agnès Duclos

Anne Riera

Jennifer Lindsay

Mas Besar

Midu, Zohra and their friends

Geneviève Lamoureux

Takno Endo and the Yokohama Boat Theater

Johanna Lederer

Mrs. Lemoine

Mr. and Mrs. Cailleret

Claire Bordais

Corine Marianeau

Bernard Droguet

Françoise Braconnier

Florence Faucheur

Christianne Chaponnière

Emmanuel Amado

Laurent Tiret and Nicolle Max

Christianne Lay

Marie Michele Delprat

Thu Hong Nguyen

Claire de Monclin

Itzhak Goldberg

Julie Charrier and Laurent Duret

Marie Bénédicte Lemaire

Geneviève Dufourmantelle

Jean-Pascal Elbaz

Jorge Perez

Véronique Pardo

Marie Néplaz

Claudine Katz

Dominique Ackerman

Nicolas Cornet

Abbot, Nicole and their friends

Association Internationale Soufie Alawiya

Laura Lampach

Luc Laporte

Olivier Drut

Pham Thi Tam

Catherine Buissière

Jean-Marc Dugas

Nathalie Ridwan

Jean-Michel Boissier

Marie-France Lecureux

Françoise Juhel

Hélène Mathieu

Michèle Champenois

BEBEKAN 10

2006-08-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Welcome to the village of Bebekan!

2006-08-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

The village of Bebekan belongs to the village community of Gilangharjo,in the district of Pandak, department of Bantul, Special Province ofYogyakarta. It is located 30 km south of Yogyakarta's city center.

Itshouses arebuilt at the foot of a small hill in the shape of an island surroundedby an ocean of green rice fields. The village is divided in two areas(or RT) and it has a population of 400 inhabitants. All the villagersare agricultural laborers without land, except for certain workers, bothmale and female, and rickshaw drivers. There is only one civil servantin the village, namely a teacher. Out of the hundred houses which werestanding in the village before the earthquake of May 27, 2006, ninety fivehave collapsed partly or totally. Some were old, some were new, but noneof the constructions met elementary antiseismic standards. Two peopledied in the earthquake and several dozens were wounded. The three dayswhich followed the earthquake were the most trying. The promisedassistance never materialized: no food, no tents, no blankets. Whatallowed them to survive was the coconuts, bananas and other fruitsgrowing on the grounds of Bebekan, truly a blessing. The aftershocks aswell as the fear of a tsunami kept haunting the nights of the people ofBebekan. The total destruction of the electric installations as well asheavy and relentless nighttime downpours made the darkness even blacker.

God knows who showed us the way to this village. We were driven bythe amazing energy of the “gotong royong” (communitycollaboration). So we decided to raise Bebekan out of its ruins, to nurture the hopes and sustain the efforts to rebuild notonly a house to shelter the body, but also a house to pacify and brightenthe heart.

A drop of water in an ocean of distress

2006-08-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

Wednesday May 31

It is 9 PM. I am going home from the south of Yogya, both ways there had been monster traffic jams, but mission accomplished : we have delivered the goods bought this morning to the villagers of Bebekan who were very happy. Of course it is only a drop in the ocean. The village of Bebekan hasn't yet received any food aid or logistical help. The army came this morning to start clearing the rubble, but there is still quite a lot to do. The local villagers went to the main road to beg for money and were able to collect 150,000 rps which allowed them to buy a bit of petrol for their stove and lamps.

Electricity isn't back yet and won't be for days. They only have 2 or 3 tents (for 500 people). At night everything is pitch black and thieves try to sneak into the ruins to steal what is left, which forces the villagers to set up a night guard. There are many mosquitoes since it has rained heavily every night since the earthquake.

The situation I am describing isn't specific to Bebekan. The majority of villages still haven't received any aid. The obvious priorities in the first days were medical : treating the wounded and excavating the bodies of those who died. The army started to clear the ruins and to demolish houses which threatened to collapse. But one thing is clear : food and logistic aid are stagnating in warehouses and are not being distributed, or barely so. Hundreds of villages are in the same situation as Bebekan. So why have I chosen to help this particular village ? Because fate brought me to it. Here is how.

Discovering Bebekan
Sunday morning, May 29. I drive to a district of Bantul where one of my friend lives (she and her son are now staying with me). As much as 95% of her district was destroyed and 18 people dies. This Sunday morning, we are attending the burial of a woman. On the way to the cemetery, little girls throw flower petals in front of the coffin carried by men. In the procession, a woman comes to me and says : "It is my cousin who is being buried. If you have time after the burial, I would like to bring you to a village which I have discovered yesterday (Saturday night). The people are very poor but they are wonderful. Their village has also been totally destroyed. I have known this village through my old mother. She lives in a village located at the foot of Bebekan village, built on a little hill. She went there on Saturday morning dragged along by a crowd driven by panic, a thousand villagers running away from the threat of a tsunami. They sought refuge in Bebekan because of its higher elevation. That morning, after having buried their two casualties, the villagers of Bebekan had decided to nonetheless celebrate, as planned, the marriage of two young couples in the middle of the ruins. The meal, which had been prepared the night before, had not been destroyed by the earthquake. No sooner did the ceremony start that they saw the mad crowd of a thousand people invading their village. They shared the modest banquet with them. Later the crowd went to the cemetery of the village, situated at the highest point. There they spent the night after having built improvised bamboo shelters. My mother was with them, and this is where I went to look for her."

I have written about this village in the Paris-Match article. It has a population of 500 inhabitants, and 42 of their 44 houses have been destroyed. They are peasants without land. They are agricultural workers who cultivate the land of others, raise the animals of other people and also build the houses of other people. They are poor but hardworking, and they seemed a very tightly knit community, in harmony with their natural surroundings in spite of the devastation. I came there for the first time on that Sunday morning with the woman who had approached me, Emi. We had brought nothing for them, no help of any kind, but they promptly gave us coconuts which they fetch by climbing the trees. I found them very enterprising and positive in spite of the catastrophe. There are undoubtedly many other villages with such qualities, but this is the one that I was brought to. I believe that to sponsor one village is more efficient and human than distributing massive amounts of assistance.

Wednesday May 31. Cooperating with SAR Yogya

Since government help was not reaching the people, thousands of citizens of Yogya have, of their own initiative, gone themselves to buy the necessary products with their own money in the stores of the story and delivered these themselves with their own car. This is what I did, already on the first night of the earthquake for the district of my friend. And this morning for Bebekan. With the 100 euros sent by my mother, I was able to buy 30 boxes of milk powder, 20 sarongs, 200 packets of instant noodles, 5 liters of oil, 20 boxes of hygienic towels, 10 antiseptic soap bars, alcohol, disinfectants, bandages, cotton, etc.

They absolutely need more tents. But since we can't find them in Yogya anymore, a female friend of mine who coordinates the help of volunteers is going to buy them in another town. A 5m x 7m tent costs 100,000 rps, equal to 9 euros. I have ordered 5 tents. They also need petrol lamps and lamp oil, flashlights and batteries, plastic mats, and basic foods : sugar, oil, rice, eggs, milk for children, medicine against colds and diarrhea, mosquito repellent. There is no doubt that when international help arrives, the villages will be inundated (or not) with such products. But for now, they have nothing. And it is the first days which are the most important to sustain their morale and their health. If they fall into despair and become sick, the reconstruction of their lives and of their houses will be very difficult.

I am ready to do the buying and to go by car every two days to Bebekan to bring the requisite aid. From Yogya, it takes about 2 hours to reach the village because the roads are full of vehicles and often jammed on many kilometers. If some people want to contribute to this concrete and direct aid, I will write an expense report every two days and give some news about Bebekan. Today three young Indonesian volunteers from SAR (Search and Rescue) escorted me for the journey, one inside the car and the other two on a motorcycle, to protect me from any aggression by people standing on the side of the road and begging for help. They have pasted on my car their SAR label and the words : "Car commissioned to evacuate a dead body". If unexpectedly governmental or international help should start raining on Bebekan, we could transfer the remaining funds on another forgotten village or invest it in a small long-term project in Bebekan.

Project for the coming days

A short explanation about SAR. It is an organization made up of young Indonesian volunteers, mostly students, dedicated to the evacuation of wounded or dead people. After the Aceh tsunami, they went twice to help evacuate the dead bodies. For the Yogya earthquake, they went from village to village to evacuate the wounded and the dead. They thought their mission would end there. Their headquarters is in the office building of the Governor of Yogyakarta on Jalan Malioboro. It is a rented office but they are not linked to any governmental structure. The families of the wounded people they had evacuated came to see them to ask for food and logistical help because they said they were not getting anything from the authorities. So in spite of themselves they became involved in collecting and centralizing data about which villages had gotten help and which ones had not, since the government isn't centralizing any data on this matter. Everything is dispersed, the NGOs don't know where they should distribute their aid and many villages, until today Wednesday May 31, still haven't receive anything : no tents, no lamps no food.

SAR is therefore compiling a detailed map of the disaster area with the collaboration of cartographers and geologists of Gadjah Mada University and have started to inform the NGOs on the specific situation of the villages by cross-referencing all the data given to them by the organizations about the progress and specifics of their activities. In principle this should be the duty of the government but it is not fulfilling it. SAR is doing all this without any money, in a totally voluntary way. They offer volunteers and cars to bring aid to the forgotten villages. Tomorrow, or after tomorrow at the latest, they will have completed the map which they will make available on an Internet website and will constantly update. (When the address of the website is known, I will put it here.)

This morning, after a very practical discussion with Mazurki and Asep, the two backbones of SAR, we have decided to do the following with the funds you have provided us : we will keep focused on the village of Bebekan. The people of Bebekan have told us yesterday that the five neighboring villages had not received any help. We will go back there tomorrow morning with four SAR volunteer students : the car will be full of mats, rice, storm lamps, petrol, milk, clothes, aspirin, vitamins, 5 tents, oil, etc. All these things were bought thanks to your donations.

In Bebekan, we will build a bamboo structure to serve as an aid center, called "posko" : communication post, and the four students will stay there in order to coordinate aid, ensure its distribution to Bebekan and the neighboring villages, which we will visit tomorrow. This light and inexpensive structure, posko, is essential in the coming days to receive international aid or aid coming from local organizations or groups, such as Jarum, Kompas, etc. If there is no Posko, the NGOs don't know to whom they should distribute the aid. Furthermore, this aid must have a follow-up : how many bags of rice are left today, what does this village need...

One must understand that this is not a situation where the victims are parked in big refugee camps. They are refugees in their own village, which means a great amount of dispersion, which means that the work to be done covers a very large surface. And even if they are not dying of hunger, or are not suffering the horrors of war for example, they are still living amid the ruins of their own houses, without electricity, without a roof, or in tents for those who have one, without any sanitary facilities, without the possibility to buy anything in their local area, because all the small stores have also been destroyed, without work, without money. This situation will likely last for many weeks, probably months, even if many of the villagers are hardy and dynamic. One the priorities is to clear the rubble of the houses with the help of big machines so that the locals can already start reconstructing as best they can while waiting for funds earmarked for reconstruction. The Indonesian government has organized poskos in some areas and villages but none in many other. The role of the SAR volunteers will therefore be to inform their HQ in Yogya of the stock level, to make sure that aid is fairly distributed to all the villagers and to act as a reception center for various NGOs. Since international help is starting to arrive, it would somehow be absurd, as are still doing thousands of people in Yogya such as me, to go buy food and other necessities at the local supermarket for the villagers, when huge stocks of these things are already piling up in the warehouses and waiting to be channeled to the needy villages.

What I am writing now will certainly be modified tomorrow when we go to Bebekan. One must know how to improvise on a daily basis because the situation is constantly changing, and the needs also. But the idea of a posko which we will sponsor with your donations and in collaboration with the logistical know-how of SAR seems like a good one and can eventually lead to long-term projects to help the villagers rebuild their houses according to earthquake-proof standards.

Elisabeth

BEBEKAN 4

2006-08-08T08:17:00.000-07:00

Carrefour, Puppet Show, Photographs of people and of the destroyed houses

Everything is going forward very well and at a good pace. The villagers don't have any food shortages or problems now. Friday night, I went to the Mercure Hotel where all the NGOs and the press members are staying. I was able to obtain from French firemen who were leaving the country two boxes of medicine which they did not want to take them back with them (200 kg). But all the notices are in French, so my daughter Sarah spent the whole day yesterday translating in Indonesian the prescribed doses of each medicine and classifying the results on a computer. I also met the regional director of Carrefour (Carrefour is a French hypermart which opened recently, in March 206, in Yogyakarta in a new commercial center that has been quite affected by the earthquake).

Carrefour and the Accor group have delivered thousands of meals to the hospitals of Yogyakarta during the whole week and Carrefour has distributed food in the villages. I wanted to ask its director to offer us school bags and accessories for the children of Bebekan because they are going back to school on Thursday June 8. But he told me he would rather get involved in the rebuilding of a school. So on Saturday morning we went together to see the most damaged school in the vicinity of Bebekan. He seemed interested in pursuing the project and should give me his answer this week.

There is no school in the village itself. The children are scattered in many schools around Bebekan. There are 60 children in all, from kindergarten to high-school, but since they attend the same schools as the children of the five surrounding villages, we must buy school material (notebooks, pencils, school bags) for the whole of the 5 villages, about 250 children, otherwise some understandable jealousy would arise.

Pupet Show "Turak"

I also met in the Mercure Hotel the director of the French Cultural Center of Surabaya. He proposed to invite the French puppeteer Michel Lauber who is now touring Indonesia. It is Michel himself who expressed the wish to do a show in one of the destroyed villages. His group, called Turak, comes from the city of Lyon. So we are organizing for tomorrow, at 4 PM on Tuesday June 6, a puppet show in the ruins of Bebekan. We are inviting the children of all the neighboring villages and at the end of the show we will distribute school accessories and some snacks.

Sunday night. I have organized in my home a meeting between the 15 members of Firemen Without Borders and the coordinator of the young Indonesian volunteers of SAR with whom we are working in Bebekan. FWB are mostly professional firemen who freely donate some of their holiday time to bring assistance in natural catastrophes around the world. They do not only help physically but also they train rescuers and foremen of other countries (notably in Peru). After the Aceh tsunami, they have trained for many months 30 Indonesian firemen who have now reached a high degree of proficiency. Yesterday they were accompanied by 4 firemen from Aceh who came specifically to help the victims of the Yogyakarta earthquake.

Last night the sound of the alarm sirens at the Merapi volcano triggered the evacuation of the villages located within 4 km of the volcano on the eastern side because of the long lava flows and volcanic clouds. We were all in the house and FWB proposed to SAR the idea of long-term training on rescue techniques around the volcano. They must first submit the proposal to all the members of their association and also find the required funds, but from now on we remain in very close contact.

So this morning they came to Bebekan, One of them is a doctor and he organized a medical visit for all the people still suffering from wounds or other diseases. Meanwhile the other firemen observed how the villagers had started to clear the rubble and demolish unstable walls. They gave them some practical advice and security hints, but in general they estimated that the villagers were working well, even if in an old fashioned way.

They slide a thick strong rope (given to them by one the SAR students) into a hole near the top of the wall and, once the rope jas been knotted, they pull on it and the wall comes crashing down. They work barefoot and bare hand, without masks. FWB gave them all of their remaining masks and today we bought them rubber boots, gloves and more thick ropes. For clearing the rubble, they still use the traditional gotong-royong method, meaning villagers of a village helping each other. All the men of the village decide together each day to clear the ruins of one house. And when that task is done, they move on to the next house. This labor will last many weeks but they work very hard at it. Some women, equally barefoot in the ruins, isolate one by one among the debris the bricks which are still intact and pile them up very delicately on the side : they will be used in the reconstruction. The men also save the beams and the roof tiles, a very detailed and painstaking job.

The French student volunteers who came in the weekend to Bebekan have photographed all the villagers in front of their house. Their mission in a few weeks will be a bureaucratic battle to obtain from the authorities the aid promised by the government, that is 30 million rps (2,800 euros) per destroyed house. But no one knows as yet how this procedure will be implemented. The Indonesian student volunteers from SAR who are camping in Bebekan will be at the forefront of this battle to help the villagers get this promised aid. Not one of the villagers is a civil servant, they are all peasants without land, agricultural workers or construction workers, or becak drivers. They therefore have no access to the local or national bureaucracy. In fact they haven't to his day received any aid from either the government (except in 11 days 50 kg of rice, 2 bottles of oil and 4 blankets) or foreign NGOs, except for the medical visit organized by FWB.

Your financial help was crucial and the French firemen were astonished by the progress of this village when compared to other villages they had visited. I therefore go each day to Bebekan, and the Indonesian students brief me on a daily basis about the new needs arising from the situation : electrical cables (hundreds of meters are needed), neon lamp support, etc. I have asked the French and Indonesian students to keep all their notes, photographs and the drawings done by the playgroup children in order to publish a small book on the history of Bebekan, its destruction by the earthquake, its reconstruction, its small-scale financing by a network of foreign friends, the daily work in the field achieved by the SAR volunteers, and the more general history of the village itself, of its inhabitants, of its local culture, and of their myths and traditions.

Elisabeth

BEBEKAN 5

2006-08-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

Wednesday June 7.

Two members of Pompiers Humanitaires (Humanitarian Firemen) have come to inspect Bebekan. They looked at the houses that were still standing, and declared that all were unsafe except two, but the villagers wanted to bring them down anyway because they are traumatized by the sight of a single shallow crack in a wall. The firemen told them that the houses were still in good shape. The villagers wanted also to destroy the pavilion on top of the hill, next to the cemetery, which serves as a reception hall for guests once a year for the ceremony of Nyadran dedicated to the ancestors. The concrete pillars were cracked and they were afraid the whole structure would collapse over their heads but the firemen told them the cracks were only surface cracks and that the building was in good shape. On the other hand they told the villagers that it was absolutely imperative to destroy a big shaky building on a little promontory projecting over the village road because its collapse would endanger all the people walking on it. But the villagers told us that they did not dare bring it down because it was a tomb belonging to a family that did not live in the village anymore. They must first ask permission to this family.

We made a new distribution of rubber boots and safety goggles for the men who are clearing the rubbles. Every evening the students set up on their camping ground a small medical office, they clean the wounds with sterile compresses, give out the medicine prescribed by visiting doctors. They maintain a list of all the villagers they treat and their related symptoms.

We proposed to the villagers to buy them a new set of musical instruments to replace those that were destroyed by the earthquake. They are very happy about this. Already each evening they play music on bamboo sticks and plastic petrol cans. The instruments are popular and inexpensive but they are difficult to find because they must be made very well since the musicians do not use any amplifiers. The sound of "reog" can carry over two kilometers if the instruments are tuned correctly. To play this music and to be able to dance is the only opportunity to relax in the evening for these men who all day long work hard without any financial gain, in a cloud of dust and on piles of debris, the ruins of their own houses. It is therefore not something superfluous but an essential activity that brings them together around the identity of their village which has been destroyed physically but not spiritually. They showed us an old building which housed a kindergarten for a few years but which had been abandoned because there was not enough funds to continue. The building is badly damaged but we suggested to bring it down and to build on the same spot a cultural center called "sangar" : an open pavilion (pendopo) measuring 9m x 8m with an enclosed part surrounded by accordion doors like those of a warung (kiosk) where we would set up a small library for the children. The musicians and dancers of reog will also be able to hold their daily practices there, and in the aftermost the children activities.

With the expertise of a volunteer architect and in collaboration with the people of Bebekan, we will establish the plans and the projected cost of this structure, knowing that the villages themselves will build it with the gotong-royong system. But of course they first want to work on clearing the rubble, which can take many more weeks. They transport the debris in wooden wheelbarrows to the various rodas of the village which they fill and reinforce. We will find a small truck to speed up the work and lighten up the loads. Meanwhile, a friend petitioned the Atlas NGO to obtain a real big army tent (until now the villagers sleep under plastic tarps suspended on bamboo poles) under which we will organize activities for the children. The Indonesian students who man the posko will be in charge of these activities. Tomorrow we will bring drawing books, a white board, paint, etc.

Four students from Jakarta have arrived to help the villagers clear the rubble. Midu, a Moroccan construction entrepreneur living in Bali, came to install freely and in a very professional way electric cables and neon lights in each tent and along the roads of the village. This morning we bought a great quantity of these cables. Midu will spend the whole day doing the electrical installation. He is assisted by a young hip-hop singer from Jakarta, Geery, whose wife just gave birth to a premature baby in Yogyakarta.

The villagers told us again yesterday that the only aid they have received from the government in the last 13 days amounts to two 25 kg bags of rice, two oil bottles and 4 blankets. No international NGO as yet entered their village to help them, except the voluntary firemen we brought here. The government has announced that it will give 90,000 rupiah (8 euros) per month for each disaster victim (whose house was destroyed). For a family of two children, this amounts to 360,000 rps a month, which is for them a welcome assistance when one knows that the monthly minimum wage in the area of Yogyakarta is lower than 600,000 rps. The chief of the village told us that the total amount will be given to him and that he would be in charge of the distribution. But he estimates that all the people of the village have a right to this aid, since even the very few people whose house withstood the earthquake are affected, they all take part in the gotong-royong, putting all their time and their labor in the cleaning of the houses of the others and the village. He will thus distribute the total sum equally between each person of Bebekan.

One of the specialties of the women of Bebekan is the production of "emping', a kind of flat chip made with a red acorn called melinjo. These trees grow on the small hill of the village but not in a sufficient number. The women buy the acorns from a supplier, bring them back to the village, make them burst in very hot sand, pound and crush them in small circles and dry them under the sun before frying them. Then they bring back their production to the supplier who gives them 1000 rps (less than 10 centimes) for each kilo of emping. In the stores, the emping are sold for more than 12,000 rps a kilo. The idea would be to plant these melinjo trees in a denser and more efficient way on the hill of Bebekan (it takes about 4 for 5 years for a tree to produces acorns) and to find a sales network in Yogyakarta, so that these women can live decently from their work. Let me emphasize here that the people of Bebekan never ask for anything. It is we who question them each day in order to know what they need. And also that the only operating costs of this adventure are the money which I give each day to the chief of the students manning the posko of Bebekan so that they can buy food for the students camping on the spot, gasoline for their motorbikes, their telephone card, some sheets of paper on which to write their reports. This adds up to about 15 euros per day for the whole group of students.

In putting ourselves at the service of Bebekan in the south of Yogyakarta, we should not forget the Merapi volcano in the north which is very very active. On several evenings, I have gone up with Asep (the coordinator of the student voluntary rescue workers for the volcano and the earthquake), to the refugee camps of Merapi and beyond. All night, the villagers sit in groups on mats laid on the road facing the crater and stand guard. They monitor the lava flows and the volcanic clouds. When the sight of the volcano is obscured by clouds, they rely on its rumble to identify its moods. They stand ready to sound the alarm to the inhabitants who sleep in their houses.

On the evening of the day before yesterday, I went up to see the guardian of the volcano, Mbah Maridjan, who has adopted me as a member of his family a few years ago. That morning, the Merapi had spit an enormous volcanic cloud, all the villages close to the crater were to be evacuated, but Mbah Maridjan remained at his station with people close to him. The access road to the village was blocked not by the army but by the villagers themselves, not because the volcano was dangerous but to prevent Indonesian and international TV crews from badgering the guardian of the volcano who had been hassled for weeks by the media and invent quotes he has never made. He thus does not receive any more any journalist and hides in the kitchen of his house, on a bamboo bed, while his wife cooks on embers lying on the beaten ground. He is hiding not from the volcanic clouds, but from the clouds of journalists and lunatics of all sorts. Human madness is more dangerous than the awakening of a volcano.

The atmosphere was both calm and tense, the trees and the house roofs were covered with ashes, the crater bubbling with volcanic clouds and lava just above our heads. Further down, the women of the village prepared the ceremonial meal and the offerings for the night. I brought for Mbah Maridjan the coconuts which people of Bebekan have given me for his village.

Elisabeth

BEBEKAN 6

2006-08-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday June 11.

Three Indonesian voluntary coeds (one is from Bali, and they all attend the Faculty of Psychology) have settled in Bebekan and begun the playgroup with the children of the village under the tent given by the Atlas NGO. As the school holidays will start in a week and last until July 16, we will develop the activities under this tent and perhaps organize one or twice an excursion by bus so that the children see other things than the ruins of their village. I put the three coeds in liaison with a French psychotherapist, Judicaëlle, a voluntary also, specialized in post-traumatic situations. She worked with the Mother Theresa organization for 2 years in the Rwanda refugee camps after the genocide, and in Sri Lanka after the earthquake. She is wonderful and will impart some of her experience to the three Indonesian coeds.

Wednesday July 14. We gave 2,000,000 rps (about 180 euros) to the women of Bebekan so that they can buy the ingredients necessary to prepare the ceremonial meal of the following day, "syukuran" or "selamatan". We suggested to them the idea to organize such a meal which would allow for the first time all the inhabitants of Bebekan to gather together for prayers, songs, short presentation speeches by the volunteers about the assistance to Bebekan since the earthquake, and partake in a communal meal for some 600 people. The women of Bebekan have thus diligently spent all of Wednesday afternoon cooking the meal, always according to the gotong-royong principle, to prepare this "festive and meditative" meal.

Wednesday evening. The Merapi volcano whose alarm status had been lowered the day before from "awas" (alert) to "siaga" (ready), spit an enormous volcanic cloud of more than 7 km which reached the hamlet of Kaliadem, where there are small restaurants which overhang a ravine where the lava runs out. It is one of the local tourist resorts, because of its superb view on the volcano. It is also the location of two sacred sites, the Elephant Stone and the White Banyan Tree, which are the central subject of the book I wrote 8 years ago about the Merapi volcano. The local population was able to flee in time, except for a SAR rescuer and a villager who took refuge in the bunker of Kaliadem. This bunker can accommodate 50 people with enough oxygen for 5 or 6 days. But several meters of lava covered the bunker. Asep, the coordinator of the SAR rescuers with whom I work every day in Bebekan, left at once for the rescue station on the volcano. At 22.00, I alerted the French Firemen Without Borders. I thought they had already left the country but they had been replaced by a new team of four people, but they were only equipped with medical material for the casualties of the earthquake and therefore did not have any fireproof equipment with them ! Nevertheless I led them to the rescue station. They left at midnight for the site with a fire engine of Yogyakarta, an ambulance and the rescue truck of SAR. In the surrounding darkness it was almost impossible to approach the bunker, hidden under the boiling lava which the fire engine tried to cool with water jets while volcanic clouds continued to fall. By 4 o'clock in the morning, they had no choice but to retreat and turn back hastily. The French firemen were very impressed by the organization of the SAR rescuers and its commander, Jabrik, who directed the operations in an orderly way and with an acute sense of the risks involved. More than ever, the firemen are eager to come back to Indonesia in a few months and train the SAR volunteers in rescue techniques and perhaps to forward to them some equipment. Thursday morning. A bulldozer made its way to the bunker but the constant volcanic clouds so terrorized the driver of the bulldozer that at one point he had to run away. Asep and I bought motorcycle goggles (the same ones used by the people of Bebekan when clearing the rubble) so that the rescuers could at least protect their eyes. Asep went north to the volcano, and I south to Bebekan.

Thursday afternoon. The villagers have unrolled their mats according to a star-pattern layout, starting from the center of the village and spreading out on two roads and the slopes of the small hill leading to the cemetery, digging their place in the middle of the ruins and the endless and ominous rubble piles. Everyone was wearing their festival clothes, the women (who in this village do not usually cover their head) their veil and their batik, the men their sarong and black peci (small hat). We were full of admiration to see them so well dressed in the middle of their ruined lives.

That same morning, I hurried to recover 200 plastic plates and glasses offered by one of the daughters of the sultan in the posko installed in her house, and I bought the remaining 200 sets in a store before hurrying back to Bebekan. We were joined by three Frenchmen working for the Atlas NGO, responsible for the rebuilding of the villages. Knowing that the Indonesian government prohibits foreign NGOs from intervening in the rebuilding of permanent houses, they do some research for the rebuilding with recycled materials, classified as "semi-permanent", a label which will allow to "bypass" this law. They wanted to see what the situation was in Bebekan. We were joined also by Vincent, a French friend who has lived for many years in Yogyakarta. Since the beginning of the earthquake, he and his Indonesian wife, Puji, have set up a posko in their house : they constantly collect aid and redistribute it to the people or villages in need, relying on phone calls made to a local community radio and various friends. Vincent has already given a lot to the village of Bebekan and on this Thursday he brought 127 packages, one for each family, containing rice, sugar, soap, etc.

The ceremonial meal opened with a "tahlilan", prayers for the dead, followed by a "dikir", an repetitive chant of the name of Allah, mantras to clean the heart, practiced by the Sufi Moslems as are the villagers of Bebekan. Then I was invited to describe how I arrived in this village. At my sides stood Emi, the woman who led me to Bebekan on the morning of Sunday May 28, after the burial of one her cousins in another district. She told the people of Bebekan that it was her dead cousin who had made us meet and help Bebekan. Then the young men of the village brought the dishes, one of which is the famous "nasi tumpeng", a rice dish in the shape of mountain or volcano with two large red peppers planted at the top, one horizontally (representing the terrestrial and mundane world), the other vertically (representing the spiritual world), and at their crossing a small ruail egg. The plates circulated from hand to hand, white rice, "sayur urap", carrots, vapor-cooked soya mixed with grated coconut, beef stew, lemper (rice stuffed with meat and cooked in a banana leaf), "naga sari" (banana, flour and palm sugar cooked in a banana leaf), glasses of ultra-sweet tea...

Asep joined us after having spent the day on the volcano with the rescuers who still had not succeeded in clearing the door of the bunker completely. As the day was falling, the villagers scattered to the sounds of percussion and gongs of the Reog group which we are helping to recreate. We ordered all the missing instruments and they will be ready in 15 days. Before buying the costumes, we asked the villagers to give us a detailed list of what they needed. They came up with the list of the 60 members, dancers, musicians, manager, "secretary", (the youngest must be at least 17-year old : since the dances are trance dances, teenagers are only authorized to join the group at their majority and if they are considered to be "mature enough" to face a trance).

Sunday afternoon. We all gather in my home (built on the slopes of the volcano but still quite far from the crater) : there is Asep, the students and the persons in charge of the Reog troupe. We are here to discuss the good organization of their group. If I can find a minibus, we could also bring along some children of Bebekan to take them out of their usual surroundings.

Friday morning, 8 o'clock. Volcanic clouds, transporting rain of ashes and sand, continue to spew out of the volcano whose top has transformed into a lunar landscape. Mbah Maridjan, the guardian of the volcano, remains faithfully at his station in his village, at a distance of some 500 meters from the volcanic clouds. I receive a message from Asep : the rescuers have just entered the bunker. Slumped against the door, they found the body of the SAR worker, burned to death and asphyxiated, and inside the bunker, in the bathroom, the body of the villager, dead also under the same conditions. It seems that the SAR rescuer who was responsible for the evacuation of the population of Kaliadem went to look for a latecomer and when both realized they did not have time to flee they took refuge at once in the nearby bunker. Either they did not close the door of the bunker properly or the bunker was badly designed. In theory, this kind of bunker is designed to withstand high temperatures and pressure and magma and lava flows.

The death of these two men in the bunker fills me this morning with an immense sorrow. The earthquake killed more than 6000 people, but in the heat of action I was undoubtedly kept from tears. Perhaps it is all the sadness accumulated unconsciously since the earthquake. Perhaps because I feel such a strong link to the volcano. Perhaps also because I work in close cooperation with some of these young, courageous and devoted volunteers of SAR.

Mati abu di utara

Mati batu di selatan

Air mata pun berdebu

Death by ashes in the north,

Death by stones in the south,

Our tears have become dust.

Thank you for your support.
Elisabeth

BEBEKAN 7

2006-08-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

In the last few days, I finally looked for the first time at the photographs which the students took two days after the earthquake in the village of Bebekan with each family in front of their destroyed house. It is a poignant spectacle, and above all they bring out the obvious conclusion that it is not a “natural disaster” (bencana alam), but a social catastrophe. Almost all the houses which collapsed in the south of Yogya are houses of poor people. The French firemen who came in the village said that they all were very badly built, with bricks of bad quality, bad cement, and without any elementary technique of sound construction. In Japan, a 5.9 earthquake does not destroy any house. And now the government has announced that it will give between 10 and 30 million rps per destroyed house. However several qualified architects say that to build an earthquake-resistant house out of cement and concrete is expensive, because one needs a lot of iron and good techniques. The villagers will thus not be able to rebuilt a solid house, they have already collected undamaged bricks in their ruins to re-use them for their next house ! The firemen picked up some of these bricks but when subjected to a very small pressure, the bricks crumbled to dust.

The money is thus not an assistance but a kind of crime : one gives to the villagers the means not to build a house but a tomb for their children. The only cheap solution seems to be bamboo, which is inexpensive and earthquake-resistant. Wood is too expensive. The only undamaged house of Bebekan is a bamboo house built on a high base, with a terrace made of cement supported by concrete pillars reinforced with iron bars going down 50cm in the ground. The bamboo walls were set up between the concrete pillars. It is the peasant himself who built this house in 1965. Not a single tile has fallen from the roof ! The problem is that he changes every year the bamboo partitions because they are devoured by animals. It must be must be less expensive for him to change the walls than to buy products against insects.

We will begin a program at Bebekan, one evening per week : projection of photographs of their destroyed houses and testimonials by the villagers on how they built before the earthquake; afterwards, projection of Japanese houses made of wood and bamboo, of trendy Balinese houses made of bamboo, or other alternatives.

Sunday I went to get the four men of the village with whom we have had the closest contact since the beginning. I brought them to my house on the slopes of the volcano to discuss their ideas for rebuilding. To get out of the ruins of their village made them feel very good. Present also were Asep and Faiz (the SAR student in charge of the posko in Bebekan), and an Indonesian architect and friend, Retno, accompanied by her husband, professor of cinema at the Yogyakarta Academy of Fine Arts (ISI). The villagers told us that in Bebekan there were many insects of all sorts which devoured bamboo and wood, a true calamity. It would thus be necessary to find out what special treatment for the bamboo could prevent this. Retno, the architect, suggested that a first step would be to make the foundations with much more sand. The previous custom was to put 5 cm of sand in the foundations, but from now on it would be necessary to put at least 20 cm. The great lesson from this earthquake came from the houses of Parangtritis, a small resort town built on the coast south of Yogya. This town was just beside the epicenter of the earthquake, at a distance of 7 km in the ocean. Practically none of these houses collapsed, thanks to the sand on which they were built and which dampened the vibrations.

Retno suggested to draft a budget for a basic earthquake-resistant structure : a foundation (with sand), a frame of 6 reinforced concrete pillars well anchored in the ground, and a “concrete crown” at the top joining together the 6 pillars. It would be the basis of the standard house. From there, each family could “fill it” with whatever they wish or can afford : walls made of bamboo or wood, or even of bricks (if the framework holds, a collapsing brick wall will fall vertically without much danger), roof made of tiles or metal sheet, windows and doors recovered from their old houses. Just speaking about rebuilding and to be able to project themselves in the future made these men feel very happy. In fact, they had stopped in the last week demolishing the walls still standing and clearing the ruins : it plunged them in a silent depression. They also stopped because they must work in the rice fields : 75% of the villagers earn their living as farm laborers. If they had given up the rice fields to clear their ruins, the rice fields would drain and die.

We told them that nonetheless it was essential that they do not stop clearing their ruins, otherwise they will never get out of their depression. The spectacle of these ruins is oppressive, they always live on the mountains of rubble left by their collapsed houses, in the dust, without a flat ground to install a large tent. They thus came up with the idea to organize a tour of duty on the same basis as the night guard duty, known as “ronda”. Each day, a group of 18 men will not go to work in the rice fields but stay in the village to continue the laborious clearing of the rubble. As of Monday morning, they had posted in the village a list of the groups of 18 men, their names and their schedule for the “ronda” and the rubble-clearing day. To support them, we decided to give money to the women so that they can cook for this group of men each day. Thus, clearing the ruins has started again, not through a big injection of funds, but through a stimulus, a few hours of discussion, and 4 euros a day to cook for the 18 men. Sunday, all the men of the village will work together to further the clearing of the rubble, and we will support them by giving to the women the means to cook for all the workers “gotong-royong”. As of this Monday, the new system has worked very well and clearing progresses, even if it will take several more weeks to complete.

We will rent a van to transport the rubble on the dirt roads leading to the village. Unless Vincent, the French friend of Yogya which also supports Bebekan and which has become an expert in the recovery and the redistribution of large stocks of stagnant assistance in the warehouses of the international NGOs, buys a van and lends it to us on certain days. As for governmental assistance, the monthly aid (90,000 rps) which all the victims of the earthquake are entitled to receive still has not arrived in Bebekan. Other villages are in the same situation and some have expressed their discontent more or less violently. The students of the posko will put pressure on the local authorities to induce them to release the sums due to the people of Bebekan. An issue to be followed closely. It is clear that the people of Bebekan do really believe that they will ever receive the promised assistance for rebuilding (between 10 and 30 million rps). Moreover, in the last two weeks, the price of all building materials has doubled in Yogyakarta. Even bamboo panels (gedek) have gone from 20,000 to 40,000 rps.

In the north, the Merapi volcano is still very active and Vincent is lobbying with great success with the international NGOs to obtain logistical aid, in particular pumps and watertanks. Following the great volcanic cloud and the lava and magma flows which have covered Kaliadem and the bunker, the drains which transport water from the top of the volcano to the higher villages were all crushed. Monday, I went up to see the guardian of the volcano, Mbah Maridjan. His village is covered with white ashes. The volcanic cloud passed at a distance of 500 m from his house. They do not have any more water. The cows do not have anything to drink and they cannot graze the grass buried under ashes and sulfur. Certain desperate peasants sell off their cows to callous speculators who buy them at a very low price.

International NGOs do not really understand the Javanese “village” culture. They are used to intervene in refugee camps. However, as well for the victims of the earthquake in the south as for the inhabitants of the volcano in the north, people did not gather in big camps but remained in their villages. On the volcano, women and children sleep in the camps set up downwards, part of the men remain in the villages near the summit, and during the day, everyone goes up to the village to take care of the animals and the fields. One thus needs cisterns and water pumps not only in the refugee camps, but also in the villages. When refugees are parked in camps, they become the “objects” of the NGOs, easy to manage and organize. In the villages however, people, even when they are victims, remain in charge of their lives. It is a remarkable fact to observe, as well on the earthquake side as on the volcano side.

I would like to explain why, although we are very involved and focused on Bebekan, the earthquake and the volcano are linked in our actions and our hearts. For more than a month, in April and May, everyone was focused on the volcano and the terrible threat of a fatal eruption. Almost everyone found that Mbah Maridjan, the guardian of the volcano, was unnecessarily and dangerously stubborn in his decision to remain in his village and in his refusal to be evacuated. Then suddenly, it is the earth which shook in the south. After which all the aid moved south and the volcano was forgotten. The only vigilant people were the SAR group : on the day of the earthquake, Saturday May 27, they split themselves into two groups: half of them would focus below on the earthquake, the remaining half on the volcano.

I work with Asep (from SAR) on Bebekan. Now that the casualties of the earthquake have all been evacuated, Asep, after a day spent working in Bebekan, goes up practically every evening to the SAR posko called Relawan Siaga Merapi. Often I accompany him by car since their station is only 15 minutes away from my house. I am thus briefed on all the problems up there, especially on the day of the enormous volcanic cloud which hit Kaliadem. Furthermore, I cannot forget that the guardian of the volcano has adopted me as a member of his family.

Since the earthquake, people did not think any more of the volcano. So much so that the French Firemen Without Borders came only with medical material for the casualties of the earthquake. When, after the big volcanic cloud, I led them at night to the posko of Merapi in order to help rescue the two men locked in the bunker, they did not have fire-resistant equipment ! Furthermore, on another level, the volcano represents verticality (spirituality), and the southern villages destroyed by the earthquake represent horizontality (this material world). To achieve right action, it is necessary to endeavor to cultivate a balance between these two axes, and even to stand at their intersection. I understood this only Monday evening as I was coming back from the house of Mbah Maridjan.

We also went to see the White Banyan Tree and the Elephant Stone. They stood in the middle of a lunar universe, buried, burnt by ashes, precisely where the bunker was. We did not stay very long because it was very dangerous, at any minute a new volcanic cloud could emerge. And since the volcano was covered and the evening fog was beginning to surround us, one would not have seen the deadly cloud coming. Moreover, the antennas which record the sound of the formation of a volcanic cloud had been damaged by the eruption of last Wednesday. The SAR rescuers cannot any more pick up this warning sound on their radio and their talkie-walkie and transmit an alarm. But these volunteers, which all knew my book “The White Banyan Tree” (on the myths surrounding the Merapi volcano, the dreams of the guardian of the volcano, and the two sacred sites called the White Banyan Tree and the Elephant Stone, published in 1998), absolutely wanted to show me the miracle : the volcanic cloud and the lava flows had passed behind the white banyan tree and stopped at the elephant stone, exactly in accordance with the legend that Mbah Maridjan tells about in “The White Banyan Tree”: “The Elephant Stone is an old story, dating from the time when the first lava flow went down to the south and dug the river of the Anyar mountain. According to this story, the volcanic lava and stones abruptly stopped in their tracks in order to save a pregnant woman. Since then, nobody has ever dared disturb this stone or destroy it…”

Thank you and until the next installment
Elisabeth

BEBEKAN 8

2006-08-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

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

BEBEKAN 9

2006-08-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

Here are the expenditures for Bebekan since the earthquake. From May 27 to June 30 2006, we have spent 49,345,800 rps, which is equivalent to approximately 4,500 euros. The expenses are ongoing, since we finance each day the meals for the group of men who take turn cleaning the village, the gasoline expenses of the art teachers and the professors of Koranic reading, the food expenses of the students manning the posko, and there are always new purchases, for example about fifty school uniforms. The big school holidays, which in Indonesia last only 15 days, have just begun. School will start again on July 17.

At the present time, we still have more than 7,000 euros (from donations). Part of this sum will enable us to continue without problems the various activities already set up in Bebekan : - the posko manned by the SAR students;- the playgroup;- the rubble clearing project.

In order to find ways to use the remaining money and the future donations as efficiently as possible, we have organized a small meeting at my house on Saturday July 1 with the students of the posko, then another smaller meeting in Bebekan on Sunday evening, July 2, with the established leaders [strong personalities] of the village, amongst whom were the chiefs of the two administrative districts of Bebekan (RT 1 and RT 2).

Saturday July 1

Students attending the meeting :- Faiz : « chief » of the posko- Lolo : assistant chief- Bintang : playgroup animator- Santi : playgroup animator- Sutris : art animator, theater Plus Asep (SAR coordinator), Vincent (contact specialist with international NGOs) and myself.

Faiz gave us the plan of Bebekan village which the students of the posko drew up on the spot and then transposed on their computer. This plan will be visible on the blog of Bebekan which will go online in about a week. It indicates the location of all the houses (100, before their collapse), of the cattle sheds (all intact), of the wells (57), of the WC (13), of the mosque, the cemetery at the top of the hill, the rice plantations which encircle the village (but do not belong to the villagers). Each house carries a number. This number is referenced on the two following documents, namely the photographs taken 5 days after the earthquake by two French voluntary students : each family in front their house, whether in ruins or not. It is a very moving and historically unique document. To my knowledge, no devastated village of Yogyakarta has undertaken such a documentation project of the houses and their inhabitants before the demolition of the houses and the clearing of the ruins. At the Sunday meeting, a man of Bebekan suggested that each photograph be enlarged and that each family hang "its photograph" inside the new house when rebuilt: "To tell the story of the earthquake to our grandchildren".

This document could have been used by the inhabitants of Bebekan to take advantage of their rights for the rebuilding premium announced by the government a few days after the earthquake (an amount from 10 to 30 million rps according to the level of destruction), but the people of Bebekan do not expect anything from this promise. They still haven't received the "survival" allowance due to any victim of the earthquake (90,000 rps and 10 kilos of rice per month) and which has already been distributed in many other districts in the last month. This premium finishes in two months. There is no justification for this delay by the local government. However the authorities of Yogyakarta have admitted that the help granted by the central government of Jakarta was not sufficient to cover all the victims. In addition, as was the case in other villages, Bebekan does not agree with the condition that this allowance only be given to the people whose houses were completely destroyed. They estimate, rightly, that even the villagers whose houses are still standing, or half-standing, have the right to receive this allowance, because they also have been very affected by the earthquake : village solidarity dictates that everyone shares all and that everyone takes part in the "gotong-royong" (collaborative voluntary help). To give to some and not to others would likely break the spirit of "gotong-royong". This refusal gives a good reason to the local government to delay the distribution of this allowance to Bebekan. On the other hand, this photographic and cartographic document ill allow us, thanks to Vincent, to obtain logistical assistance from various international NGOs : tools and equipment for rebuilding, more plastic tarps, mats, blankets, etc.

The rubble clearing is going on well because of the fairness at the heart of the "gotong-royong" system. Each time the ruins of a house are cleared, the owner tries to rebuild at once a temporary house with the remainders of his old house : beams, frames, window frames, doors, tiles, sheets, walls made of plywood or braided bamboo (gedek). Thus, in the last week, 5 cleverly-designed small houses have been born. But all the families of Bebekan do not have the same luck : certain houses crushed everything inside when they collapsed. The villagers estimated that a family would need on average 700,000 to 1,000,000 rps (about 80 euros, for some less, for some more) to build a temporary house using salvaged elements and bought supplements. It is not a large amount, but for 95 houses it adds up to quite a lot. Therefore Vincent and Asep will try during my absence (I must go to India on Tuesday July 4 for 15 days) to find NGOs which distribute bamboo or plywood. We will bring in an architect to check if these houses are earthquake-resistant.

We cannot for the moment think about financing the rebuilding of permanent houses in Bebekan. It is impossible to rebuild one or five of them. It is necessary to rebuild the totality of the 95 destroyed houses, otherwise it would most certainly create serious tensions between neighbors in a village which until now has been very united and egalitarian. A few Indonesian architects, friends of ours, have drawn up plans of small earthquake-resistant houses made of wood and bamboo : they measure approximately 30 square meters, and will cost between 1000 and 1500 euros per house. Consequently, with the money we currently have, we can build only collective spaces. We have dropped for now the idea of the "sanggar", an open courtyard intended to accommodate cultural activities and those of the playgroup, because 15 days ago, while discussing with the men of the village, they said they did not consider it a priority. Their main concern was clearing the ruins of their houses, a goal they were not able to achieve because they had to work in the rice fields. The idea of such a building was out of place. But maybe in a few weeks it will make sense to have such a public building.

There is another, less romantic, project than the sangar : the villagers chose the construction of six public WC : the first one will be installed on the current location of the common well at the center of the village (there is a beautiful story related to this well, which I will tell you later); the second one will be close to the mosque; and the other four at locations to be determined. These 4 WC will be built near four private wells, but they will be used by all. It is thus necessary to study the chart of the village and locate the wells so that the 6 WC are distributed at a correct distance one from the other, and at an accessible distance from the houses. These WC will be equipped with a skeptic pit and a "shower" corner (water vat). The majority of the people of Bebekan currently satisfy their needs outdoors, in the irrigation canals of the rice plantations. For the time being, we do not plan to install a water pump. The inhabitants do not have one and they all draw water by hand. A water pump is certainly an improvement but it requires electricity.

In Indonesia, electricity is much more expensive than in Europe and it is not certain that people of Bebekan have the means to pay the bill in the long-term. Thus let us stick to simple solutions. On the other hand, we will work with an architect and the people of the village to find an economic and original idea for the spatial distribution of these WC and bathroom. One proposal was to have the children and the young people (or less young people) paint the walls. Murals have been a very well developed popular art in Yogyakarta in the last 10 years, the movement was launched by a group of artists (Apotek Komik) and it was then taken up by all the population : schoolboys, the inhabitants of such and such district who paint their dreams, their sufferings, their traditions on the walls of their school, on the concrete dustbins, the pillars of motorway bridges, etc… They are a true image book of contemporary urban life in Yoygakarta. In the villages of the south, this art is not developed yet. Now is the opportunity to do so.

We are putting aside part of the money to help the women of Bebekan to set up in the near future a co-operative of "emping" and perhaps of other traditional foodstuffs like "tempeh" (cheese of fermented soya) or palm sugar. But that will take some time because the women still have a bit of difficulty to organize themselves, and the desire to create this co-operative must come from them. To stimulate the sharpest and most open-minded among them, we proposed to five of them to follow a training workshop on the animation of a playgroup, workshop led by Judicaëlle, a voluntary Frenchwoman, a brilliant and generous psychotherapist (whom I talked about in a preceding episode). This free workshop will be held every Friday afternoon, during 5 weeks, at the restaurant "Milas", managed by a German woman and a group of street children, and whose principal building was also damaged. It is located in the south of Yogyakarta City proper, but all the same it takes an hour by bus to reach it from Bebekan. So we will finance the transport of the women of Bebekan eager to follow this training which will give them the opportunity not only to gain new knowledge but also to meet very different people. An opening to the world. There is also the fact that when the female students will leave the village in a few weeks (they will have to go back to university), a few in women of Bebekan will be able to take over the playgroup.

The Reog Trance-Dance

Sutris (the art and theater animator) and Asep started to ask questions to the men of the village about the origin of their dance called "reog". Originally reog came from Ponogoro, a small city in East Java. The central creature of the reog is a mask carved in the skin of the head of a tiger crowned by a peacock wheel-tail two meters high. Accompanied by the rhythms and sounds of gongs, flutes and angklung (bamboo organ), a young man dressed in black kung fu trousers lies down on his back, introduces his head into the tiger head, clamps his teeth on the huge mask to lock it up in place, and in a powerful movement of his back, he gets up, urged on by the frenzied percussions. He has now become a "barongan", the "tiger-peacock". Around him a mocking character leaps about, wearing a blood red mask whose mouth is filled with huge pointed teeth and whose forehead is covered by a mop of wild hair. He is escorted by horsemen, young men or young girls dressed as boys, riding straw horses… The reog is the history of the rebellion headed by a poet at the court of Majapahit (Hindu-Buddhist kingdom in East Java in the XVth century) against the king. It is a story set between asceticism and ecstasy.

Reog was quite often banned in the past : by the Dutch colonial powers, then by the Japanese invaders, finally by the dictatorship of Soeharto which finally authorized it again by using it as a propaganda political tool, imposing a new watered-down scenario in place of the rebellion of the poet. I had gone to Ponorogo a few years ago to investigate reog when I was working on a French retelling of the great poem of Java called the Book of Centhini. I had met one of the old masters who had raised this dance to a high spiritual level. Pak Wo had explained to me that reog was a supreme challenge, that one precisely did not have to be devoured by the trance, by the apparent bestial power of the tiger mask. Through the mask "barongan", one was supposed to be released from any animality (hatred, anger, fear) and to reach the large wheel of the peacock, prism of all the colors of the universe, mirror of all the divine qualities. "Who plays at being an angel becomes an animal", states a French proverb. As for the dancers of reog, they play at being an animal for one day in order to become, God willing, an angel.

But the men of Bebekan do not dance the reog of Ponorogo. They do not have a "barongan" mask. Their costumes are those of the characters of Ramayana (Indian epic) with some added indigenous Javanese ones. Bebekan is located in the area of Mangiran, known as the area which, in the XVIth century, refused to be subjected to the kingdom of Mataram (Yogyakarta) and to its first sovereign, Senopati. The reog of Bebekan would thus be the dance of insubordination, not of East Java, but of Central Java. But the dancers of Bebekan cannot explain the meaning of their dance, they know only the form of it, and badly at that. Yet they have in themselves something of this insubordination to central rule, insubordination which explains why they did not receive any official help at the time of the earthquake, but also insubordination to the "culture of corruption" which reigns in Indonesia. They are people who do not request anything from anybody and can share equally the little they receive. On that Sunday May 28, at the moment I entered this village, I had the intuition that it was a village peopled by descendants of an "under-caste", in olden times when Java was Hinduist. We will dig with them the history of "their" reog. This should be a very exciting inquiry.

One evening in Bebekan, Asep heard from a villager the origin of the name "Bebekan". "Bebek" in Indonesian and Javanese means duck, "an" indicates a collective. It seems that there are two villages in the area bearing the name of Bebekan. Formerly, there were indeed two ducks: a female duck in "our" Bebekan, and her faithful male companion in the other Bebekan. Each evening the couple was found near a spring in the middle of the rice fields, a spring which still exists and is connected to the central well of the village. Their fidelity in love was so deep that they produced numerous and beautiful eggs. These eggs were at the disposal of the villagers for the ceremonial offerings and meals, but it was forbidden to sell them, to benefit financially from them, otherwise the miraculous egg-laying would stop.

In another time, Sunan Kalijaga (one of the 9 mythical saints which had propagated Islam in Java, a man very attached to Javanese traditional culture) was living in Kota Gede (the old city in the south-east of Yogyakarta, also severely damaged by the earthquake). Each evening he would go with his grandson to the sacred water spring in Kota Gede. One day, the little child fell into the well and drowned without the knowledge of Sunan Kalijaga who was peacefully eating a "lele" (a fresh water fish). The mother of the child announced to Sunan Kalijaga the death of his adored grandson, Sunan Kalijaga then pronounced a mantra, the child reappeared out of the well and the fish skeleton was fleshed again and came back to life. And here is the "lele" which from the royal spring will meet the pastoral spring of the two ducks of Bebekan...

I have asked the two students in charge of the playgroup to use these holidays to make the children explore the name of their village. Why Bebekan ? What do they know? Let them ask questions to their parents, their grandparents, and let them make drawings of the stories which they heard. Let them slowly rebuild an "inner house" (rumah batin). Their external house of stones (rumah batu) is destroyed, but the opportunity has been given to them precisely to focus on the construction of their inner house. As solid as may be our stone-built house, if we do not have an inner house, we will remain exposed to all the winds.

Sunday July 2.

Marzuki, the friend who introduced me to Asep and SAR on the first day of the earthquake and who helps damaged villages in the area of Prambanan (east of Yogya), proposed to project in Bebekan a film on the philosophy of bamboo. He has a large screen and a very good DVD projector. We arrive with the material in Bebekan as night falls. Pak Jamhari and his wife invite us to drink tea in the temporary house they have just rebuilt. Pak Jamhari, smiling and laughing, starts to swing from a horizontal beam then shakes the wooden pillars violently to show us that this construction will resist an earthquake. At the intersection of the three roads of the village, the children have woven a long display panel, precisely in bamboo, where we have hanged the collages that Sarah (my daughter) made from the photographs taken of the excursion the children made to my house. It is there that we unfold the screen. Around it, the people of Bebekan sit down on mats.

This film was made several years ago by an Indonesian director, Arahmaiani, based on a very simple but deep text on bamboo written by Sindhunata, a great Indonesian writer and a Jesuit priest. It is an animated feature, minimalist in style. The text is read in Javanese by the beautiful voice of a child, with subtitles in Indonesian and the music of… John Cage. The story shows how bamboo belongs to the family of the plants, of grasses even, and yet it is resistant to any challenge because he is humble by nature but strong when dealing with challenges. In one night it can grow by of one meter, it can reach a height of 30 meters, and in the darkness of the night the sound of its rustle makes us shudder with fear and shiver with delight. It knows how to serve others and thus has multiple uses : construction of bridges, weaving of baskets, very strong ropes, walls, etc. When it is young, its sprouts are also delicious to eat… When it is carved out, one can make a alarm drum with it.

Thus bamboo fills the night with sounds and yet, if we look inside, it is empty. To be at the same time full and empty, such is the central philosophy of the bamboo. The poor men and women which we are (this film was aimed at Indonesian peasants) must resemble this bamboo: weak as a blade of grass, but resistant to the challenges of life and devoted to serve others. A grandmother living on the Merapi volcano says that humans must plant bamboos while they are alive, because on the day of their death, it is on an yoke of bamboo that one is carried to the grave. The philosophy of the bamboo is therefore that of memory : to remember oneself, to remember one's fellow humans, to remember death, to remember God.

Since it is a short film, we showed it three times, and then we showed a full-length fiction film of the very talented Indonesian script writer, Garin Nugroho, "Rindu padamu" (I am nostalgic of you). During the projection, Asep and I went up a little higher on the hill (about 20 m further) where the posko students have pitched their three igloo-tents. We have organized a small informal meeting with the two RT (district chief) of Bebekan. People with whom we are in closest contact are those in charge of the RT1. The RT2 is less organized, they did not use the gotong-royong system to clear the ruins, everyone is free to do it in whatever way they want when they have time, so we did not support them with money for the meals as we did for the RT1. As we did with the RT 1, we proposed to them to rent a small truck to help carry the rubble away, but the RT2 chief told the posko students that he preferred not to use the truck and that the rental money be given in "cash money" for the inhabitants who were clearing the ruins of their house.

I was somewhat astonished to hear this English word in the mouth of the RT2. An French NGO that I had met a week after the earthquake, had stated that it was absolutely necessary to pay the villagers in "cash money" in order to support them in their work. Asep and I were strongly opposed to this idea. To give them the means and the tools to work, yes. But not "wages", otherwise one breaks forever the spirit of the "gotong-royong". That indigenous system had proved to be very reliable since the earthquake : it made it possible to weave a huge net of protection, of assistance, of help, everywhere where governmental and foreign aid was absent, and at the same time a human tissue magnificently intertwined and full of loving. This foreign NGO, and others like it, land in this country with dogmatic concepts of a foreign origin which can destroy local cultures. It is a very serious matter. In Aceh, after the tsunami, many people were completely corrupted by these NGOs which paid them to help themselves.

Perhaps that gotong-royong culture did not exist in Aceh whose social fabric was initially destroyed by years of civil war and military oppression, and then by the tsunami which decimated families and whole villages. But in Yogyakarta the situation is completely different. We thus explained to the RT2 how the villagers here had a extraordinary chance to possess this culture of "gotong-royong", almost unique in the world, etc. The men of the RT1 also joined our argument and explained to him that money allotted to a particular task could not be transferred to another. The RT2 finally agreed. The villagers decided that evening to go ahead with the construction of the six WC. During my absence, they will study the favorable locations, will draw up plans and an estimate with the help of our architect friends. Interestingly, they proposed to recycle certain elements of their collapsed houses in the construction of the WC, for example bricks to make small walls. We undoubtedly will build everything as new, but this proposal is still a proof of the great integrity of the people of Bebekan.

Thank you, to them and to you.
Elisabeth
Let us limit ourselves to a pace of progress according to our means and the daily needs as they arise on the field in Bebekan.