nighttime

I just walked out onto our second floor balcony, and two cows were soundly sleeping in the middle of the dusty street below. Evening prayer chants echoed from distant mosques, competing with the sounds of the one visible over my neighbors’ rooftops. It’s Friday, the Muslim holy day, and it’s the month of Ramadan, the holiest of times, so there is an air of serenity in the city that’s almost tangible.

Nighttime is quiet in Banda Aceh, or maybe it’s normal here but still seems quiet to me. No TV, no DSL, no phone ringing with friends making plans to do this or that, only the persistent meowing of our house cat that literally came as part of the house, and Blake Shelton playing on my mp3 player. It’s been a good first week, and I’m settling into my new environs. The bathroom is scrubbed, the bags are mostly unpacked, I’ve learned a few phrases in Bahasa and made a lot of good connections with people already. I met a man today that could easily become a mentor – wise, kind, a veteran freelance journalist who became a PIO for a one of our cooperative agencies just to be part of the humanitarian effort. Next week, we're going to the weekly meeting of all the communicators so I can continue getting to know my peers. It was an encouraging encounter, and one which profoundly reminded me again of how much I’m going to learn here.

Speaking of learning, that’s what my first days here have consisted of – sitting with my new team members soaking in massive amounts of information about the programs they’ve been working on. There’s 12 of us now, with three others arriving this week, too. It’s absolutely astounding to see and hear all that’s been accomplished so far with just these few dedicated individuals and two dozen or so local staff. Water sanitation programs, community health and vaccinations, partnerships to build houses, psychosocial projects, cash for work cleanup and rebuilding initiatives that help local residents earn wages while restoring their own community – I’ve been dumbfounded by it all, and very proud to now be a part of the team. Granted they all work 10/12 hour days six or seven days a week, but there’s really not much else to do in Banda!

And from a few months ago, the city has changed. Yesterday, I went out to few sites to see the cash for work programs in action, and driving through areas that were once completely devastated by the tsunami, I saw something that surprised me – vitality. Places I recognized from my own photographs in January were not only cleaned of mountains of debris, they were rebuilt and bustling. Shops were open, roads were repaired. It was awesome. But my stomach dropped when we rounded a corner and a caravan of yellow dump trucks rolled toward us – the same trucks that were hauling lifeless bodies away when I was last here. We eased into neighborhoods, that though they were free of debris, consisted of ramshackle houses, pieced together with scrap lumber, all sitting amid tattered tents that had deteriorated after months and months in the hot Indonesian sun and daily rains. It was heart-wrenching, but the people… the people seemed happy.

Much, much more remains to be done, yes, but the scope of what has been accomplished so far is staggering. The debris removal alone is a task I thought in January would take years, and now, relatively speaking, it’s done, with portions even being recycled for rebuilding projects… Banda Aceh is indeed recovering, and I’m so thankful to be able to see it, and hopefully, in some way, be a part of it …