adaptation

It’s been awhile since I’ve written, and though it’s always a cathartic process that makes me feel like I’m instantaneously catching up with everyone whose emails I haven’t answered yet, sometimes I think I avoid it. Yes, I’m “very busy” with other things pulling me this way and that (namely, work), but I guess I know that though my environment may be somewhat exotic, my days are often incredibly lackluster… I go to the office. I have a stressful, long day. I go home. I crash.

And then the cycle repeats itself, deviating at times for trips to the field and other more inspirational activities, evenings out at one of our three dine-able restaurants, and lately, sadly, farewell parties. Yes, the exodus of the original team we had when I arrived has begun, and we recently said “see you later” (not “good-bye”) to two of our colleagues within just 10 days. The first was Elzat, who was both a beloved housemate and an office buddy who sat beside me almost my entire time here. She’s home in Kyrgyzstan now, spending a few months with her younger sisters and coaching them through the process of applying to study in the U.S. like she did. I’m thinking I may just have to go see her when I leave Banda. After all, I’ve never been to Central Asia before…

Transitions are happening all around me. Just as projects are really starting to move full steam ahead, national headquarters is searching for my replacement, and I hear myself in planning and strategy meetings saying things like “Well, actually, I’m leaving in October…” It’s strange, exciting, terrifying and endless other emotions all at the same time. And amid it all is the perpetual question – “So, what are you doing after this?”

My most often used answer = “Sleeping.”
My humanitarian answer = “I hope to work in Sudan or in the Middle East.”
My intellectual answer = “I’m going to write a novel.”
My homesick answer = “Buying a house in the South and settling down.”
My over-worked and frustrated answer = “Starting my own business and working for myself.”
My honest answer = “I have no idea.”

Or better yet, I have too many ideas. Perhaps if I come home and sleep for a long, long time clarity will come to me in a dream… I’m kidding. Sort of. I know my next path with be just as clearly marked as the one that led me to Banda. But as I start to see glimpses of this journey’s end, I do wonder what is next…

Part of discovering what’s next, I think, is the continuous process of finding what inspires you most in your current environment. And one of our programs that I’ve loved and grasped the most since being here is our Psychosocial Support Program. You won’t hear the term “psychosocial” in the U.S., but perhaps it’s best explained as community counseling for the whole community. After major disasters, psychosocial specialists help communities re-establish their cultural traditions, community structures, and daily routines through relevant, unique activities. In an emergency, they do things like psychological first aid (yes, there is such a thing) and help set up informal schools for kids when schools are damaged or destroyed. It’s a lot to explain (an entire emerging field of psychology actually), but basically, it’s an incredible program. So, just in case I wanted to leave communications and tackle a new area of disaster response in the future, I have currently immersed myself in a 15-day training to become a certified psychosocial “Crisis Intervention Specialist.”

It’s a mouthful, I know, but it’s exciting. And perhaps I’m insane for still trying to work while doing this intensive course, but I really have too many things I can’t lose momentum on at this point and have no idea what other opportunity I may have to get this training. It’s currently Day 6 of the 15, and I’ve been to most every session, understood it all extremely well, but have met one reoccurring challenge – group work.

Though the course was technically supposed to be in English and all of the trainers are my English-speaking colleagues, each session uses an instructor and a translator, and two projectors simultaneously showing powerpoints in English and Bahasa Indonesian. This is not a problem. However, me being the only non-Indonesian participant, and only three or so others being fluent or brave enough to really interact with me, it leaves me in “group work” sitting and staring off into space while the rest of the group jabbers rapidly about a question or topic I am longing to discuss. So, as you can imagine, it’s a wee bit frustrating. I wrestle with my own linguistical inadequacies for not learning to speak more Bahasa after ten months, and then simultaneously I feel oddly excluded, which is never a good feeling, especially in a training that teaches people how to re-establish community bonds and relationships.

After the second or third day, I was feeling particularly the Oddball and was honestly relieved when the final group activity ended and my colleagues (who are leading the training) and I hopped in the car and headed home. Before I could even utter a word in English to start a bit of conversation that I could actually understand, my dear friends with me, who are all from India, started speaking in Hindi! As I slumped back in my seat, they proceeded to chatter the entire way home… and something in me (selfishly?) just wanted to scream – SOMEONE SPEAK IN MY LANGUAGE!!

But, as we all know, it’s not “all about us” and selfish people are indeed among the most miserable people on the planet. Yet, I suppose we all have moments of wanting to be heard, and included accordingly… Random thought, I know, but I felt the need to share that small little reality of my daily life, as I have spent so much time here listening to people talk and having no clue what they’re saying. Hopefully, though, I’ll come back much more skilled in understanding non-verbal communication, if not Bahasa Indonesian.

selamat malam (good night),
bonnie jean

inhumanity

As world stands idly by, this voice from another writer at a “sister society” has lingered with me all week. Amid the horror unfolding daily, may we not forget the hundreds of thousands in need, and the untold courage of those trying to help them…

Red Cross volunteers in Lebanon: from dusk to dawn - a journey of misery by Ayad el-Mounzer, Lebanese Red Cross

Since hostilities began in Lebanon, some two weeks ago, more than 5,000 Lebanese Red Cross (LRC), volunteers and staff, working under increasingly dangerous and life-threatening situations, continue to evacuate the wounded, the sick and distribute essential relief and medicines to displaced families, sometimes at the peril of their life, especially in the south of the country.

Lebanese Red Cross paramedics are providing the only ambulance service in the country to transport patients from the hardest-hit areas near the Israeli border to Tyre, and from there, to safer cities such as Beirut. It is one of the few organizations able to evacuate war wounded and civilians under fire.

The director of the Emergency Medical Service Teams, Georges Kettaneh, explains that the Lebanese Red Cross is on 24-hour alert. It is coordinating its action with the Ministry of Health and the High Relief commission. With bridges and roads heavily damaged, it is particularly difficult for the Red Cross teams to try and reach villages in the south, isolated by the fighting, where thousands of people are trapped, with little or no food or water. This is also delaying the evacuation of people, transportation of the wounded and the delivery of medicines.

In the nearly 3,000 first aid and rescue missions they have carried out to date, some 2,400 volunteers have transported more than 2,200 people, nearly 500 wounded to hospital as well as nearly 100 bodies. In addition, about 2,000 volunteers are assisting more than 43,000 sick and displaced people. Georges Kettaneh underlines the extreme difficulties they face in accessing isolated people or those living in areas under fire.

Even in regions where the situation is most dangerous, Red Cross volunteers are present in the First Aid Stations to respond to the emergency calls. Between dusk and dawn, their life becomes a journey full of misery as they sit waiting to hear the echo of bombs, ready to receive the emergency calls, and to pull people from under the rubble and the clouds of smoke.

When Walid volunteered in the Red Cross three years ago, he never thought that his mission would go beyond delivering first aid to elderly people, victims of heart attacks. He believed, until very recently, that the hardest and most painful situation that he might encounter might be to rescue someone from an accident or to extract a body trapped under a car.

He never imagined that his life would be in danger to rescue others. And he never imagined that he would, one day, see so many injured and dead people, buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings in streets which seem to be in a different world, that look like "hell on earth.

Walid is not the only volunteer who never expected that volunteering in the Red Cross would put his life in danger. He is one of hundreds of volunteers, working together like bees in a hive, non-stop for more than 15 days. Some of them volunteered recently, after the beginning of the hostilities, in spite of the fact they knew that the situation was very difficult and dangerous.

Other volunteers have been with the Red Cross for much longer. Abdallah, a first aid worker since 1992, says that he became stronger after seeing so many people die. He explains that, although the scenes are painful, the hard days he is going through will not stop him from helping the victims. As he remembers a dangerous situation he and his colleagues faced recently, he says: "I wonder now what could have happened to me when I rescued a wounded person near the oil tanks in the airport after they were bombed." He adds: "I don't know why I was not wounded and was able to rescue the other person."

On several occasions, Lebanese Red Cross ambulances have been hit or suffered near misses from artillery fire. The LRC reported five security incidents in recent days. The latest one occurred in the evening of July 23, in Cana, a village in southern Lebanon. As first aid workers were transferring patients from one ambulance to another, the two vehicles were hit, although both were clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem and distinctive flashing lights. Nine people, including six Red Cross workers, were wounded.

A first aid station in Tebnine also suffered an indirect hit, on July 25. First aid workers were injured and ambulances damaged. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has raised this issue with the Israeli authorities and urged them to take measures to avoid such incidents. The LRC has 42 ambulance stations all over Lebanon and an aging fleet of 200 ambulances. It also has a country-wide network of 24 primary health care clinics, 24 dispensaries, eight mobile clinics and nine blood banks, which are currently open 24 hours a day due to the emergency situation.