The Klub Frisbee Jakarta / Sanggar Alam Kita POSKO
I was watching a movie on Saturday night and got an sms from Ardy that the floodwaters had risen over a metre again. I was surprised because we'd been having heavy rain for days and it didn't seem to have much of an effect... The rain on Saturday, while heavy, seemed comparatively short. I got some more donations of noodles and Frutang from Tini, notepads from Trish, clothes from Arlan and a huge box of clothes from Barb so I figured I should probably head out and check it out while bringing out the donations.
Here's some video footage I took while I was out there.
TNI helping out
Back to the school
More school footage
Computer room at the school
Interview with Pak Eddy
Practical uses for floodwaters...
The kids were trying to convince me to sit on a piece of styrofoam and have a tour of the flooded area...
I felt a little bad having so many people pushing me around, but they didn't seem to mind the water at all... When Uji started spraying it out of his mouth I began to get a little worried though...
The Klub Frisbee Jakarta / Sanggar Alam Kita clubhouse which is actually housing a lot of the displaced kids and their families at the moment. It flooded on Saturday night, but the water receded again soon enough.
An interview with Calo, Aming's older brother. Every time I have visited I have seen Calo breaking his back to help people; whether it be going out in a rubber boat to rescue families, shoveling out mud or manning a hose.
Dropping by RT 12 behind the mosque.
Some more footage of RT 12.
They claimed that the water that they were using to bathe and wash their clothes was from the river... I hope that they were wrong, or at least that it was filtered in some way. It did look cleaner.
The contents of people's houses: completely destroyed.
Disclaimer: My apologies, the video's aren't subtitled yet. I'm super busy at work and probably don't even have time to be posting this now... I'll hopefully get them subtitled this week sometime. I figured the important thing was to get them online and seen by as many people as possible. I may well edit them all together and subtitle them properly, but the odds of that happening in the next few weeks are slim... (Anyone else want to do it for me? Yes, I'm looking in your direction Jakartaguy...)
Also, sorry about the poor interviewing technique... Cold interviewing is hard, man, and I couldn't be bothered editing out my more tactless questions right now.
We were lucky enough to hook up with Muslim Aid the previous day and were able to show them some of the photos that Ardy and Rian (the head of Sanggar Alam Kita, the sister theatre club to Klub Frisbee Jakarta) took, and they agreed to help out to the tune of around Rp. 70 million (I haven’t got the final reckoning yet, but that’s a ballpark)! So, bright and early, Ardy and I went and met Mas Nano to head out to Kampung Melayu.
As we drove in, they had dozens of trucks lined up to collect mud and rubbish, they also had the fire department out with high pressure hoses firing detergent and water onto the road to clean it off.
When we arrived, I was a little worried that people had been cleaning too well and there was nowhere left for us to help. I’d been talking up how devastated the neighbourhood was all of the previous day and they had allocated us all of this money. We were walking through streets that had been chest high in water only a week before and they looked fine… Roads were clean, gutters were cleaned out and mattresses were drying on fences (whether or not they can dry out fast enough not to cause respiratory infections is dubious). As we walked further we began to see signs of the mud. Gutters were totally clogged and people were clearing them out into sacks that were carried out to the road in gerobak.
Moving rubbish out to the trucks on Kampung Melayu Besar
After we saw the first signs of the mud, it began to get very bad, very quickly…
As I walked down the street towards the local school, SMP Perguruan Rakyat II, the mud got thicker and thicker. Soon enough we were wading through ankle high, thick, stinking mud stepping over the destroyed contents of people’s houses that had been discarded onto the path. Soon enough we reached the school:
SMP Perguruan Rakyat II
Interviews with teachers
Interviews with teachers
I also ran into some parents of members of Klub Frisbee Jakarta, so I thought I’d have a chat to them. All of the Discindo players will know who Sugi is, despite being 13 years old, he is probably the best player out of all of them (but still needs to learn not to poach on defence). Here is his mother:
I also ran into Pak Yadi, Uji’s father, but unfortunately the filming got cut off by someone calling me halfway through the interview…
Pak Yadi, Uji's dad
I wanted to head down to the river to see the houses that most of the Klub Frisbee Jakarta members live in (including the house that Ardy’s mother, brothers and sisters live in that had a wall collapse last week), but the mud was still knee high so I thought better of it and turned back at the Sanggar Alam Kita house.
A sampling of the debris outside people’s houses
Some aid arriving from Walhi
Sibuk's mother
Some of the kids living in the town hall at the moment
On the walk back to the car we decided the best use of the funds would be to buy some high pressure hoses and pumps to help the cleaning process, and spend some money on emergency supplies (which are still needed). Ardy and Mas Nano (from Muslim Aid) went off to shop around for the supplies, while I stayed at the POSKO to avoid bule tax and receive other donations.
While this was going on, the KFJ members and I decided that the best use of Rp. 700,000 of the remaining Rp. 900,000 in donations from Discindo and some individual donations I had received would be to spend it on a nutritious lunch of Nasi Bungkus for the people working to clear out the mud down in the worst affected areas. Aming went off with the money and came back with 130 packed lunches just as Rob and Jason from the Jakarta Bintangs Australian Football Club showed up with around Rp. 2 million worth of medical and cleaning supplies.
Aming delivering food to the workers (I don’t know why Blogger is posting my pictures like this… The source image on my computer is portrait…)
Ditto
Nasi bungkus arriving for the workers
I took a little more footage of the school while I was down there… They had made some progress on the library, but there’s a long way to go.
Library clean up
After a quick trip down to Senayan with 6 KFJ members in the back of the taxi (Sugi’s learning to throw inside-outs, and outside-ins, but still needs some practice), we turned up only 15 minutes before the Regional Director of Muslim Aid, Fadhulah Wilmot, and his entourage turned up with the truck full of supplies. Ardy and Nano bought two high pressure pumps (cost is coming soon), and spent Rp. 10 million on emergency supplies including food, medicines, and, crucially, rubber boots, rakes, and other tools to help clean up.
In the time it took us to walk down to the school, both pumps were already working hard and the community members were making good progress on their clean up effort. There’s a lot of work left though…
After I heard that the fire department was mixing disinfectant in the water they were spraying I did worry for a little while about the trouble we might be causing by spraying down the houses with river water. On balance though, I think benefit that the people get from getting the mud out of their houses outweights the possible health risks of spraying the polluted river water around. At least I hope so…
Here’s some more video footage I took:
Mud, mud everywhere
Cleaning up. Note Pak Yadi
More cleanup with second Muslim Aid pump
Chatting with Jaya, Buaya and Uji
Thank yous and congratulations with Muslim Aid, the principal of SMP PR II, Klub Frisbee Jakarta and Sanggar Alam Kita
Moving food down to Poncol
Heading home
Even when the water was at its highest, and I was seeing families being saved from their houses in rubber rafts, I didn’t really understand the scale of the disaster facing families in flooding affected areas of Jakarta. I must admit, I haven’t seen all of the affected areas, but I can’t imagine how much worse they could be than Poncol in Kampung Melayu. The neighbourhood is located right next to Kali Ciliwung and gets hit every flooding season, but everyone agreed that this was as bad as they had ever seen it.
Muslim Aid is very generously channelling quite a bit of funding towards Poncol in Kampung Melayu, although I haven’t got all of the details yet; and while Rp. 70 million is probably more than the combined income of the citizenry of the entire area behind SMP PR II, it still pales in comparison to what they lost. The entire contents of everyone’s houses have been completely destroyed or washed away. If anyone has any donations of clothes, books, sporting equipment, household items, etc., etc., etc. that they can spare, then let us know and we’ll send it to Kampung Melayu.
I’ll keep updating on the progress with Muslim Aid, and I’ll have a reconciliation up here soon on who donated what (just initials) and where it went.
You may want to compare how the school looks in the above videos to how it looked in August last year. Also, keep an eye out for photos of Ardy, Pak Yadi, Jaya, Aming, Uji, Sugi, Caplang, Desti, and a whole lot more. Happier times…
We received an extra Rp. 1.25 million in pledges so last night I went and bought some more supplies and Ardy came out to my place last night on a motorbike to pick up donations. I only ended up spending Rp. 465,000 because that was all that would fit on the motorbike, so we still have some more thinking to do.
In fact, Ardy said that there were still some shortages of food, so the total haul last night was 1 box of instant noodles, 40 packets of biscuits, 8 x 50 packets of sanitary pads, and 10 tubs of antiseptic towelettes. We also got some extra in-kind donations of new clothes, and more sanitary pads.
Apparently the water has all subsided now, but people are still homeless as there is a foot of mud (filled with rubbish) caking the floors of their homes. Mattresses, clothes, school uniforms, books, furniture, (the list goes on) are all destroyed.
We had a whole lot more rain last night, but the water doesn't seem to have risen much, while people still need everything they needed over the past week, they now also need shovels, gumboots, wheelbarrows, and equipment to clean out their houses... I think we're going to need help from an NGO for this... Any takers? I spoke to someone from an NGO that I met in Jogja after the earthquake last year, so we'll see if anything materialises...
Ardy trying not to fall off the back of the motorbike with the donations
Unfortunately, the house of our property steward, Aming, was completely flooded, and chances are all of our discs have been washed away. We'll see what we can salvage, but the water is actually flowing pretty fast and I'd be very surprised if they're not halfway to Singapore by now.
Coincidentally, Discindo is sending a whole bunch of people to the Bangkok Hat tournament this weekend, so if you're planning on going we would really appreciate it if you could bring any old crappy practice discs that you have lying around the place and drop them in to Andrew W, Manoah, Boom, Treena, Barb T, Jeff C, Cindy M, and probably a few more. Everyone's favourite Filipino: Lester from Vietnam will be coming our way soon as well, so feel free to drop them in to him as well.
Despite raining all of last night, it seems as though the waters haven't risen, although they haven't really subsided either. No one has moved back home yet, and Deni's grandmother is still stranded...
Food needs seem to be covered for the time being, and free health clinics are taking care of most of the health problems that people are encountering. Ardy feels that the number one priority now is still clothes and blankets. People literally ran out of their houses with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and after swimming through the floodwaters and then sleeping in those clothes for 5 days straight (and counting) skin ailments are starting to cause trouble. There is also still a shortage of women's sanitary products, bandages, and wound cleaning solution.
Just in case anyone wants to head out there to donate, Ardy has set up a Posko at the following address in cooperation with Sanggar Alam Kita, a theatre club he is also involved in:
Posko Klub Frisbee Jakarta/Sanggar Alam Kita Jl. Kampung Melayu Kecil 5 RT 14/RW 10 No. 1 Kampung Melayu Jakarta
If you need directions call Ardy on +62856 9363 3125 (Indonesian), Rian +62813 1827 4323 (Indonesian) or me at +62816 138 1077 (English/Indonesian).
If anyone wants to come out with me, I'll hopefully head out there again tomorrow evening, but it's unlikely that I'll make it there before sundown.
PS - Cybermap is how I find obscure streets in Jakarta, print off the map there before you go.
Despite the fact that it had been flooded since Thursday night and it was Sunday when we visited, some people were still being rescued from their houses in rubber rafts. Apparently this family had been forced to drink the flood waters while waiting for rescue.
For those that have just joined us, Jakarta has been receiving enormous amounts of rain over the last few days, newspapers around the world are reporting figures of 60-70% of Jakarta being flooded, with 40cm (almost a foot and a half) of rain having fallen on Thursday night/Friday morning alone. The worst hit area of Jakarta is Kampung Melayu, and the worst hit neighbourhood in Kampung Melayu just happens to be Poncol, where most of the core members of KFJ reside.
The field Discindo plays on on Sunday afternoons tends to turn to a big swamp if there's even a little bit of rain, let alone the torrential downpours that we've been having over the last few days. With this in mind, Discindo felt that it was better to use the money that we normally paid for the field in Senayan to buy emergency supplies for the families affected by the severe flooding in Kampung Melayu; in addition to this, pledges from a few generous members brought the total donated up to Rp. 2.1 million (around US$200)
Rp. 2.1 million may not seem like a lot of money, and its not compared to the scale of the disaster, but you can buy a surprising amount of stuff for it. In fact, our main concern was how to get the most value for the victims that would still fit in a taxi. We ended up spending Rp. 700,000 on basic medical supplies, Rp. 200,000 food, and the rest in cash donations to be used as Ardy and the kids that I gave it to felt best.
The medical supplies we gave included
13 bottles of betadine, 4 bottles of antiseptic solution, cotton wool, plasters, and q-tips for cleaning wounds;
A few hundred sachets of Pharolit (rehydration salts for diarrhea), a few hundred blister packs of Diapet (over-the-counter diarrhea medication);
16 tubes of Autan (mosquito repellent);
10 packs of sanitary pads; and
a few hundred blister packs of generic paracetamol tablets to reduce fever.
We would have bought much more of a lot of those things (sanitary pads, and Pharolit in particular), but it was a relatively small chemist and we cleared them out.
The stuff we gave was really just basic hygiene stuff, although, in these situations, the local knowledge of these sorts of things is really less than satisfactory. When I was telling the kids to go and get any wound cleaned up, no matter how small, because the water was absolutely filthy and they could get horrible infections, they all proudly showed me their open sores that they had been swimming around in the water with for the past 3 days. Also, for those not keeping up with the local news at the moment, the newspapers in the weeks leading up to this flooding had been filled with stories of outbreaks of Dengue Fever. With all this standing water around, people going hungry and lacking sleep immune systems are going to be low so we thought the medical supplies would be the best way to go.
So, I loaded up the car, picked up a few donated t-shirts (lots of people are cold and wet) and Howie and Haviva, and headed off to Kampung Melayu.
Handing over the donated goods to Pak Eddy, the sports teacher from SMP Perguruan Rakyat II and participant in the Poncol Cup in August last year.
Pak Eddy helping Tamara unload supplies
Yoyo and two other KFJ members helping unload boxes of water
We arrived at around 5pm and were followed not long after by Tamara and Chris, dabblers in Discindo who answered the call and brought a carload of supplies including big boxes of water, instant noodles, biscuits, and bags and bags of old clothes. After unloading the supplies we took up the invitation to have a wander around the neighbourhood to see what we could see.
Over lunch I had maintained that there was no way I was going to set foot in that filthy water, but it soon became obvious that we weren't going to see very much unless we took the plunge, so we rolled up out pant legs and waded in. Here are some of the photos:
Sugi, Yoyo and Howie knee-deep in the surprisingly cold floodwater
People crowding to see who is being rescued from their house. Sibuk, one of the stars of KFJ is behind Ardy (in the red and white t-shirt).
I had thought that the Town Hall I had visited on Friday night was the extent of the refugee problem in Kampung Melayu, but it soon became obvious that it was much, much larger than that... The below is some video footage of the mosque just east of Tebet train station. It's packed, and most of the Klub Frisbee Jakarta kids have been staying here for 3-4 days. Sugi, Desti, Soleh, Ardy's younger brother and all of their families to name but a few.
The mosque near Tebet train station. Soleh is near the middle of the photo wearing the orange life jacket and talking to his mother.
One of the meal tickets entitling Ibu Mul and her 4 family members to 3 meals a day at the mosque cooked in the communal kitchen
Looking onto 2 lanes of the completely flooded 8 lane Kampung Melayu Besar
Deni is staying in the mosque alone at the moment because his grandmother and younger siblings are still stranded in their house, the alley is too narrow for the rubber boats to pass.
As you can see from the photo above, surprisingly, people seem to be in relatively good spirits, in fact, the kids seem to be enjoying the time off school and living in one big room with all of their friends. We'll see how they go in the coming days. Ardy said that while the waters normally take 3-4 days to subside, families can take as long as 2 weeks to get back to work as they clean out their houses. As I mentioned in a previous post, the school is completely submerged along with all of the schoolbooks, teachers' records and so on. It will be a while until things are back to normal...
Sorry for the radio silence, pick-up has been happening in either Klender or Cawang, but there haven't been school visits for the last few weeks because I've been busy, Ardy and the kids from Kampung Melayu (the core group) have had a theatre performance, I've been busy, and Jakarta has been hit by the worst floods in 5 years and Kampung Melayu is under (literally) 8 feet of water, respectively.
SMP Perguruan Rakyat II, the school that some loyal readers may remember from the Poncol Cup, is underwater... The whole thing! I went with Ardy, Soleh and Aming to see it last night but we couldn't get close enough and someone else was using the inflatable raft that someone had donated. I might get another chance to get out there tomorrow before Discindo training and I'll see if I can get some photos.
There are literally tens of thousands of people displaced by the flooding and torrential rain but, for the most part, they seem to be taking it pretty well. As I walked through the darkened streets of Poncol at about 11pm last night (the power is out, quite a few of the deaths that occur in these situations are from electrocution, though they are dwarfed by the threat of diarrhea) all of the neighbourhood men and boys were out and about sitting around kerosene lanterns and playing guitar or chatting. The women (who were mostly asleep) didn't seem quite so blasé about it though... I just poked my head into the town hall (the mosque, where people would normally sleep is mostly underwater too) and there were around 40 mothers and children curled up on mats on the stone floor packed in like sardines trying to get to sleep.
What a lot of people don't realise about these sorts of short-term, relatively frequently occuring emergency situations is how many productive hours are lost in the weeks following (and even lives threatened) by all of the illness caused. Also, calling the water "water" is possibly misleading; a decent percentage of it is human effluent and there's truckload after truckload of rubbish. When people are wading and, in some cases, swimming through this to try to salvage belongings from their houses you've got a serious threat of infection from cuts and ingestion of the water.
A few Discindo members have donated some clothes and blankets to keep people warm and dry, but we'll see what we can collect tomorrow at training.
I'm of two minds at the moment as to how we can best deploy our limited resources. I was considering giving Ardy money to bring the kids down to Senayan to play ultimate with us to get them out of their parents hair and take their minds off the flooding, but most of the regular players should probably be helping their parents salvage stuff anyway... I suppose it would be better spent on electrolyte replacement drinks, clean water, and biscuits...
The mini hat tournament with Klub Frisbee Jakarta and Discindo went well with *ahem* Samsara (my team) dominating and taking out the top honours. I picked an exceptionally bad weekend to have it as it seemed like half of Discindo was out of town, and we only had three teams, but everyone had fun and the Jakarta Post published this article about it (we'll see how long the hyperlink works...).
We'll get a scanned copy up here soon, and I think there are a few more photos floating around there too...
The Klub Frisbee Jakarta / Sanggar Alam Kita POSKO
