Poncol Visit: Sunday, 11th February 2007

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…