We're still here

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...

We'll see how it goes...