The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted October 9, 2009, 9:47 am by Elpido Soplantila

Lead them to a better future

I started my day with a cup of tea while reading a local newspaper, Padang Ekspres, this morning. The headline for today’s edition read “70 percent of the business economy is destroyed.”

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake has affected Indonesia's West Sumatra province in so many aspects. It's not only about ruined buildings or damaged houses; not only about deaths and missing people. Besides all those losses, the economy is also falling down.

So many hotels, schools, shopping centers, markets and even companies are destroyed. So many staff died. Even though most survived, it’s not easy for them to start again.

But the worst impact of this economic problem is the suffering and burden among earthquake-affected families.

Elok, a fish farmer, saw his ponds destroyed by the earthquake and now wonders where his family's income will come from. Photo: Doddy Suparta/Mercy Corps

Elok, a 51-year-old fish farmer from Ulakan village, lost the fish ponds that generated his family income.

Basril — father of three children — once ran a small business together with his wife in order to fulfill their daily needs, but now faces the reality that the earthquake has made his family’s life worse.

The news reports that West Sumatra really needs a lot of money to recover the economy. Mercy Corps is really eager to help affected families to start generating income again but, with the current funding sources, we realize how hard it will be to meet these overwhelming needs.

But we won’t stop now. So many needs are still out there. People need to survive.

“Beyond the immediate tragedy of this disaster, lies a longer term impact on the economy, which has been severely affected. While we are working on alleviating the suffering of people made homeless, we are also looking ahead to how we can help get the markets and supply chains functioning again — and make them more resilient so they will come back more quickly from future disasters”, explained Malka Older, Mercy Corps Indonesia's Program Director, who leads the emergency response team on the ground.

Mercy Corps strongly believes that supporting people like Elok and Basril to start their livelihoods will lead all survivors to a better future.

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Blog Post Posted October 9, 2009, 1:57 am by Tanty Pranawisanty

A happy moment amid the ruins

Rendra (at back) plays with his two friends and a rusty old bicycle in the village of Suranti, where Mercy Corps delivered hygiene kits to earthquake-affected families. Photo: Tanty Pranawisanty/Mercy Corps

I was busy overseeing the distribution of hygiene kits for 167 earthquake-affected households in Surantiah village when I was suddenly attracted by the sound of laughter from outside the hall where we were handing out supplies.

Three little children shared the joy and laughter of riding a rusty, dusty bicycle around. From their appearance, I guess they are around six or seven years old. I offered them candies that I always bring whenever I go to the field and, without hesitation, they took some with smiles on their faces. Soon after, I had a few wonderful moments taking their pictures as they rode the bike and laughing out loud when I showed them the previews on my digital camera.

When I asked what were they doing there, one of them — a boy named Rendra — said that they were there waiting for his mother, Ibu Yanti, who is a member of the Disaster Preparedness Team in this village. Mercy Corps — through a partnership with a local organization, Kogami —has formed these teams in each sub-district and trained them for disaster preparedness. Ibu Yanti was in charge of arranging this distribution for her village.

The two girls playing with Rendra were also waiting for their mothers, who were in line to get hygiene kits. They are all neighbours in Surantiah and they all had the same story for me. Their houses and school were badly damaged by the quake. At the moment, they are out of school and still have no idea when they will be back to study and see the rest of their schoolmates.

But one thing's for sure: they really understand what has happened and, sadly, what might happen in the future when another disaster strikes. They have learned from Rendra’s mother and other Disaster Preparedness Team members what should they do if an earthquake happens again.

But today, they all seemed very happy playing with their rusty bike, the only belonging left from the earthquake. Deep inside, I do wish that they will always have happy moments like I saw today — and I hope their school will be rebuilt soon.

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Blog Post Posted October 8, 2009, 7:44 pm by Carol Ward

The business of relief in Samoa

Staff from South Pacific Business Development, Mercy Corps' local partner, pack relief supplies for delivery to poor women who lost everything in last week's tsunami. Photo: Carol Ward/Mercy Corps

In order to bury and mourn those who died in the tsunami on September 29, today was designated a half-day national holiday by the Government of Western Samoa. This meant that the staff at South Pacific Business Development, our local partner, had a lot to do. In addition to their normal work of servicing the loans made to poor business women, they purchased items for relief packages and made the arrangements for distributing them tomorrow to women who were severely affected by the tsunami.

In the meantime, we have been working out the details of a public works program that we hope to initiate — if we can find funding. We expect that temporary employment would reintroduce cash flows into beneficiary communities, help to revitalise local markets and restore basic economic functions. There will be an Early Recovery Coordination meeting tomorrow, where we hope to discuss our plans with other agencies like the Red Cross, to avoid duplication of efforts and harmonise details.

I went to the bank today to change money and found that the U.S. dollar has fallen against the Western Samoan Tala for the third day in a row. This will make all our programs relatively more expensive. As this is an island where almost everything is imported, making things very pricey. I was shocked to find that a wheelbarrow costs about U.S. $250!

Right, I had better get back to helping people pack things up!

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Blog Post Posted October 8, 2009, 12:46 pm by Elpido Soplantila

Your help means a lot

Today Mercy Corps has done a lot.

Starting very early in the morning, a number of staff made a run to our warehouse to pack the hygiene kits that we'd be distributing later in the day, while the procurement and logistics team procured more supplies for the next distribution. Another team did an assessment in Agam district, where hundreds of people have died and tons are still missing.

The distribution for today is quite special because two donors — USAID and ECHO — visited the affected areas in Pesisir Selatan with our emergency response team and joined us in the distribution process. I was responsible for accompanying one of the staff members from USAID Indonesia, who flew from Jakarta to Padang to see the great work that Mercy Corps is doing on the ground.

Basril's five-year-old daughter stands in the wreckage of what once once her bedroom in the village of Balai Sinayan, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Photo: Elpido Soplantila/Mercy Corps

We departed from Padang around 11 A.M. and, once again, we enjoyed views of the beautiful white sandy beaches and the green hills of the province as we drove toward our destination. But the amazing scenery was soon tempered by reality when we arrived at one of the distribution points in Balai Sinayan sub village, Pesisir Selatan district. Although this area was not as devastated compared to some places in Padang Pariaman, more than 50 families lost their houses and belongings here.

In Balai Sinayan I met Basril, a father of three children, in front of his damaged house. He told me how he was so worried when the earthquake happened. On that day, Basril and the whole family — including his 71-year-old mother —were attending a communal volleyball game in the village. From far away, he saw some houses fall down. The whole family ran back in fear to see their houses. The children were crying while he tried to enter the house, where he found that all the bedroom walls were cracked and the kitchen broken into pieces.

Now, they have to stay at his brother’s house because not a single room in their old house can be occupied anymore.

“Honestly, I don’t know how to start," Basril explained as tears fell down his face. "In the 2007 earthquake, we lost our small kiosk where we sold a few items to make family income. We hadn’t even been able to start that small business again, and now, our house is destroyed.”

I patted his shoulder for a while as we stood there quietly. When I thanked him for sharing his story, he suddenly said terima kasih which means "thank you."

Here in Balai Sinayan today, we distributed hygiene kits — soap, detergent, toothbrushes and toothpaste, women's sanitary napkins, buckets, blankets, and other household items — to Basril and 385 other families throughout the earthquake-damaged Pesisir Selatan district.

Just a few minutes before I left his house, Basril shook my hand and, again, he said terima kasih.

The hygiene kit means a lot to him.

Terima kasih means a lot to me and the team here.

And your help and support mean a lot to Basril and thousands of affected families in West Sumatra, Indonesia.

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Blog Post Posted October 8, 2009, 12:35 pm by Tanty Pranawisanty

I hope the world got my message

I never imagined that I would be interviewed by an international news TV station. But there I was, on a live report from the field, with Al Jazeera asking me to tell the world what I seeing. They asked me about the rapid needs assessments that Mercy Corps conducted within 48 hours after the massive earthquake hit Padang, West Sumatra.

I must admit that I was bit nervous and less confident — in part because I'd missed my morning shower due to the lack of water all over Padang. But I went to meet Al Jazeera’s crews, who were ready and standing by in front of the fatally-damaged Ambacang Hotel, where hundreds of hotel guests were trapped under the collapsed building and buried alive there.

I was very surprised to know that I would be interviewed by Veronica Pedrosa, the reporter that I often saw on TV, updating news from all over the world. It made me feel quite edgy.

After having a minute for self calming, I started to realize that this was a big chance for me to let the world know what was going on in this place. The cry for help from the survivors who had lost their family members, the view of the children who were sleeping under the tent in an open areas, and the family members who tried to search for things in the ruins — all those things suddenly gave me my confidence back.

And that morning, live from the field, I was finally able to spread the message to the world that there are thousands of survivors who need immediate help. They need clean water and food. They need hygiene kits. They need recovery kits to clean up debris. And most of all, they need to have the world know about what happened to them.

It was only a ten-minute interview, but I hope the world got my message.

Soon afterward, I received phone calls and text messages from my Mercy Corps colleges who happened to be watching that live report. I also got a sweet phone call from my kids, who were also watching me on TV. All those supportive messages and responses made me smile.

I felt so fine the rest of that day and very grateful about my life. That afternoon, while enjoying my cup of hot black coffee, I remembered the famous quote from Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in this world.” I smiled to myself for choosing the right life path and being member of Mercy Corps' big family. It's the best decision I have ever made.

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Blog Post Posted October 8, 2009, 10:52 am by Malka Older

A few comforts as they start to rebuild

Dozens of households in the small, earthquake-stricken village of Surantiah received hygiene kits - which included mosquito nets, blankets, towels, toothpaste, detergent and water containers - from our emergency response team today. Photo: Malka Older/Mercy Corps

Today Mercy Corps carried out a distribution in Surantiah, a village in the district of Pesisir Selatan, about three and a half hours south of Padang City. The drive took us on a winding road between mountains and paddy fields on one side, and the sea on the other. In some places, the road still showed the effects of the landslides that the earthquake had knocked down over it.

In Painan, the small city that is the capital of Pesisir Selatan, we stopped to meet with government officials at the informal headquarters they had set up to gather and disseminate earthquake information. Painan is a lovely city, set in a hollow surrounded by hills and open to a bay — a nightmare scenario for a tsunami. Along the main roads of the town are small signs marking the tsunami evacuation route up into the hills.

After listening to the government team explain the damages from the earthquake and the small assistance they had been receiving, we continued along the coast to Surantiah, a small town clustered around a muddy but extensive market area. The distribution was in the village office, where women and a few men crowded into the room and then walked up one by one, smiling shyly as their names were called, to receive hygiene kits: buckets, mosquito nets, blankets, soap, sanitary products and supplies for other basic needs.

As the distribution continued in the hall, we went around to visit some of the damaged houses of the people we were distributing to. The elderly, fragile men and women with colorful headscarves invited us into their elderly, fragile homes. The brick walls, held together with thick crusts of mortar, had just crumbled and fallen away during the earthquake. In other houses the cement floor was cracked into shards.

Most of the families living in these houses had moved into neighbors’ or family houses, but some had just stayed where they were, sleeping in a bed that looked out into nothingness where a wall had been. When we asked, they proudly showed us the hygiene kits they had just received, to give them a few comforts as they start to rebuild.

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Blog Post Posted October 8, 2009, 9:17 am by Malka Older

More needs emerge along Sumatra's coast

The Mercy Corps team has begun distributions, giving out much-needed items like tool kits to help people rebuild their homes and their lives. In each village, the Disaster Preparedness Teams that Mercy Corps and local partner Kogami trained during the on-going program organize their community in groups of ten households. These groups will share the tool kits, working together in the traditional Indonesian method of gotong royong to collectively rebuild their houses one by one. This will support the villages’ cohesiveness and self-sufficiency while helping them with their most pressing need: shelter.

As Mercy Corps continues distributing to more villages, traveling north and south along the coast to the areas where we have been building relationships with local governments, people and schools for almost a year, the news of more and more damaged areas continues to emerge. Assessment teams come back with stories of interior areas with no roads, where houses were toppled by the earthquake or smothered in landslides.

Today Mercy Corps sent an assessment team to the north of the province, where aid is still scarce and people are facing the same dire situation as elsewhere. Houses and other buildings are cracked, collapsed or unusable. Water supplies have been disrupted, making it difficult for people to care for themselves and their families.

As the understanding of the disaster’s full impact continues to expand, Mercy Corps is also expanding its coverage to support more communities in their work to rebuild.

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Blog Post Posted October 7, 2009, 11:02 pm by Katherine Hollis

Microfinance and development in Kyrgyzstan

Kompanion News is distributed in Kyrgyzstan to highlight the development work that Mercy Corps and Kompanion, Mercy Corps’ microfinance institution, undertake in the country. Through financial and development services at the household level, Kompanion seeks to address some of the country’s development challenges and contribute to the strengthening of communities through sustainable development.

This newsletter features major initiatives that focus on issues of organic agricultural and waste management practices. It also highlights a lack of knowledge in rural communities as part of a broader goal of promoting natural resources conservation and good management practices by using a science-based, ethno-ecological approach. Kompanion News tells the stories of individuals who have benefited from doing business with Kompanion, and the multi-faceted support they received, not only through microfinance loans, but also through Kompanion’s development services and initiatives focused on community development.

You can read the latest issue of Kompanion News here: http://www.mercycorps.org/publications/16558

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Blog Post Posted October 7, 2009, 11:41 am by Elpido Soplantila

We won't stop now

I wasn't joking when I wrote in my previous blog post that Padang is one of my favorite holiday destinations. So it was amazing this morning as I drove with our emergency response team to Pesisir Selatan district and saw the beautiful white sandy beaches along the coast.

The three-hour trip from Padang city brought us to three different villages: Suranti, Salido and Lumpo, where our next distribution will happen tomorrow. We were joined today by a local non-governmental organization (NGO), Kogami, who has partnered with Mercy Corps’ Disaster Risk Reduction project in West Sumatra since 2008. The team arrived a day before the distribution to coordinate with the local government to make sure that the activity will go well tomorrow.

Staff from Mercy Corps and its local partner, Kogami, coordinate details with a sub-village leader in Pesisir Selatan district one day before distribution of critical supplies to earthquake-affected families. Photo: Elpido Soplantila/Mercy Corps

As we drove into the devastated areas, I again realized the enormous needs. The latest official update indicates that 740 people died in the earthquake, 343 are still missing, 412 severely injured and 2,039 slightly injured. But, unofficially, thousands of people are feared to be trapped in the rubble and the number of casualties is expected to increase.

Besides the casualties and destruction, the earthquake has devastated family livelihoods. Everyone seems unsure of what to do next and how they'll make ends meet.

Today marks a week since the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck West Sumatra. Lots of NGOs are working hard, trying their best to address the enormous needs across this area. Tomorrow, we'll be back here, distributing hygiene kits to more than 380 families.

But the response does not stop with distribution.

With a full team of 25 staff members — mostly deployed from the field offices around Indonesia and supported by international emergency response experts — Mercy Corps has planned for a long-term program strategy to complete the emergency phase, then move quickly forward to the recovery and development phase.

We won’t stop now.

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Blog Post Posted October 7, 2009, 10:55 am by Greg Casagrande

The challenges of post-tsunami Samoa

In just a few moments, a tsunami reduced dozens of Samoan villages to rubble. Photo: Greg Casagrande

Monday was a very long day. We visited with dozens and dozens of South Pacific Business Development Foundation (SPBD) ladies who have been severely impacted by the Samoan Tsunami. The stories they tell and their grief is extreme.

One SPBD member, Ruta Sao —who has a small taro plantation — tells of losing four of her children (ages: five months, two, four and five) when the wave hit. Each of their bodies has since been recovered and they will all be buried in the mass national funeral this Thursday. Ruta is now living high up on a mountainside under a tarp held up by four large sticks. She insists that she is not leaving.

In fact, there is a whole enclave of people from Ruta’s village of Saleapaga who have now moved up there. They all insist that they will never go back to Saleapaga. And after experiencing such terrifying tragedy who can blame them?

We will help her and the others rebuild new and safe homes on the hillside above Saleapaga.

The prime purpose for today’s activities was to individually assess each of the survivors' situations and determine how we can best assist them. People like Ruta are still grieving tremendously and perhaps what she needs most is time, and then some counseling and then some opportunity. We are good at providing economic opportunity. We hope to also link her and others with some charitable psychological counseling organizations that will be arriving on the island in the next couple of weeks.

The village next door to Saleapaga, Lalomanu, was also largely wiped out. Thanks to a nearby off-shore island which bore the brunt of the tsunami, some houses in Lalomanu were mercifully spared. We had organized a group of 21 of our micro-entrepreneurs with whom we work in Lalomanu and were gauging very specifically how each was impacted.

A client of South Pacific Business Development Foundation, Mercy Corps' partner in Samoa, stands in what's left of her business after it was devastated by the tsunami. Photo: Greg Casagrande

One of our members, whom we had assessed as having been entirely spared from disaster, then burst into sudden tears and she began to tell us all of a heartbreaking story of losing a grip on her mother’s arm as they were escaping the wave — her mother was carried out to the sea. Her mother, too, will be buried along with Ruta’s children this Thursday.

The point is — homes can be replaced and businesses can be re-launched. But people are truly precious. And for this reason, all of these ladies in this area have been terribly, deeply and personally affected and need our help.

SPBD is putting together aid packages to deliver to women who have now been literally scattered throughout Samoa. We have already delivered to most a prepaid cell phone so that we can keep in touch with them. Cash grants will be a big part of the package —these should go out later this week.

The logistical issues are significant; however, we have one of the best distribution systems in the entire country and so I am confident that we can pull it off.

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