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Nine
Months Later….
Birth comes after nine months of waiting.
As a midwife I hold this time span sacred.
Retuning to Aceh to work in the Bumi Sehat
clinic, nine months after the Tsunami, I had
expected rebirth.
I found the people living in rotted
sagging tents, malnourished and depressed. I
found them clinging to any spark of hope. When
I say this people wonder what has happened to
the flood of relief money that went to Aceh.
Please know that so much good work has been,
and is being done. It is just that the
destruction of Aceh from the earthquake and
tsunami was vast. When I saw the path of the
tsunami from the air, I realized then, that it
would be a long long road to recovery. I
struggle with hopelessness, and wonder why I
imagined that a little foundation, like Bumi
Sehat could make a scratch in moving this
mountain of despair. Believe me, I often feel
like throwing in the towel, resting on the
belief that, 'we've done our part.' But I don't
think I would rest at all.
Our clinic has become, for many people,
a bright place to come and get out of the rain
in the evening. Since the hospital in Meulaboh
is so far away and the road so bad, the Bumi
Sehat clinic is the essential medical facility
for the large collection of Tsunami survivors in
this area. Without our little clinic, many
illnesses would go untreated, wounds undressed.
We did crunch the numbers for June, July and
Aug. 2005, and Bumi Sehat Aceh had approx. 1,500
incidents of patient care per month. That is
astonishing when one considers that the clinic
is little more than a large shack! It is a
miracle of cooperation between donors and
volunteers, who I must cry in gratitude for. If
I have not personally kissed your hands, believe
me I want to, and will when I get a chance.
My staff took me straight from the
airstrip in Meulaboh to the hospital, where I
found our patient, Zubaidah, with a fasting
blood sugar of 217. Insulin was prescribed, or
she would loose her foot and soon die (she had
stepped on a nail, and it went bad).
Fortunately John Fawcette contacted me (he
operates the non-profit foundation that does
cataract, cleft lip/palate surgery, and provides
us with heaps of medications and support). John
suggested we put her on Dibex, an oral medicine,
and check her blood sugar levels daily, until
she stabilizes. Both of us knew that it would
be crazy to put a woman living in a tent, with
only one surviving family member, on Insulin.
Zubaidah can be counted as one more person
whose life John has saved in Indonesia.
When I finally did reach the Bumi Sehat
clinic in Samatiga, I found Australian midwife
Amanda Driscoll hard at work organizing the
medicines and doing patient care. She has been
amazing. Anna Rawlingson, a British midwife has
joined Amanda, and at this writing they are
covering all the patient care. Auzzie ambulance
medics, Shane Edwards, Nigel Longman, and Peter
Shearer joined our team in Aug. - Sept. have now
gone home. These skilled men saved several
lives as we have seen an increase in serious
accidents in Aceh.
There was a three a.m. wake up that I
hoped was a birth, and turned out to be nearly
the opposite. A young man, asleep in his tent
was attacked, his throat slit from ear to ear.
Pete and Nigel got his IV in, Amanda dressed
the wounds, his jugular vein was exposed to our
view, but not cut, thank heaven. Amanda rode in
the car to the hospital. Where he eventually
got surgery, thanks to the advocate skills of
Christine and Ade. This young man, in his mid
twenties had already lost his parents and home
in the tsunami. This crime of violence was a
harsh reminder, for the medical staff, that our
patients are under grave stress. Approximately
80% of the tsunami/quake victims were women and
children. This has left a population of
traumatized, homeless, lonely, malnourished men.
A friend, who wishes to remain
anonymous, donated money, some of which we
decided should be used to buy a car. IDEP
matched the funds, and we have a beautiful, not
brand new, but in good running order, Isuzu
Panther. Renting a vehicle, even an only
semi-dependable one, has been a burdensome
monthly expense. Already lives have been saved
due to this beautiful gift of a car.
Our next patient transport to Meulaboh
hospital was "Ami", a 17 year old boy. Ami was
gassing up a borrowed old motorbike, and he lit
a cigarette. We he arrived, riding between two
men on motorcycle, his skin was peeling off in
sheets. Our ambulance medics, Nigel and Pete
quickly got IV fluids and pain relief onboard.
As we sped along the bumpy road, we bathed his
burns with water and lavender oil. As it turned
out, 45% of Ami's skin was burned. He became
one of the eight patients we were supporting in
the hospital that week, for if Bumi Sehat does
not buy the medications, the patients will get
none. The Hospital is clean out of medicine, and
though services and medications are supposed to
be free for Tsunami survivors, there are no free
meds to be had. This is an awful source of
frustration for the doctors, nurses and midwives
working in the Meulaboh hospital, who must send
their patient's family members out to the street
pharmacies, to attempt to buy medicines, without
which, in some cases, the patient would die.
Ami has made it so far. Our Bumi Sehat
staff visit him whenever they go to Muelaboh,
and bring money for his medications. They have
made up a squirt bottle of colloidal silver
water and essential oil of lavender flowers,
which Ami's friends and family spritz him with
often. This has brought some relief. There will
be many scars, and it will be a long road to
recovery for this boy.
I was able to see Ibu Rosni several
times. She helped me, and Sarah Averbach, a
beautiful medical student from Fairfield Iowa,
organize a capacity building workshop for the
surviving midwives on hemorrhage prevention and
control. It was a wonderful feeling to get
together with the midwives and traditional birth
attendants, and open our hearts, do peer review
of difficult cases, and share food & love.
Our next workshop will be on
breastfeeding and may even be sponsored by
Catholic Relief Services Water and Sanitation
Dept. as bottle feeding is dangerous for tsunami
survivors to attempt, due to the lack of clean
potable, uncontaminated water. Just before I
left I saw two children one 13 another 15 months
of age. They were both bottle fed orphans. Both
had poor muscle tone, no light in their eyes,
difficulty holding their heads up for long
periods of time, had never attempted crawling,
and they had not begun to verbalize simple
syllables. Clearly they were both
developmentally impaired. Their challenges were
due to malnutrition and more investigation is
needed, as there have been reports of naturally
occurring arsenic in the shallow wells in that
area.
Will Rogers, our new fundraiser/
professional beggar, and Matias, our go-for and
all out hard working Bumi devotee, took the U.N.
flight with me to the city of Banda Aceh. Film
maker Dendy Montgomery and his astonishing wife,
Rehan (who just became a mom!!!) took care of
us. Banda Aceh is much further along in Tsunami
recovery than the Samatiga area is. There we
met with UNICEF, UNFPA, World Vision, IOM, BRR,
AUSAID, and other NGOs to seek funding, to keep
the clinic in Samatiga open. IDEP, who has been
funding us since February, is out of money. They
got us this far and we are so full of gratitude.
The Rotary New York, in cooperation with the
Rotary of Ubud have awarded us enough to keep us
going in the interim. At this writing we are
actively seeking funding to keep the Aceh clinic
operating.
Will and his wife Renita have thrown
all their eggs in our Bumi Sehat basket, moved
to Nyuh Kuning and have rescued us. Thank you
Melanie for brining them onboard. Mel, by the
way is back from England and in full swing doing
our logistics.
At the Bumi Sehat Bali clinic babies
are being born. Prenatal care continues.
Midwives, Ibu Jero Susanti, Ibu Putu and Ibu
Budi continue to be amazing. Dr. Bobbi Aqua is
hard at work providing Traditional Chinese
Medicine for the relief of suffering. Many of
her patients at the Bumi Sehat clinic are
elderly, with chronic pain. We expect to send
her back to Aceh in November. Frank Wilson has
come on board as our financial director, we are
getting more organized in computer accounting,
so we can be transparent in our reporting to
donors. Our donors work hard and contribute
from the heart, we feel a responsibility to
spend their money wisely, and according to their
wishes.
Speaking of donors, Zimmerman
Foundation has joined our family, thanks to
Heather Podol, for putting out project on the
table for them to look at. Marie Zenack's
family, particularly her husband, Nathan and
daughter-in-love, Karen, have continued to
support us. Dr. Peter and Ibu Ruth, Bruce
Grady, Ash Charities of Australia, The Women of
Spirit group, Caine of the "Dancing Donors", how
can we thank you for keeping us afloat? Special
thanks to everyone from Australia, Japan and
America who has brought in vitamins, children's
clothing and loving support.
I have lost my fear that funding will
dry up for the Yayasan. All the help and love
that pours in has given me faith. Having lived
and worked in the wake of the deluge in Aceh, I
have been thinking of Noah, of his wife and
family, of the animals on the Ark… and I agree
with the poet Rumi who lived from 1207 to 1273
when he wrote:
"Start a large and foolish project, like Noah.
It makes no absolutely no difference what
people think of you."
Om Shanti & Alhamduhlillah ~~~ Ibu Robin Lim
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